Goodmorning, Hook, Line, and Sinker

The dreams faded away and were replaced with the cozy warm feeling of mud. Wiggling, the mud squished and squloshed around me as I worked myself back up to the surface of my mud pool bed. A shallow layer of hotspring water flowed over the top, washing the mud from my body.

With a blurble, I opened my eyes to the darkness beyond sputtering out the rest of the breath in shock. The base mud structures were all still the same with my hot spring pool flowing into my mud pool, then mixing into the cooler river runoff, and Pandora's alcove on the opposite side with path down the middle leading to the lower cave used as a larder. However, now Pandora's alcove was decked out with silk tapestries and pillowing like a thrown of leisure. My pools were covered with hanging silks of various sorts and colors, acting as curtains and decoration complementing my vibrant cave paintings.

"Finally, you wake." Pandora huffed with a little amusement in her voice, all eyes focused on me. "It was my turn to make changes."

"Love it," I replied with an energetic hop, "but why? I thought you saidit was all silly waste of time?"

Pandora's mandible shifted... into a smile? "I was bored while you slept. After a few weeks I realized that being silly isn't a bad thing. It's actually a very human thing."

"What?" My eyes grew larger as I really looked around at how many lengths of fabric were strung about. They varied in color and quality from basic to fit for royalty like a monument to trial and error of a master. The nicest ones were not only dyed but the texture in the threads shifted this way and that to make subtle patterns. "How long have I been asleep?"

Pandora's pedipapls clicked with a rhythmic sound as the cloth she held grew longer. "After asking me for a blanket you began to slip deeper and deeper into the mud and stayed there through the snow months. About three to four moons? I made the blanket you asked for, but since you couldn't really use it without getting it dirty, I hung it up."

I hopped into the warmer water and placed my head on the ledge to watch Pandora work. Ah, toasty bliss. "What are you making now?"

The cloth Pandora held was a much smaller and skinnier than those hanging around. "It must have been a harsh winter. More larger animals made their way into our mountain alcove and human poachers followed after." She held up the cloth. It was the most beautiful one yet with a flowery design, lace, and gauzy bits. I vaguely remember reading something on the internet saying that spider silk had a natural yellow tint to it, but this was so gold it could put Rumpelstiltskin to shame. It was also more than big enough to go around a girl's neck as a scarf. Pandora's smile widened. "This should help you lure them to me."

Humans? After not seeing any for so long I hadn't really thought about them. It wasn't like I was going to leave my mountain spa resort to go search for them... but now that they were coming here, that means I could possibly go to them, check out their towns, live with humans? Have some luxuries? Can frogs eat chocolate?

"If you are hesitant in killing humans, remember that I'm the one doing that. You just have to lure the ones blinded by greed to me. The ones you will be targeting are not going to be peasants or knights, but poachers who are trespassing on the emperor's sacred mountain. If you see anyone with armor and or a kingdom seal on them, ignore them. However, the poachers will be devoid of markings and wearing leathers that are both stealthy and functional. A normal person will see you wearing this ribbon as an anomaly or delusion and leave you alone fearing fae will whisk them away, but a greedy person will see you as profit and hunt you down. Lure those hunting you to me and... they will never bother anyone ever again."

"What does the kingdom seal look like?" Chocolate covered ants? Chocolate covered crickets? Sugar dusted grubs? What does a butcher do with their bad meat? Would bad pork belly make good larva? Fried in curtled pigs fat?

"Pet? Are you listening?" Clicked Pandora's mandables in annoyance.

"Yes, yes." I licked away some of the sleep still lingering in my eyes. I glanced at the the symbol Pandors had carved into the ground. It looked familiar... My tummy grumbled and all brainpower melted away. "Okey-dokey."

Pandora helped me tie the ribbon in a bow around my waist so it wouldn't get in the way of my legs. I then went off searching for bugs and grubs still nestled in their hidy-holes, but it was still pretty cold. Instead, I floating from one hotspring to another pretending I was a double finned shark.

The water did make the bow droop a little, but it was surprisingly water resistant. Pandora said that the weave she used was waterproof, so swimming was okey. However, I didn't trust it not to get caught on branches underwater or tangled in roots, so I kept to skirting the edge of the bigger water leaves instead of diving through the maze of tunnels.

A whole day past and no humans were seen. In some places snow still glistened in melting heaps and a few birds flitted about. Yet, most of the animals and insects still seemed to be asleep. I flipped over a familiar log and found exactly what I excpected. The underside was covered with sleeping red wood eating larva. They were my first meal of the new year.

Day four, I slipped out a little more. I began to see more signs of the larger beast Pandora had mentioned. She had named a few she would be interested in eating if I could lure them to her. But, not for that day. I found a snow rabbit I bullied until it ran into her webs. I felt a little bad about it, but their horns were sharp and they were by no means defenseless. All I could do was hop around avoiding it and pestering it with a large kick here and there. It was nothing like the carnivorous beast who chased me before, but I had to feed Pandora or Pandora would feed on me.

I began to fall into this pattern of behavior as time went on. In the mornings I'd pretend I was training with Bywyn and the princess or the gaurd. He was an amazing Spearman who formed his spells with his spear's tip. He often ran through drills with the royal gaurds and then later ran the princess through the same drills in secret... or at least so I imagined.

I would then pretend to practice spells with the princess. I didn't have any weapons, so I used a stick for practice. In the morning it was a sword or dagger, while in the afternoon it was a wand. Though they didn't really use wands for magic. Like with Bywyn, all that was needed was a way to form the contract out of mana.

People with spell classes often had a method of casting worked into their class. This made it easier for them. For Bywyn, the arcane spear class allowed him to form the mana with the flick of his wrist and the tip of his spear. For a bard class they would form the mana with the sound waves of their music. For a pure caster they could even form the pattern in their head or one their hand instantly and cast faster.

However, for the princess, people who had not received a class yet, or just people who didn't have a magic class, mana could be formed on paper, in an object, or other movements. It was just harder to form the mana quickly if a person didn't hold a magic class and required more concentration. This made talismans, spell scrolls, and magic items even more valuable because they were made of materials that could absorb mana into their formations quickly. A class who specialized in talismans could still use and make them better than one who didn't, but anyone could send their mana through and object with a spell engraved in it and get a result.

Thinking about the use of mana and the formation of spells, I bounced around the forest looking for herbs. Since my home and water slides were complete (though it was still too cold to slide), I had moved to trying different bath combos in the hotsprings. I had cleared out three pools near our place and was working on finding interesting plants to steep in them. It was still too early for flowers, so anything like lavender, rose, or apple were a pipedream, but I could get some pine needles or bark. Wait! Is that...?

By one of the cooler pools there was a large creature. It had the body of a deer, but the head of a goat. It's thick, powerful legs ended in furry tufts around clawed hooves. Yet, most notable were the two twisted white horns that rose out of it's brow and then split into several points.

Pandora would call this a deer, but it was nothing like graceful creatures I occasionally saw fleeing the road when I was a kid. This looked like some carnivorous beast from a nightmare bent on revenge for Bambi's mother.