A Natural Reserve
By Moss F.M.
In a misty wood on a sun dappled morning, a group of gnomes forage fruit, flowers, mushrooms, and herbs. This trite scene would be idyllic if Jarold wasn't such a prick. Indeed, all would be having a lovely morning if he was absent.
As if cued, the thorny gnome begins the return journey from his area of a briar patch with his quota: no more, no less. He nitpicks Marta's paltry basket under his breath, scoffs at Edmund's poor flirtation of Marta, and rolls his eyes at Mrs. Bellowstones’ grumbling about achy joints.
Jarold sticks to a traditional pathway designed to hide gnomish tracks from outsiders. Humans relinquished dwelling here for their clamoring concrete cities generations ago. They retreated from the wilds and knit wires, abuzz with electricity and voices, through trails cut by their ancestors. Naught but petty gnomish squabbles disrupt trilling bird song, guttering creeks, the susurration of leaves and grasses. It's a peacefulness that verges on monotony.
For those who know where to enter, the foliage breaks into the village of Oakvale. Morning market bustles cheerily with stands of forageables, produce, textiles of earthen tones (and occasionally jewel tones for a higher price). Baked goods perfume the air, joining cloying florals and musky livestock. Those not haggling laugh and gossip around the gazebo and a garish ribbon-banded maypole.
Jarold arrives well before the other gatherers. He enters dismally and makes no effort to avoid shoppers and mongers. Any that don't shuffle out of his impertinent pathway are shoved into stands of sparkling trinkets and fish. He drops the berry basket unceremoniously on the table where Uncle Benton gives a pinched smile to an irritated spinster.
“Ah, nephew —” he starts, caught between soothing the flustered old windbag and winding up to ‘chastise’ Jarold. Jarold is already turning away.
“The others will deliver before lunch, if only not to miss a meal.” He waves dismissively, secure in his nepotism and disdain for the pleasantries of town. “Going back to watch duty.”
Jarold follows the path carved by his first passing, ignoring meager glares and meeker “excuse you’s!” He turns off the hidden trail to forge his way to seclusion.
As the distance grows between Jarold and jostling lines of goods and buyers, his shoulders inch down little by little. SIGH. Ah, better.
The blessed solitude of the woods! No blathering fools to manage, no childish festivities and social interactions to navigate, no expectations here. He prefers to contribute to the community via unaccompanied watch duties at the perimeters of their home forest — when his uncle isn’t volunteering him to group work for “social skill building.” Ugh.
Golden morning light turns viridescent through the leaves as the sun follows Jarold’s path. He keeps a mental map of a half dozen secluded spots to tuck himself away when possible. A heather meadow for a nap; the northernmost stream for fishing; a sunny glen to read. These remain his until he sees or hears some brainless teens or a dithering gatherer stumble upon them.
With the morning’s stressors firing in his nerves, he heads to the most secluded: the westernmost edge and the mill abandoned by humans. It sits empty except for roosting creatures. The wheel, unmoving for decades, sinks piecemeal into the stream that once powered its toothy gears and grinding stones.
It’s never ideal to spend time in a human structure, of course, but this gives Jarold the greatest chance at remaining undisturbed. The gnomes didn't come here as a point of pride. Also safety, sure, but more importantly pride. Who wants human garbage? Certainly none need it enough to risk getting caught or injured. Moreso with recent intrusions of humans furtively laying traps and strapping strange little boxes to tree trunks. Worth the risk for a little alone time, perhaps, but not for anything else.
Jarold steps into the crumbling mill with more trust than the floorboards garner. His mind already rests in the second story alcove with picturesque, strategic views to the west of the flowering prairie and stream and to the east of his familiar forest.
Before he can creak the first rotting stair, Jarold freezes. Glimmering behind the open-backed staircase are two eyes nearly indistinguishable from the shadows. He releases his held breath and mentally marks off the spot from his solitudinous sanctuaries. Incensed, Jarold steps toward the stairwell to castigate this rotten intruder. A number of things happen very quickly as he closes in.
The eyes, level with Jarold, smoothly ascend until they are nearly twice his height.
Before Jarold can haul his heart from somewhere near his feet, a crack of enormous doom sounds behind him.
His head whips around to see another tall being. One green-panted leg is consumed by moldering floorboards. She swears and wrenches her way free, coughing out dust as gray as her shirt. Beneath a wide tan brim, dark eyes widen with shock upon seeing Jarold. Feeling is mutual at least.
“H-hi?” stammers a smooth alto voice from a friendly walnut-brown face.
Jarold bolts.
The only clear door is blocked. The windows are too high for gnomish legs. His only option is the staircase. Jarold abandons all propriety. He springs four-limbed up the stairs, feet and hands pushing him from the uncertain situation. He ignores the calling voice. He dodges a branch — OH NO THAT'S A HAND — in between the stairs. From the landing he throws a side table down the steps to hopefully slow the tall ones.
Below the staircase, the stranger pulls their hand back slowly and sways against the wall. They didn't think the little one a threat, but the other looked human. Enough of those today. They glide serenely back into the deepest shadows as the human focuses on the clattering above. For now, they would only observe.
Stella debates whether this is a teen with a spot to party or one of the strange hazing rituals her new wildlife reserve colleagues keep inventing. She pushes aside the echoing thoughts of campfire folklore and mutters about these damn kids.
Stella keeps her tone light, “Uh, hey? Buddy? Does your mom know you're here?”
No reply. “All right, I'm coming up. You're not in trouble, by the way. But it's not safe here. I'm — oop — going to help you outside.” She looks up in time to dodge a termite-ridden chunk of wood. “HEY NOW. Ahem. Please don't throw anything else!”
An irritated, adult-sounding voice calls down, “I'm not a hu- CHILD!”
“Oh! Okay, sir.” She stops with slight relief. “Can you please help me out and leave? I don't want to write a report anyway so I'll just pretend I didn't see you here.”
“…Go away. I'll leave.” He sounds a bit scared. Maybe he is just a kid?
“Fantastic! What's your name?” She starts picking her way down the sketchy staircase.
“For your report?” Gruff again. Stella feels she’s not winning this one over with civil servant hospitality.
“Ha, no! I really do hate reports. I'm Ranger Stella. Just joined this park a couple months ago.” She posts herself on dependable stone flooring and waits. Eventually she sees a small figure wearing a blanket clamber over the table with greater difficulty.
He looks unhappily at her as he approaches and brushes off brown linen trousers. Not a blanket: a cottony green cape sweeps over suspenders and off-white sleeves roll over tanned and freckled arms. Sharp and haggard hazel eyes cut from under a wavy mop of auburn hair.
Standing together brings attention to their height difference. He is no taller than an 8-year-old but bears the face of a man in his twenties. Rustling draws their gazes again to the staircase.
From beneath a deeply shaded recess, a person-shaped figure steps into a beam of stark midday light. Stella reels. Their skin is grayish and dry, almost ashen, and clings tightly to their bones. The face, well above hers, is concealed in an inky black curtain of hair save for two glinting eyes. A wave of familiar petrichor wafts along with them, followed by something equally pleasant but unplaceable in this context.
“This, um, is a cool costume. You Lord of the Rings fans? Kinda tall for Gollum.”
They both look confused and shift nervously on their feet, eyeing the door.
“Okay, whatever you kids are up to, just… Keep the LARPing to the designated campgrounds and trails? This structure is not suitable for humans.”
“AHA HA HA YES, we humans will do that! Come on. Uh, Goggim.” The grumpy one grabs the tall being’s hand and strides to the door. “Okay bye please don’t tell anyone you saw us.”
Stella watches them scurry into the forest, presumably back to their campground. First the weird conspiracy nuts grilling her about bigfoot or whatever and now nerds. She might have to make a report after all, just to let her peers know to keep these dorks safe.
Jarold had a long, quiet walk back to Oakvale with the stranger. He was too shaken to try beyond a few cursory questions with no answers. He had to spend his remaining wits keeping the other moving. Moon above, they poked at everything that caught their gaze!
They were obviously not human to anyone with even passing awareness of the hidden world but didn’t seem familiar with the woods. Mostly gnomes populated this area, occasionally a travelling fae merchant visiting from other realms. Jarold couldn’t place their species. For now, he simply called the eerily silent being Cryptid. With no desire to draw human curiosity, they had to retreat to the village while a plan could be made.
Now, after what feels like hours of repeating the tale to Uncle Benton, the mayor, council members, and anyone that stopped his path, Jarold sits at the back of an emergency town meeting. The township argues around them in fearful tones. Cryptid glances around curiously and picks at items within reach. Jarold has sore legs, a sweaty brow, and a headache.
Although the situation is potentially quite serious, Cryptid seems unperturbed now. Uncle Benton raises his voice above the commotion.
“We cannot, above all else, let our home be discovered by those brutes. I say we keep, er... the esteemed visitant? In our care until the danger passes.”
“And WHO do you propose takes this person — it is a person, right? — into their home?”
Silence fell over the group, enough to give Jarold an unrealistic level of hope that this might end soon. Maybe they could let Cryptid go deeper in the forest and be done with this. Jarold could return to his pleasant — no. Well. Quiet life. Avoiding others. Being by himself. Yes. Great. Hm. Perhaps...
“Oh for chestnut's sake! I'll help them.” No one is more stunned at the announcement Jarold made than himself. The quiet discomfort redoubles into shock. “Ah. The human. She didn’t follow. Tomorrow they, uh, they'll — we can figure something out.”
Jarold looks at his uncle for the first time ever in his adult life with a silent plea. His overbearing uncle will likely jump at this chance to prove the familial bond to Jarold. But Uncle Benton’s gaze is too low to catch. Jarold follows the angle to see arching fingers, pale fading to blackened tips, gently folded around his hand.
“A great go-getter, my Jarold!” his uncle recovers. "We'll host our guest at the Cloverspark home, plan for a safer outing with the sun's return." The shock and fear in the crowded hall softens into murmurs.
With no objections or eager volunteers, conversation turns to practicalities such as reinforcing the hidden pathways with camouflage and lookouts, and to impracticalities like what kind of main course the celebratory feast should have once this all blows over.
Jarold, hand still enclosed by Cryptid's, backs them slowly out of the crowd. Can't really go unnoticed after his moment in the spotlight. Or when pulling along a seven foot nightmare. His uncle trails after as he makes polite excuses to the neighbors. Jarold senses a conversation coming with him.
But with the crowd miraculously parting around them, they make it to the Cloverspark household before Uncle Benton. Jarold immediately sequesters them in his room. Say what you will about his uncle, but the man respects his boundaries. Enough arguments and fights have made this space unbreachable to his family.
Cryptid seems unbothered by the constraints of having to kneel in gnomish rooms. They snoop through Jarold's bookshelves and hold fabrics up to their face for closer inspection. Oh no, are they smelling it?? Jarold yanks away a linen shirt as he sees, with horror, a tongue poking out of the curtain of oilslick hair.
“Do not lick my things.” Cryptid's head turns toward Jarold but makes no expression — no anger, nо remorse. They shuffle on their knees back to rifle through the beleaguered bookcase once more.
Jarold is at wit's end realizing he's volunteered to care for a towering toddler. He needs to distract Cryptid for the safety of his complete collection of novels painstakingly traded for over six years of tedious markets.
“You can borrow a book tonight, just... Be careful, please? I don't lend them out usually.” Cryptid looks again at him. Their head tilts.
“...Can you read gnomish?"
Cryptid looks at the open book on the nearby desk. They crane over. They look up and shake their head.
“Can you read English?” Jarold points to another book.
Cryptid squints at print once more. Looks up, shakes their head. Fantastic.
“— ! Jarold! I made your favorite! Come on, sleepyheads!” A bell-like voice tinkles down the hallway to the open bedroom door. He grumbles sleepily but can’t resist the syrupy, savory smells. Oh! Mama made sausage and her special wheatcakes! He hasn’t had that in —
He watches carefully from one of father’s knees as sturdy, warm hands twist string and feathers delicately into flies. No fish can resist his lures. No one beat his record catch until after he —
The sunlight blankets his back as he carefully fills the oil crayon petals with a rich blue. Uncle Benton brought these art supplies but made him promise to share. She was drawing a fish for their father. His mother loves forget-me-nots. She loves them so much that he brings them every year to her —
Papa makes the funniest voices at bedtime stories. But he is too good at the usual tales and we want to challenge him, so we are writing a story for him to read to us. It has a friendly dragon protecting a family of talking mushrooms from a hungry human. She wants the bad guy to be a bear, but I tell her humans are way more scary and I’m right because I am her big brother and I will always protect Silvia —
Jarold inhales and sits up crookedly. His right arm is all needles from laying on it wrong. It takes a minute to get his balance and breathing right again. This is his room now, in his uncle’s house. His house is gone, and his family lays together. He thinks maybe the dream lingers, smelling the soil of their graves: but this is a darker, greener soil. Jarold’s eyes adjust enough to see Cryptid laying on the floor, head at one wall and feet at the other. Poor creature can’t fit upright in here and barely fits sideways.
He gently treads to the window and sees the sparkling sky easing into light hues at two points on the horizon. The periwinkle edge of sunrise radiates to the east while embers of a human town set the southern edge ablaze. Early, but he likes the solitude. Better to start his day now than see if the dreams slide to harsher memories.
As he picks his way around the room and eases drawers open for fresh clothes, he feels a prickling on his neck. Jarold peeks over a shoulder to find a familiar glint in the shadows. He realizes that Cryptid has been watching him from their repose.
“Mercy! Have you been awake all night?” he whispers.
Cryptid sits up and leans one arm against a bent knee. No, they shake their head. Before Jarold can ask the next question, they rasp, “Bad dream?”
Too surprised to question this newfound voice and too tired to brush off the question, Jarold replies quietly, “Good dreams, actually, but they never stay that way.” Perhaps this is the only chance he’ll get for answers. He slowly sits on his bedside facing Cryptid. “Did you? Have dreams?”
Cryptid brings their other knee up and wraps both arms around their legs, a whisper of the dry skin brushing over itself like autumn leaves in a breeze. “Yes. Not good dreams.” Jarold can’t discern their expression in the dimness before their face sinks a little into their arms. “My home. It’s far. Lost.”
Jarold feels a sympathy he rarely spares for his insipid neighbors. Most of them can’t fathom what it is to be ripped entirely from your home. He’d moved beyond shock and numbness in his grief to irritation at their constant empty platitudes. He didn’t notice when exactly the feeling morphed into contempt. Now it is more comfortable to keep them all at arm’s length than to struggle against their pity.
“I… I actually understand.” Cryptid raises their head just enough to meet his eyes. Jarold swallows against a bitter lump. Not the time to be tearful. “Maybe we can get you back. Do you know how you got into this forest? I’m sure I’d have noticed folks like you around if you were local.”
Without uncurling, Cryptid offers, “Ran from the city.”
“THE — the city?” Jarold catches his shocked outburst before he wakes his nosy uncle. “You’re from the human city?”
Cryptid shakes their head. “Weird light. Woke up there. Humans screamed.” They hug their knees tighter. “I ran. Some followed.” The memory sounds as painful as their grating speech.
“Say, what should I call you? I’ve, er, sort of named you in my mind thinking you’d never talk and that seems rude now.”
Cryptid perks up, unfurls their spindly limbs to sit cross-legged, and gently clears their throat. “At home, I’m ℘̵͕̋͜ơ̷̭̪͛͘ʂ̷͓͋̒ʑ̶̞̙͑ų̶̻̃ƙ̵͍̮́ı̶͔̎ῳ̶̻͓͛͌ą̵̩̖̋̒ƈ̴̹̱͋ʑ̴̞̏ ̷̦̾̈́ơ̴̦̰̅̇℘̸̰̈ơ̴̪͌ῳ̶͖̃͐ı̵̜̜̈ɛ̸̞͘ṣ̶́͗̋ƈ̵̱̅ı̴̮̅ ̷́̉ͅ.”
There is a discordant ringing in Jarold’s ears and he feels like a nosebleed may follow. Jarold understands now why his own language sounds so painful for Cryptid to speak.
“Please never say that again.” They slouch. “Ah, I mean, I’m sure it’s lovely? But also I think it doesn’t quite hit gnomish ears the same. And I can’t make any of those sounds, not without damaging something inside me. Can I perhaps offer the name I’d picked?” They look a little deflated but nod.
“Cryptid? Is that acceptable?”
They tilt their head in thought. “Cryp… tid? What is the meaning?”
“A cryptid is… a sort of mysterious creature that may not even exist.” Cryptid looks affronted, so Jarold continues quickly,
“Sometimes they are magical, or even dangerous. They are rare and special. I confess it’s a human term, but I quite like it and I think it suits you.”
There is a barely perceptible yet entirely genuine smile. With as much warmth as they can intone in this garbled language, they respond, “Cryptid. I accept.”
