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““But it looked eata... edi.. able... like some you eat!" the boy's brow wrinkled in confusion.
Nod chuckled at the little boy, he looked so confused, “Why would I have something to eat in my bathroom?”
He put on a pot of mint tea to brew. The little Nod would need something to get the taste of soap out of his mouth,
For your Wander Home series: 4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue?5. What part was hardest to write?
Those are good ones!
For 4, probably when Nod says “I’ll go stay with Ronin, then,” after he finds out Ronin has been injured and will have to stay in the healers ward for a few days (from this snippet - I feel like it’s kind of cheating to use this one, since I haven’t finished the third story arc yet, but I did post this part of it already, at least).
It pretty much sums up how simple things are for Nod. If Ronin is there, then that’s where he’s going to be too. It’s the adults that keep complicating things.
For 5, writing the scene where Barnet is really mean to Nod when he takes custody of him in Lost in the Woods. I think I wrote all the scenes around it, and was quite a ways past it in the story, before I actually went back and wrote that one. I just don’t like writing scenes where people are really mean to children (and sadly there was no room in the story for anyone to smack Barnet for doing it, although Ronin came close).
What do you think about frogs?
“I have a frog!” Nod held up his felted toy for Nod with the fox teeth to see, “his name is Ribbit because he goes ribbit! ribbit! And we hop together.”
The boy preceded to frog hop around the living room ribbiting.
“We explore under the beds together,” Nod said between hops, “and we hide treasure and we play with my other toys, and we hop! hop! hop!”
“What about frogs that aren’t toys?” Ronin prompted.
“Oh!” Nod stopped hopping and tucked Ribbit in the crook of his arm, “I like those too. They swim and hop and eat bugs and they have a long long tongue that’s all sticky and they stick it out really fast and the bugs stick to it and some frogs live near water and some of them have sticky feet and climb up trees and they’re mostly green, but sometimes they’re brown and they have pretty designs on their skin.
“And sometimes in the summer me and Ronin go swimming and there are frogs and we can swim with them but they can hold their breath longer than me and I can hold my breath a really long time ‘cause I’m good at it, but frogs can hold their breath even longer.
“And I think Nod with the fox teeth and me should go swimming, and we can visit the frogs,” the boy concluded, giving the king a hopeful look.
Chipmunk
“I don’t like chipmunks,” Nod wrinkled his nose, “they’re not very nice and they’re mean and they won’t share their food like chickadees and they chase you away if you get too close and they eat frogs sometimes and that’s icky, and in the fall they stuff nuts and stuff in their cheeks and they look stupid like this...”
The boy blew air into his cheeks, making them as big as he could. Ronin walked by and raised his eyebrows at him, then reached down and poked his cheeks, forcing him to let all the air out.
“Hey!” Nod giggled, “I was showing Lonewarrior how dumb chipmunks are and chipmunks aren’t people so I can call them dumb if I want to.”
“Ah,” Ronin nodded, “did you tell them that chipmunks are aggressive and sometimes attack our harvest caravans in the fall?”
“Yes,” Nod said, “no, maybe? I told them chipmunks were mean and didn’t share their food, and what does ‘aggressive’ mean?”
“It means they attack without us doing anything to them first,” Ronin explained.
“Oh, yeah, I told them that,” the boy nodded, “I told them that if you get too close to their food they chase you away even if you didn’t mean to be too close and weren’t going to take any.”
“They aren’t very friendly,” Ronin agreed.
“They’re bad, but not as bad as ferrets or mice and they look dumb with their cheeks all stuffed with food, and even thought they’re fluffy and have pretty patterns on their fur, they’re not any good for cuddling with,” Nod concluded decisively, “I don’t like them.”
(Thank you for the question lonewarrior! It’s always fun to have a chance to make Nod make funny faces.)
What about a deer?
“I like deer!” Nod bounced, “they’re great big, and not very fast, but they can go really far in a day and they don’t try to eat you. They eat leaves and bushes and grass and sometimes mushrooms.
“If you’re nice to them they let you sit on their head and ride them places and it’s really fun when they have antlers in the summer because then you can ride way up high. Their antlers fall off though in the winter and Ronin has a knife that has a handle made from deer antler and he says when I’m older I can have one too and I’m older now than I was when he said that so I think I’m old enough but he says I’m not and that’s not how it works, but I think...”
“You were talking about deer, chickadee,” Ronin interrupted the on-going argument about what “older” really meant.
“Oh! Deer have spotty babies,” the boy smiled, “and they’re soft and warm and sometimes there are two of them and the spots go away when they get older, but I wished they stayed because the spots are pretty.”
(Thank you for the ask! Nod likes deer and could sit and ride on their head all day if he didn’t have other things he needed to do.)
Ferret
“Ferrets are bad!” Nod huffed and crossed his arms over his chest.
Ronin gave him an amused look, “are you going to tell Finn why they’re bad?”
“They’re bad because they’re like mice and they chase you and they’re fast and scary and they’ll eat you up if they catch you and they smell bad and they’re stinky,” the boy grumbled.
“Do you know anything about them besides that they smelling bad?” Ronin prompted.
“They eat mice and sometimes chipmunks and bats,” Nod said grudgingly, “and they have cute babies,” he admitted, “but they grow up bad because they chase everything and they attack things even if they aren’t going to eat them and I don’t like them because they chase me.”
“Not anymore, they don’t,” Ronin ruffled his hair and kissed the top of his head.
“You and the other Leafmen chase them away because you’re good,” the boy tipped his head back and rubbed his nose against Ronin’s.
“Yep,” Ronin nodded, “so no more bad ferrets to worry about.”
“Okay,” Nod grinned then turned back to Finn, “and that’s all I know about stinky ferrets.”
(Thanks for the ask! Nod doesn’t care for small carnivores very much even when he thinks they’re kind of cute (I think they’re pretty cute too, stinky though they are). He’s probably thinking of a long-tailed weasel which is more common in New England than ferrets, but they look similar in a lot of ways.)
platypus
“What’s a platypus?” Nod cocked his head to the side.
“I’m not sure,” Marne smiled at her student, “it’s a good thing we’re at the Stump today for our lessons. Why don’t we ask Mr. Nim?”
“Okay!” Nod ran to the caterpillar, darting through moths and jinn studying the scrolls.”Mr. Nim! Mr. Nim! What’s a platypus?”
“A platy-what?” Nim lifted the boy up onto the table he was working on.
“A ptaypus!” Nod swung his feet, “Eastofthemoon wants to know about platypuses and I don’t know what they are.”
“Well, let see what I can find,” Nim left the boy sitting on his table and went poking through the section of scrolls on animal.
After a few minutes of looking he gave a cry of triumph and came back with a scroll in hand, “here they are! They’re from a place called Australia.”
“Mrs. Marne showed me a scroll with birds from Australia,” Nod said excitedly, “are they a bird?”
“I don’t think so,” Nim opened the scroll on the table so the boy could see it.
“They’re funny looking,” Nod giggled at the sketches on the scroll.
“It says here they don’t do much,” Nim scratched his head with one hand, using two more to keep the scroll open.
“That’s not true,” Nod shook his head, “the scroll has lots of things that they do.”
After reading the scroll and looking at the pictures and asking Nim lots of things about the parts that were hard to read, Nod was ready to make his report to Eastofthemoon.
“Here’s all about the platypus,” the boy announced, “they look funny and they have a bill like a duck and a tail and feet like beavers and they’re furry and swim in the water and they lay eggs and they live in a place called Australia that is far, far away on the other side of the ocean and there are great big birds that live there called Emus that Mrs. Marne told me about and they’re bigger than a deer, but I don’t think that platypuses are that big.
“and they eat worms and bugs and little crawly things that live in the water called shrimp and the boys have spikes on their back legs that are poisonous like a snake.
“and I think I should get a platypus because we could swim together and I would get a girl so she wouldn’t be poisonous and she would lay eggs and I could help her take care of the babies and they’re neat because they’re like a whole bunch of animals all squished together in one.”
Nim chuckled as the boy chattered happily. It was lucky for Ronin that the chances of them ever coming across a platypus in this part of the world were slim, or he would have found himself having to explain why a poisonous duck-beaver would be a bad pet.
(Thanks for the ask! This was a fun one. :))
For an animal - a fox?
“I like foxes!” Nod clapped his hands, “I have a fox sweater, and it has fox ears, and I can make sounds like a fox. They bark when they’re excited or angry and they can howl, but it sounds like an owl and they sound whinny when they’re really happy.”
The boy proceeded to demonstrate all the sound that he had heard foxes make. Almost all of them anyway.
“And they growl too, but Ronin says I shouldn’t growl at people, but I think he should let me because how will they know to stay away if I don’t growl at them?”
“If you want someone to stay away, you can just tell them that,” Ronin called from the other room, “if they don’t stay away, then go get an adult. You don’t need to growl at everyone who makes you nervous.”
“Growling is better,” Nod huffed, then smiled at Sharpglance again, “also foxes wag their tails really fast when they’re happy, and they put their ears back when they’re angry and they live in dens that are nice and cozy in the winter, but they’re stinky too.
“And they eat mice and chipmunks and other bad things and the bad things stay away from them and they eat bugs too and it’s kind of icky, but I like them because bad things leave them alone and sometimes they eat berries and acorns too.
“When they have babies they’re all black and they’re fluffy and they can’t see and the mommy fox takes good care of them and fox milk is kind of funny tasting, but the baby foxes like it and it makes them grow big.
“And sometimes I’m a fox because foxes can fight bad things, but sometimes I’m a chickadee because they’re nice too and I like flying and seeds and sleeping in nests.”
(Thank you for the ask! You found an animal Nod really likes. :) )
