posted on Feb, 2 2023 @ 06:32 PM
Tess believed in magic. The bedtime stories she was told by her mother were not fantasy (the new term is “speculative fiction”), but a retelling
of a past time where trees talked and fairies flitted about. The brothers were only Grimm in name!
But then hormones happen and breast buds appear and then breasts then a horrific talk about monthly flows of blood and sex… gross!!
But that is what they call “growing up”.
Then, one morning, after a strange dream about a boy, and something sticky… gross!… (best to be ignored)… and a morning walk to clear her mind,
Tess found herself in the woods behind her house.
The woods were not scary. There were not wolves ready to kill her grandmother and eat her before a friendly axman could free her from the wolf’s
stomach, no lions, tigers, or bears, and very few deer, just bugs, and moss, and damp trees, and wind, when it showed up, but there was a trail that
circled around a glen then back towards home that took an hour or so to traverse.
If you were to ask, the answer would be a variation of, “… a million times! Never were there any creatures of an animal nature let alone
THAT!!”
Which is as good as it gets when you stumble upon a dwarf, sun tanned, and otherwise dressed like one of those garden gnomes that get stolen from
people’s front lawns and have photos sent to the shocked owners of their gnome at Machu Pichu, or a Thailand beach, or with a sombrero on the beach
of the Gulf of Mexico.
It moved. It froze. It looked unblinking at Tess before saying, “Hello?”
Tess had to blink. The damn thing was still there!! And the weird silence when a conversation hits an unmarked speed bump…
“Hi??…”, Tess tailed off into more awkwardness.
“My name is, ‘Hedge”,” said the gnome/dwarf creature.
“Hi, Hedge. What are you doing here??”, enquired Tess instead of the normal pleasantries.
“I haven’t been here in a long time and wanted to see what it looked like now”, said the tanned dwarf under his gnome hat.
“Uh,… okay….”, Tess tested the waters with, “Is it different?”, she finally offered.
“Less animals,” said Hedge as he shifted feet.
“Huh,” offered Tess. And the awkward silence returned.
“Well, I have other places I want to visit. It was nice meeting you…” lingered the question from the dwarf.
“Tess”, answered Tess to the strange conversation. “My name is ‘Tess’,” she offered.
The dwarf extended his hand in the shake intention…
Tess extended her hand and shook Hedge’s tanned hand. It was pretty warm, and had some callouses, “Nice meeting you, Hedge”, she offered.
Hedge smiled, shook Tess’ hand heartily, and turned around and left.
Tess stood in the woods. The clearing in-front of her, and Hedge tromping off into the woods behind.
She never told anyone about the warm hand of a wood dwarf she had met while walking through the woods one morning.
-End-
Info: TEOTWAWKIAIFF author, status: Writer.