The water pooling at the base of the foothills was bitterly cold. Brittle’s cork bark toes curled in protest as he splashed about the shallow streambeds, flipping over rocks in search of tadpoles. He tipped a large river stone onto its back, stirring a cloud of red-brown sediment into the crystal clear water. The cloud settled moments later, revealing the smooth, pebbled bed beneath. Alas, there were no tadpoles huddled together at the bottom. Only more obnoxious shimmering as something shiny caught the sunlight. Brittle dipped his hand beneath the surface, grimacing at the biting sting of the frigid water that seeped through the gaps in his bark, and fished the nugget free.
Brittle uncurled his twiggy fingers, revealing a gold-colored hunk nestled within his palm. As lovely as the lump was, it wasn’t nearly as lovely as a fat, roly-poly tadpole. With a feigned sigh, Brittle clenched his fist around the nugget and slowly waded ashore to add it to his growing collection.
“Another one?” Lastar said, voice laced with incredulousness. The demigod was sitting cross legged on the bank, enjoying the late afternoon sun. A quick dip coupled with some furious combing had managed to remove the majority of the sap from the back of his head. Not all of it, unfortunately, as there was still just enough to cause the demigod’s wool to stick out at odd angles.
Lastar eyed Brittle’s growing collection of gold nuggets as if it had personally insulted him. “How?”
“The trick is to try and not find ‘em. If I look for tadpoles, then I get gold.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Edvin says luck rarely does.” Brittle placed the nugget with the other two before slogging back out into the shallow stream, dragging his numb feet along the tops of the smooth, slick river rock.
“Huh,” Lastar said as several thoughts flickered behind his amber-colored eyes. He gestured to the small collection of gold beside him. “What do you do with all of this then?”
“Whatever I find goes to Edvin.” Brittle lifted his fist into the air and declared to the cloudless sky above, employing his best grownup voice, “To ‘help cover the soaring costs of raising a family in this economy!’”
Edvin’s fitness business had been slow as of late. Ill-gotten Gainz protein powder just wasn’t selling as well as it used to, the god insisted. That, coupled with the power ban imposed upon him by the other deities, had the family in a bit of a financial pickle. Edvin and Sir Thomassin had done their best to keep it from him, but Brittle recognized a bare cupboard when he saw one.
He remembered the startled look on their faces when he’d interrupted one of their ‘just talking loudly’ matches and insisted he’d help out by getting a job. At least it’d got the yelling to stop. After recovering from his shock, Sir Thomassin reminded Brittle that he already had a job – staying alive, learning his letters, and most importantly, keeping hidden from mankind for Mara’s sake. While his guardians may have considered the matter put to rest, Brittle vowed to find a way to contribute that involved more than just hiding for the foreseeable future.
His contributions came about the following week in the most unexpected way. After a fruitless afternoon spent scouring the stream for tadpoles, Brittle returned home to show Edvin the strange stone he’d found nestled amongst the river rock, buried by sediment. Oh how Edvin’s face had lit with relief. It was the first time Brittle had seen genuine delight on the god’s face in ages. Edvin insisted they return to the pools the following day to collect more.
The next afternoon they found only tadpoles.
After careful consideration, Edvin instructed Brittle to do exactly as he’d done the day before. The trick to finding gold, Brittle soon discovered, was not to look for it in the first place. Whatever Edvin did with the gold kept him away from the cottage for days at a time. He’d leave with a pocketful of nuggets and return by the end of the week with enough money and supplies to tide them over until it was time to do it all over again.
Sir Thomassin wasn’t a fan of their system. But, pesky child labor concerns aside, he was even less of a fan of starvation.
Lastar sat in silence for quite some time, mulling something over in his head. “Family?” He spoke slowly, as if selecting his words with great care. “Whose family?”
“Mine, obviously.”
“I thought you were the last of the bog log beasts.”
“My new family,” Brittle said with a groan.
Admittedly, a god, a human, and a sentient log did make for odd relations. On the other hand, it could not have been any stranger than whatever familial situation Lastar had come from. Brittle had yet to summon the nerve to ask the demigod how exactly a half human, half sheep being had come to be. Something told him it was one of those things he wasn’t supposed to ask. Brittle swore he could feel Mama's side-eye all the way from the spirit realm just for thinking it.
Brittle flipped over another slab of smooth river stone. “Just ‘cause we’re not related doesn’t make it so. Why else would we be together?”
“To prevent the others from getting to you?” While Lastar may have stated this as a question, Brittle was under the impression that it was supposed to have passed for common knowledge. Fortunately, Lastar was too preoccupied with thinking about what he was going to say next to notice. The demigod twirled his hand in the air absentmindedly as he spoke. “I imagine there are all sorts of power-hungry scavengers looking for the opportunity to swoop in and take advantage.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Oh, you mean like the bad men who want to harvest my heart stone?” Those were the only sort of power-hungry scavengers Brittle was familiar with.
“Dear gods, no. That’s not what I meant at all.” Lastar’s already pale face somehow flushed a shade paler. He tilted his horns to the side curiously. “Do...do you not know?”
“Of course I know! I know lots of things. All the things,” Brittle assured him. “I know so many things in fact, it’s impossible to know which one you’re talking about. Now, sir, if you would, kindly be clearer, please.”
Alas, as so many inconsiderate adults were oft to do, Lastar must have realized he was revealing critical information and immediately snapped his infernal mouth shut. His unsettling stare suddenly wanted to be anywhere but on Brittle. “Never mind.”
Fiddlesticks. Brittle had given up the game before it had even had a chance to get started. He feared there was only one remaining course of action. “Now see here, you!” He whipped about, cold water splashing underfoot as he stomped closer, trying to appear as intimidating as a four-foot bog log beast could muster. “I’m getting mighty tired of people who don’t know the first thing about me deciding they know better. If this friendship is gonna work, then it’s got to be mu–”
“Shh.”
“Don’t shush me!”
Lastar’s long, sheep-like ears were fanned wide as he twisted his fuzzy head to look over his shoulder. He held his palm to Brittle in a slightly less insulting plea for silence. His explanation came in the form of a whisper. “Someone’s coming.”
“How convenient.” Brittle crossed his twiggy arms over his hollow chest. “Right in the middle of a telling-off too.”
Alas, it was not a lie. The telltale sounds of someone scrambling through the underbrush, trampling over every conceivable dry leaf and twig in their haste, grew undeniably louder. Lastar stood and drew his hood over his horned head. “Hide.”
Brittle scurried up onto the bank to collect his gold.
Lastar caught him by the arm. He hissed between his teeth, already starting towards the dense tree line at a hurried trot. “Leave it. There’s no time.”
“But it’s for my family!”
“I’m certain your family would much rather have you than a pile of gold.”
Struggling proved futile. Lastar whisked him away into the trees and didn’t stop until he’d found suitable cover. Brittle jerked his arm free, rubbing the bark beneath the hinge in his elbow. Stifling a grumble, he hunkered down behind the silverberry bush and parted the leafy branches enough to allow him to see what sort of creature would reveal itself. It was not long before a willowy shape scrambled free of the undergrowth and stumbled out onto the rocky shoreline across from them.
Brittle found himself suddenly envious of the ability to narrow his eyes. He tried anyway, whipping his head around at Lastar and willing his hollow eyeholes to reflect his anger. Alas, his eyes remained the same, much like Lastar, who was too busy watching the intruder to notice what Brittle was doing with his face.
“It’s just a girl,” Brittle said.
“You don’t know that,” Lastar whispered back. “It could be a disguise.”
“Nah, she’s got the correct number of legs.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Given the rather obvious answer, Brittle focused his efforts on being a better spy than his demigod companion. The girl was thin and willowy, built like a sapling, with her black hair pulled into a loose braid that swung back and forth behind her like a tail. Brittle was not very good at human ages but, based on the girl’s size, he wagered she was amongst the mystical age group known as teenagers. Teenagers were a relatively new discovery for Brittle. He only knew of them due to Sir Thomassin’s insistence that he simply couldn’t wait for Brittle to become one.
The girl’s head moved back and forth as she scurried along the rocky shoreline, crisscrossing from pool to stream with a bold sense of surefootedness that did not quite match her skill. She moved like a mouse, scouring from here to there, never lingered in one spot for long. At least not until she stumbled across Brittle’s pile of gold. She froze when she saw it. And then, once certain there was no one else around, she crept closer. Her left hand darted into the pocket of her tattered brown coat as she closed in.
Indignation flushed beneath Brittle’s bark at the thought of someone laying claim to his hard earned treasure. Dodging Lastar’s grasp, he burst through the silverberry bush and raced towards her. “Thief!” He raised his little fist into the air and gave it a good shake. “Shameless, beastly thief! Hands off!”
Brittle had never considered himself to be a particularly formidable monster. Admittedly, seeing a sentient log come crashing out of the forest probably would have given just about anyone a fright. The poor girl screamed, turned to run, and slipped on the wet rock instead, landing hard on the seat of her poorly fitted trousers.
She threw her hands up over her face. “Don’t hurt me, please!”
Brittle’s fast footsteps slowed at the pitiful sight. A part of him still roiled with rage, however. Unfortunately for him, it was the part left in charge of his blasted tongue. It was as if the words came out all on their own, regardless of how conflicted he felt on the matter. “Don’t take things that aren’t yours then!”
“I wasn’t going to take anything, I swear!” The teenager’s deep brown eyes were wide with terror as her left hand darted free from her pocket. She sprinkled a handful of birdseed onto the bank between them and recited a strange sequence of words in a tone that suggested it was from memory. “O kind forest sprite of the deep dark wood, I beseech thee. Take favor in my offering. I bear no ill intent.”
Brittle’s stare settled on the small mound of bird seed. “I’m not trading gold for birdseed, if that’s what you’re after.”
“It’s a peace offering,” a familiar demigod’s voice croaked beside him. Brittle’s attention shifted from the birdseed to the strange, three-eyed bullfrog that had appeared beside him. Lastar continued, “She thinks you’re a forest sprite.”
The teenager tore her startled gaze from Brittle to the frog with a gasp. “That frog just talked.”
Brittle scooted the birdseed in front of Lastar with his foot. “He’s a forest sprite.”
“No he’s not.”
“How would you know?”
The teenager curled her eyebrows at him in a manner that made Brittle feel simultaneously small and foolish – a mighty power, he would later learn, that was universally shared amongst teenage kind. The girl gestured with her hand as she spoke. “He has three eyes!”
“I never said he was a competent forest sprite.”