Mistiel has a minion!

Zepoof the Vetan Cottonling

Well hi there, it's great to see you! Er, am I facing you? Yukia tells me that a lot of the times I'm saying it's great to see folks while not facing the right way. It's hard to tell with these eyes. If I know Yukia, you're probably wondering where to put a slice of cake. She sends visitors when she can't bring me one of her sweets in person. I have a lot of treats to get through so what say you keep that one for yourself and if you're curious, I'll tell you my story. We'll tell Yukia that I ate it all and that I'm now, um, what color is that cake?

I’ll bet it’s delicious.

I think I’ve always had a wandering soul, or maybe an inquisitive one. I wanted to travel, explore, discover new things. The world around me was huge and I wanted to see it all. So, packing a few essentials and a spirit of adventure I left my home and set out. It turns out that being very small in a very large place makes travel a very loooong process. I thought I would never get out of the maze of pumpkins but finally I saw the brightness in the windows of the Skelly home shrink in the distance. Just past a line of cold trees with oddly connected branches but no leaves I found a small assortment of individual shelters and picked one as a temporary base where I could arrange daily jaunts. I didn’t plan on staying long in any one place until I had seen more, but I wouldn’t stay there for more than a single night. The dim light of pre-dawn surprised me when the shelter rose suddenly into the air and then slammed back down around me before quickly moving along the ground in a series of dizzying arcs. Disoriented and shaken I made the decision to start my day early, and my exploration somewhere else, and when the shelter lifted again I made a bumbusline away from the madness.

The first few weeks were not especially exciting until I found a land of upright stone growths. Yukia has told me it is the graveyard in Shadowglen. Some ghost probably haunts those shelters and didn’t like me thinking about sticking around. I also encountered an entire race of beings living in a secret underground world that it turns out isn't secret. They had an exciting custom that I thought to join but it seems I lacked the required agility, and speed, strength..size. There’s another condition but it’s too spooky to consider trying to meet. I thought I might continue exploring there but the forest was taking over the surrounding area and to avoid having to struggle through it I turned toward the high, glowing peaks in the West. After a few months of steady travel, I noticed that the soil began to change from dark loam to a dry, dusty red, and that the rains were lessening. The air was warming as well. This is great, I thought, and I picked up my pace as I left the last of the forest behind. Warm breeze, open sky; there was even a slight moisture in the air that made the dust easily bearable. I vowed to be overlooking a lush valley bathed in birdsong and warm daylight before the new year. Excited by the imagined scenery, I started up the slopes.

The damage was probably done well before I reached the top of the mountain that would overlook my valley, but it was then that I finally noticed it; that the tingle I thought was excitement hadn’t ever gone away, that the air felt thick when I breathed it and left me feeling tired, wet, and sticky where dust adhered to me, the constant heat, the dizziness. I slipped and fell. There was no prairie of cushioning flowers to tumbled into, no musical laughter from birds. There was no sunlit blue sky. A half-buried stone brought me to a stop in a valley that looked like it had been scraped raw. Figuring it was safe enough for now, and figuring that I wasn’t going to like moving, I slept. A misery seeped into me as days in the shadows thrown by the mountains turned to weeks. I gave up trying to find my way out and turned to sleep as an escape. I don’t know how long I had spent tucked into my shell where I lay against the hard wall of a giant fortress but that was where Yukia noticed me, glowing, she says. I wouldn’t know. My eyes had been scoured blind by the constant grit and dust in the air. I wouldn’t ever get to see the world.

Have you even met Yukia? That’s a silly question, of course you have. She wouldn’t let me give up and insisted that I keep her company while she baked. I was having a hard time of it and one day I stalked away from her work right over a scattering of candy dots. They tasted sweet, and kind of like surprises feel, and in my mind, I saw them as pink. Yukia let out a squeal and a babble of words that I think might have been some other language, certainly not the sounds I expected to hear after possibly ruining someone’s cupcake toppings. Before I could turn around, she was sticking frostings to me, and not just frosting; batters, doughs, and I’m sure butter, though she denies it. That was how we discovered something so weird, so amazing, so out of this world; you better sit down. Are you sitting down? I can taste color! Yukia says I change colors too. Not super dramatic like a chameleon or anything, just a few of the colors I taste show up on me, but it sounds neat. She sends one of her special treats every day for me to taste, and see, and when she visits we talk about what colors I am and what things I remember being which colors. I’m still trying to finish the one from yesterday, which she called nuclear. That sounds about right, it had a spice to it.

Wait. What’s this? Have I been facing a wall this whole time? Oh for cryin…

Well hi there, it’s great to see you! Am I facing you? Yukia tells me...

Back away slowly


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Story, gif, and and profile tweaks by Uadjet
Thankies always for the inspiration and support, and for Mist's cakes! TheSilentFall
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