Hewwo Runaan, how are youuuu? *Slides over moonberries and tosses some adoraburrs to you* Did these adoraburrs also live in your old home? Or are they just found here around the silvergrove? How was your first encounter with them. As kid? As adult? *cuddles with one of them*
Adoraburrs will live wild anywhere there’s the remotest patch of sunlight, but they can be raised in villages, too, under the moon domes. The Moonhollow had several tiny enclaves of them scattered about the pools, and I grew up seeing them every day.
The thing about Moonhollow adoraburrs is... they’re separated by colors. All the blue ones are set in one little patch of grass, all the purple ones over by the popplepurr trees, the white and red striped ones usually congregate under one of the outer bridges, and so on. They’re meant to be aesthetically pleasing that way.
When I was a wee elfling, I would dutifully pick up stray adoraburrs and match them back with their color-coded communities without even thinking twice. Those were the Rules. But one day when I was about four, I saw several adoraburrs jumping together on the grass. Five were white, and one was orange. Well, I knew the orange one was supposed to live somewhere else, so I scooped him up and toddled off with him. But then I looked down and saw five sad white adoraburrs stuck to my pant legs.
I tried to explain the rules as i peeled them off and gently put them back. But they just hopped on me again and squirmed back into my ponytail. I was getting pretty frustrated. I was trying to follow the rules, and they weren’t cooperating!
Then I looked down at the orange adoraburr I was holding. He was very sad, and he wouldn’t look at me. Listen, no elfling, not even me, is immune to seeing a sad adoraburr. We love them for many reasons, but one of them is because they’re so dizzingly happy! And I’d made him sad instead.
It was one of my first Big Thoughts, that maybe a bit of malicious compliance won’t be such a terrible idea. My first act of insubordination was to let the orange adoraburr ride in my hair, all visible and everything, while the five white ones hid inside my ponytail and blended right in. They got to spend all day together that way, and they were very happy.
After that, I started creating secret pathways for the adoraburrs to more easily travel across the Moonhollow, and I’d sneak out at night to lead them on recon missions to find their nearest neighbors and get to know them.
Within weeks, the gentry were complaining of mismatched adoraburrs all over the Moonhollow, and no one had any idea how it began. They’d put the adoraburrs back, only to find them mismatched the next day. It was utter chaos, but I was proud of my work because it helped the adoraburrs make friends.
That orange adoraburr found my window one night and booped my nose to wake me up. He showed me a friendly pink adoraburr and a cluster of multi-colored baby adoraburrs. He’d found a family, by traveling where he wasn’t supposed to go. I was so happy I had to jump around on my bed for a while. And then I started leaving flower petals and seeds on my window sill for them.
When I was leaving for the Silvergrove, I told them goodbye on my last night in my room. But when I headed out the next morning, my ponytail was a little heavier than usual.
Orange, Pink, their adoralings, and all their descendants have lived in the Silvergrove’s adoraburr meadow with its original inhabitants ever since. And I never ever made them color-coordinate.
color coordinating is my job not theirs