Pistachio
Legacy Name: Pistachio

In the deepest forests of a kingdom whose name nobody is quite sure of, there stood a gigantic pistachio tree (as in enormous. Unnaturally big. A juggernaut of a thing) by a river delta, and it was in this gargantuan tree that the crafty little mouse Pistachio lived in and tended. He worked his days as a ferry-man, punting optimistic adventurers across the three joining rivers on his giant pistachio-shell boats. Why would he undertake such a task, you ask? Well, Pistachio's specially-carved boats were the only sort of transport that could cross the rivers, three leagues up and down each one, curiously enough. He suspected that it was because of some old kind of magic between the giant pistachio tree and the rivers, and that during the centuries they have stood side-by-side, they had become fond friends. But Pistachio doesn't know much about those kinds of willy-wally magical things, and therefore did not think too much on it.

In any case, every time travellers would approach his riverbanks and light his torch-towers, Pistachio would hop on one of his fine nut-shelled boats and go out to meet them. And in exchange for passage across the river, Pistachio would request interesting things. Sometimes these would be artifacts - other times books or coin, or even stories and songs from lands far, far away. In his evenings, Pistachio would spend the time tending the moss-gardens in his home-tree and gather that day’s worth of nut harvest. Sometimes he would bring in, mend, and re-cast his fishing nets, or arrange his collections by the warmth of a peat-fire. At night, sometimes, hewould make carvings out of a particularly well-grown giant pistachio shell he had found that day. Other nights, he would break out his favourite old pipe and slide out a volume journeyers had paid him long ago, and while away the hours lost in beautiful poems or wise old textbooks or tales of adventure, love, and discovery.

It was a happy life for the mouse. Cozy and happy and perfect -- that is, until the fires began.

They were first flickers on the midnight horizon, more feeble than lonely fireflies on a chilly autumn night.

And then night by night, they grew closer and larger and brighter, until, peering out from the canopies of his tree, Pistachio could tell they were great pillars of swirling, twirling, relentless violet and blue flames. And as they burned through they night, they blocked the clear, star-painted sky with an acrid, green smoke.

Pistachio tried not to dwell on it, then, for around this time they had stopped inching ever closer to his tree, and if he were to be honest with himself, the strange fires frightened him deeply. But then other, stranger, most inignorable things began to happen.

The waters on the delta began the routine of churning every dawn, dusk, and midnight more violently than Pistachio had ever seen, even in the midst of a summer storm.

The adventuers stopped showing up at the riverbanks.

And then his good old, beloved pistachio tree completely and inexplicably ceased to flower.

Alarmed and confused, it took Pistachio a whole day and night to calm himself down enough to think. And think he did, though he did not like the conclusion of his thoughts one bit. For his intuitions and musings and common sense told him that something was amiss in the Kingdom With No One Particular Name and that if he did not go and try to do something about it, his tree and his rivers and all that he had ever know may disappear, forever.

And so one misty twilight, when the pillars of fire had begun burning exceptionally bright, Pistachio packed his most treasured things in his favourite shell-pack. And with a heave of his punting stick, he cast off down the River Three, watching the mix of fiery haze and moonlight as he drew steadily closer, trying to imagine just what he would find around the riverbend.

To be continued.