My progens are both authors and librarians. One of them (a guardian) is the big, cuddly, "when was the last time you ate??" kinda grannies, and the other (a fae) is this lil twig granny who absolutely killed back in her day.
Anyway, both lovely ladies are always searching for books in their home-built library, and I imagine that in their gijinka forms the lil twig granny would sit up on the big cuddly Granny's shoulders to search for books
Granny Nika speaks with a heavy southern accent, plants a seed every time she cusses, and will absolutely whoop your ass if you raise another damn coRPSE FROM THAT SWAMP, BOY!!!
My first and clearest memory is of a thick, heavy, shimmering golden tail slithering away behind a tree. Although I suppose if I were to be entirely accurate I would say that it was the sound of the scales being dragged through the underbrush, and the huge thudding steps retreating from my reach. I have no idea how old I was on this day, as I didn't think anything of it. She left often, always returned with food and trinkets and a glowing smile. And so I waited.
When she would leave I would stand at the very edge of the rock’s gentle overhang, peaking through the hanging vines but not daring to leave the safety of the den. It was a very nice den-- made from an absolutely enormous piece of rock which stuck out of the ground at a convenient angle, and made a warm, dry home guarded by a green curtain. It felt very safe, and I stayed very far to the back of the den, tucked away tightly and securely between the tamped-down dirt and the cool stone. I remember the den more than her, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.
After that is a smell. The smell of wet sand and stagnant water and raw fish meat as I learned how to feed myself. It's funny that I don't remember a taste at all, actually. There's a hazy recollection of the duckweed between my claws as I lunged for every movement in the water. This was the first time I noticed myself, if you can believe that. I saw my wobbly reflection in the still water, and I thought it was a monster lurking in the deep. Although I was afraid, I struck and I caught my first fish.
I had never held a live fish, and the way it flopped and spasmed on the shore gave me chills. The little creature's slick wet scales rolled in the loose sand and dirt, its swiftly pumping gills taking in soil and air alike, but to no avail. When it finally died, I poked its side a few times with my claw, brushed away the sand to expose a tiny patch of perfectly shimmering scales. For an instant, I felt a horrible pang in my chest. I choked deep in my throat and tried to break my gaze with the cold, empty eyes of the fish. As soon as I managed to turn my head away, I swiped at the corpse and pierced its flesh, quickly tearing away the scales and the eyes in search of the white meat which would slake my hunger. Even as my little stomach did flip flops and I tried not to cry, I could not ignore my hunger any longer.
The only reason I had even gone fishing, I thought, was because I could just barely remember her warnings about foraging. There was always a golden haziness to her and her voice-- much like the bright aura the sun would give the world on a particularly cloudless day.
“Remember, Kundanika,” she would always say, her voice smooth and sweet as honey. But never could I recall her next words. I could feel the rising and falling slopes of her tone, sense where certain syllables might fall… but it was always as though she were speaking softly to someone else, not at all to me.
I spent the hours at night trying desperately to cling onto even tiny remnants of her wonderful voice, but that was all I ever had. “Remember, Kundanika…” I was trying to so hard to, whipping myself with guilt when I couldn't recall more than those words. Eventually, even that gentle presence of her speaking to another retreated completely from my mind.
But as time went on, I grew tired of fish. There were just so many round red berries hanging off of bushes, so many ripe fruits bending boughs down low. And so began my experimentation.
Was it dangerous? Perhaps. But I was determined to make myself a good life while I waited. The rock under which I always slept was the perfect place to begin my documentation. I climbed on the back of the great stone and cleared its surface of vines, moss, and packed-in soil. It took some looking, but I also managed to dig up a lump of coal, which I used to mark the stone with my notes.
Even at that young, adventurous age, I was quite the meticulous notetaker. I picked two berries and one leaf off of a nearby bush, pulverizing one berry against the surface of the stone and letting its juices stain the surface. Although it was more than a little difficult to write with a jagged hunk of rock, I traced the shape of the leaf right beside the berry stain. I took the smallest, tiniest bit of the little berry that I could muster and waited.
In this way, I slowly documented all of the fruits and berries and tubers and vegetables I could find in the marsh. The stone was soon covered with notes and sketches and scrawls and diagrams and suddenly there was sense in the world. The world became a great machine, a huge mechanism made from tangled vines and roots, from delicate leaves and burbling water, from growth and life. I stood before my work, looked at the beautiful beginning of meaning in a world that was very suddenly mine. I ran my tongue over my berry stained teeth, stopped to suck a seed out from between my fangs. This was real. This was mine. I had language and power and knowledge! So much knowledge.
This was the first moment I did not miss her.
~~~~~
My very favorite thing to do was watch snails. It might sound silly-- like watching the water erode the very land away-- but something about their necessary decisiveness interested me. Most other animals appeared to me to be very twitchy and ridiculous, like the squirrels whom had run right over my claws in their panics, or the birds who spooked so easily. Snails moved slowly but purposefully, with their destination so clearly in mind. Nothing that slow could afford to guess where they needed to be. What wisdom they might hold.
My creativity blossomed as my materials grew scarce. Once I had thoroughly coated the stone from all sides and angles in my wild notes, I needed a new way to keep track of all that I discovered. I sharpened sticks into very nice points and pressed berries to make deep red ink, wrote my notes on leaves and soft, thin bark. This way I could keep my notes in a neat stack in the hole I had dug out for them under the rock. After some time, I discovered that feathers made even better writing tools, and so I invented the quill all on my own.
One of the greatest discoveries I made was tending trees. It was so easy to make a tree grow exactly the way you wanted it to. I planted seeds in a ring around the rock, trained the saplings to weave through each other, and created a real den. The saplings grew to solid trees, each single tree helping to form a solid structure which I grew to call home, all with the stone slab at the center.
There were so many things in the world to learn! So many things just in this little marsh to discover and name and track and explain. I felt a swelling, growing, bursting sense of purpose as I pressed further and further to fill out my growing library of notes. I felt as though this place was uniquely mine, and it made me indescribably happy.
~~~~~
Maybe it’s my own fault, but I guess I figured no one would ever find this place. It seemed right to me that I was here on my own, just me and the animals.
I remember a distinct feeling of wrongness late one night as I tried to drift off to sleep. I was starting to get rather large for sleeping under the rock, and the vines tickled my snout as I tried to sleep. It was here, just as I was starting to slip into the blissful sleep after an honest day’s work, that a gut-wrenching fear came upon me as suddenly as though I had been kicked in the chest. I dug my claws into the dirt almost instinctively and poked my face out of the vines. Nothing.
As suddenly as the fear had come, it sank away. Exhausted from this sharp dose of horror, I fell into a deep sleep at last.
The next morning, I awoke to an unfamiliar feeling. It was not horror or fear, but rather a nagging worry. A paranoia.
Someone else was here.
I was absolutely certain of it. Someone else had come here.
“Remember, Kundanika…”
Who was it? Who had found me?
While every bone in my body screamed to dart out of my den and go tearing through the trees, trying to find whatever threat had come into my territory, I gave myself a moment to steady my breathing and set out as calmly as I could muster.
Part of me followed my nose, but I think most of my search was so deeply ingrained in me that I didn’t need to smell. I could feel that there was someone here-- here, in my home, in my place, MINE-- and they needed to leave.
My feelings of aggression grew stronger and stronger the closer I came to the intruders. I could feel their presence, could feel the blood boiling in my veins.
There was a sound of slow, deep breathing. Two chests rising and falling. Sleeping. They’d come in here and fallen asleep, had kicked down the doors to my home and fallen asleep-- how dare they! What disrespect! What utter foolishness!
It did not occur to me at the time that my “territory” was unmarked, unclaimed, and unprotected at its borders. All I could feel was intense and endless burning rage.
My breathing hitched in my throat when I finally found them. The larger beast seemed like a deer, but with a third thick horn protruding from its head, upward-facing fangs, and an eerie green glow which seemed to ooze out of vents in its neck. Despite its size and the breathing so deep it could have been a steadily rolling growl, it seemed quite peaceful and harmless curled up and sleeping.
Tucked safely in the center of the creature’s curl was another little beast. It was a color I had never seen, except perhaps hidden in the hues of the berries I had crushed on the rock. Made almost entirely of webbing, it seemed, and wearing a doll-like scrap of fabric around its neck.
I tried to keep my breathing calm as I sized the two up. My controlled breaths started to become angry huffs as I looked at them.
As hard as I tried, I lost control then and there, leaping out of the bushes with all the energy I had tried to constrain, bellowing out a tremendous roar with the breath I had tried to control.
The pair of animals startled awake, the smaller thing shocked so badly in must have leapt several feet in the air, and the larger getting to its feet at an alarming speed. At that time, I barely stood taller than it, and its frame was much more menacing.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? Leave this place!” I screamed in the most imposing voice I could.
“J-Just calm down--” spoke the smaller creature. Its voice was rather silky and low for such a tiny thing.
I thudded my claw on the ground and the little creature pressed the fins on each side of its head down against its neck as close as it could.
“Leave!” I repeated, my voice faltering slightly.
“We don’t mean any trouble,” the small one said, its tone so even it was alien. “We needed a place to sleep. Is this the Viridian Labyrinth?”
The fins twitched inquisitively.
“I--” I stuttered. “This is-- This is my territory!”
“But… where are we?”
The big beast seemed to soften as I did, its stance becoming less and less terrifying.
I swallowed hard and looked between the two of the them, unable to muster a single word.
“I am Mair,” the little one said. “This is Deoward. We come from the Starwood Strand. We’re not here to cause trouble, we were only resting.”
“The Starwood…?” I trailed off.
The beast narrowed its eyes. “The Starwood Strand. On the Southeastern border of the Starfall Isles.” His voice was low and rough.
“I don’t--”
“Is there anyone else here?” Mair asked. “Are you alone?”
“Yes.” I answered. “It’s just me.”
“Would you mind if we stayed?” Mair said. “We have been looking for a place to live. Neither of us have a home right now, and we--”
“No!” I reacted, drawing back from these two intruders. “I mean… no.”
“Just for the day, then?” Mair pressed. “We’re really very tired, we’ve been travelling for a very long time.”
Despite Mair’s strangely toneless voice, I couldn’t help but feel that I could trust the little creature. I couldn’t for the life of me conjure up a reason that these two would lie to me.
“Well,” I said, and then I stopped.
“Yes?” Deoward prompted.
“Well, yes. Fine. The day,” I agreed. “But I don’t want any nonsense. And I don’t want to see the two of you. I want you to stay and rest and then you will leave tomorrow morning. I’ll know.”
And I turned and left, feeling like the absolute master of negotiations.
Progens: large biologist mom and her small diplomat trans wife They are wonderful parents and willing to adopt any orphaned hatchlings Also they have matching scarves
