by Kyle Hemmings

The earth was created from a weeping egg and from the ice came the Merrows who created from their shadows the Mooncalf that I am. At first so intensely shy, emerging only in the light of the full moon, trying to hide my spindly legs and enormous flat feet. Who could love a mooncalf like me? But I performed intricate dances in geometric patterns causing the Murtlaps to mate with the Nundus, the Nogtails with Occamies. As I danced the world rotated on its axis and the sun grew warmer and the rains fed the flowers and trees. Then a Pogrebin crouched in my shadow, followed me. At first, I thought it/him/her friendly, only wanting to talk, must have been so lonely with that oversized grey head. Eventually, a great sense of futility overcame me, and the futility led to brown lethargy and winter despair. I stopped dancing, sunk to my knees, weeping at the pointlessness of the earth's spinning, at the purposelessness of my dance. Was this a hex of the Pogrebin? Yes. It had to be. It leapt upon me and attempted to devour me, and I thought of the stupefying charms that the Merrows once taught me. But nothing worked better than a kick which turned the Pogrebin into a Plimpy, destined to live out its life with webbed feet, its rubbery legs tied in a knot, fated to sink to the bottom of deep lakes where it was eaten by a mermaid mistaking it for a snail. Some time later, I met and fell in love with a Pixie, mesmerized by her high-pitched jabbering, and she gave birth to a litter of five inside a cave, and Pixie and I lived the rest of our happy days in a burrow deep inside the disfigured heart of the earth.