It had been a long night for Manti. Bent over and weary, she managed to keep up with her friends as they approached her yew tree. Her little pet fisher scurried behind. The ancient bog witch sat down on a fallen tree trunk and held her head in her gnarled hands. Amal, Laelia and Odin, with Punga resting on his shoulder, stood by silently and felt her pain. This was her home. A cruel gang of oil trolls had defiled her yew tree and her magical bog.
As the group surrounding Manti grieved with her, they did not notice the fisher hurrying away. Her furry friend announced his return as he herded in an excited gaggle of honking geese. It appeared they had escaped capture by hiding in tall clumps of weeds by the lake. The sight of her plump feathered friends waddling toward her and their raucous honking raised Manti’s spirits as she embraced each cheerful goose.
Manti and her family of friends went to work restoring her yew tree. Odin and Amal cleaned the black oil from Manti’s fireplace and replanted the befuddling herbs. Manti, with Laelia’s help, set out to collect bulbs, fungi, a few bog worms and green beetles, all nearly destroyed by the malicious trolls. Working alongside Manti, Laelia listened to the wise witch as she passed on her knowledge. Both intuitively knew that all of planet Ode’s plants and creatures were linked together; each held a life-giving force.
Odin, Amal and Laelia, exhausted after their hard work, were asleep by nightfall. In the quiet of evening, Punga asked the wise witch about the ancient legends that foretold Mt. Grieg’s hidden source of power. Believing in its truth, Manti explained the tale’s meaning—the genesis of this powerful energy was in the Milky Way. The Goddess of Boundless Space gave birth to the stars. She created the Milky Way by spurting her breast milk across the night sky. As the Goddess nursed her billions of infant stars, ultimately some of her milk fell to planet Ode and turned to dust. The prophecies spoke of Mt. Grieg as the nourishing womb for this dust. The mountain’s deep fissures had been the perfect nest for the magical alchemy needed to form the powerful minerals. Due to the mastery of pressure and heat for billions of years, the dust metamorphosed into precious crystals. Hidden deep within the dark crevices of the mountain were crystals that could absorb the sun’s energy, crystals capable of producing energy that far exceeded the power of crude oil. After listening to Manti, Punga spent much time pondering the meaning of her words.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The morning arrived when Odin, Punga and Laelia must leave for Mt. Grieg. They all agreed that Amal would stay behind. He had won the trust of his new friends and he and Manti had formed a strong bond. Before the friends bid farewell, Manti gave Laelia the lavender earring the old raven left with her. Then Manti, her body twisted but strong, moved close to Amal. She reached for his hand and held it tightly. She would work with the miraculous plants of the bog to find a cure for the disease that left him malformed. Maybe it would be in the ancient lichens, cells of bacteria thriving in the bog, or possibly even in the blood of an insect.
With the kinship that had grown among the five friends, they agreed to meet whenever the full moon, shrouded with the veil of green, was high in the night sky. Tears flowed freely as Laelia and Odin, with Punga now sound asleep in his beard, turned their backs and trotted away.