Story: Blessings of the Cool Dark

This fill was inspired by a prompt from fuzzyred at the April 2021 Crowdfunding Creative Jam of "Light as bad and dark as good" and the painting by Laura Coffee posted at the end of the story. At 596 words it is not set in any of my current series.


Blessings of the Cool Dark

It was a long, snow laden winter. Spring came slowly, in fits and starts, and even the Earthen struggled with hunger within their subterranean warrens. The humans above died in unprecedented numbers, cursing the cold and the dark, longing for Summer.

The Earthen knew to curse nothing about the weather, because it was a waste of a perfectly good curse. They hoarded their curses and cures as closely as they hoarded their other waning wealth. Deep in the warren, winter stores running low, they did eagerly anticipate the Spring.

The cool dark of the forest was alive with edible treasure in the damp months of March and April if you only knew what to watch for and the Earthen sent out their bravest and most knowledgeable gatherers. 
 

The gatherers this season were headed by Bendek who was Blessed with a talent for discovery and Zotia with her Wisdom, who they relied upon to know what was safe to eat and what caused the gut rot. Dezydery burned with a fierce Desire for food and other pleasures and couldn’t stay in the burrow a single moment longer as her hunger drove her to the surface each Spring. Feliks was born with Luck and often spotted the most precious resources. Last of the crew was Gnegon, sent to guard the gatherers as they worked; he was Watchful and armed with a sharp hawthorn needle.
 

That spring they found a bounty in the cool darkness of the forest. They harvested greens that were both delicious and could be used to craft Earthen cures. They found fungi good for the stew pot and the potion bottle.

Dezydery picked bunches and baskets of miner’s lettuce, violets, and a few precious dandelions. Zotia carefully harvested the correct fiddlehead ferns, peeled away thin strips of white willow bark along the banks of the swollen streams, and chose young yarrow to bring home, but did not mistake it for hemlock. Bendek loaded up on plantain, nettles, and braved the pain of the sun upon his nutty hide to gather a patch of wild asparagus growing right on the verge of their forest. Feliks found many elusive morels, a few early oyster mushrooms, and after a quick consult with Zotia, gathered several bushels of Spring Kings found clustered at the base of a red pine.
 

The spring gathering lasted weeks, and each excursion was a blessing to the warren. The Earthen praised their gatherers and considered sending more members up to the surface to forage. But Gnegon refused. Keeping track of the four he herded already was enough of a hassle, and he’d been quite busy with his sharp hawthorn needle. He regularly pushed off songbirds, squirrels, and other forest creatures who were scrounging through the underbrush near the gatherers. He’d defended Feliks from a waking garter snake that thought he looked like a tasty morsel.  And most terrifying of all was a prolonged battle with a feral cat that slept in sunbeams and stalked the Earthen through the trees. The cat was barely deterred by his hawthorn needle, and he bore deep scratches along the wrinkled walnut skin of his left side. Luckily Earthen knew excellent cures for the malady that resided in feline claws & Gnegon had only burned with fever for a single day.
 

Towards the end of the season, as the sun grew towards the deadly brightness of Summer, the Earthen retreated once again into their warrens. They celebrated and gave thanks for the gifts of the shaded woods, the cool moist Spring, and the comforting darkness of their underground home.

 "Beyond Our Ken" by Laura Coffee