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Bukka's Curious

Have you ever been curious?

By Skelly SnooPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
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Bukka's Curious
Photo by Dominik VO on Unsplash

The halfling stepped out from his front door and took in a deep breath of fresh autumn forest air. His home was built into the ground beneath a large redwood, a comfortable little place that opened out into one room with a bed on the far end and a large fireplace where a hole opened up into a make-shift chimney, and a small table sat in the center with shelves lining his walls, all decorated with jars full of preserved deceased animals and other animal trinkets. The forest itself was comfortably filled with many redwoods tightly fit together and underbrush decorating the trunks at the base. As mentioned, it was autumn, and the forest floor was littered with colourful leaves and twigs that snapped beneath his small feet as he found a spot on a tree root and sipped from the cup of tea in his hands.

“A cold morning!” He noted to himself as he relaxed and listened into the sounds of the woods. He was dressed in a simple black shirt and joggers and a warm black coat, and he wore warm boots on his feet, which was unusual for him, but since coming more north of his original home, shoes have become an uncomfortable necessity. Upon his head was a mess of curly brown hair that hasn’t felt a comb in ages.

After a little while of tea and tranquility, an owl flew through and landed on another tree root not too far away from him. It was a beautiful grey owl, and its intimidating yellow eyes stared at him as it shifted into a comfortable position on the tree.

“Good morning, Grey.” He said to the owl, who was a familiar neighbour.

“Good morning to you, Bukka Hilltop.” The owl said in reply.

“A lovely autumn day today, is it not?”

“Quite.”

There was a twig snap and a badger came into view as it yawned its way into the small clearing by Bukka’s front door. There was a burrow nearby, from what Bukka knew, leading to a small network of underground tunnelings.

“Good morning, Stripe.”

“Good morning, Bukka. Lovely day today.”

“Quite.”

There was a bit of a pause.

“I heard there’s things by the river.”

“Things?” Bukka tilted his head in curiosity. Curiosity has always been a huge factor of his personality. There where his curiosity peaked, he was there exploring to feed it. He never believed in the whole “curiosity killed the cat”. The last time he was told that phrase was when he was much younger and still in the village, and even then he never bothered to listen to it no matter the sort of trouble it got him into with the adults.

“Hm, yeah.” The badger stretched. “I’m not sure what it is, but I heard there’s things.”

“Not very detailed.” said Grey.

“Whatever.” The badger looked to shrug. “Anyways, I’m off. Got some bugs to find.”

“Good day to you.” Bukka managed to say as the badger quickly slipped back into an open burrow, disappearing underground.

“I will be off, too.” Grey said, shaking his wings. “Good day.”

And with that, Grey took off, leaving Bukka alone again. He sighed contently.

“You were right, Bukka.” He spoke to himself as he watched Grey fly off into the high branches of the redwoods. “No one will find you here, and no one can hurt you.”

For a moment, the curiosity in him clashed with his paranoia, which always lurked with him like a river leech that never detached. It was a frequent occurrence that he has had to fight daily since coming into isolation.

“No!” He exclaimed. “We can’t go to the river! What if someone finds us?”

“I know you want to.” The curiosity seemed to speak to him.

“But don’t!” The paranoia fought back. “You’ll be found!”

Bukka has spent his entire adolescent years in isolation and was finally just entering into adulthood, whatever that meant for a halfling. He had spent it all alone, living in his tree and surviving from whatever foraging and hunting he could manage, all the while he studied any and every creature that he came across and befriending them if he could. His paranoia didn’t extend to creatures, so he has found a special comfort in having company amongst them.

It all started when he was just a boy. Bukka grew up in a small village more to the south where there was a tight-knit community of halflings nestled into a jungle. There he learned the basics of animal handling and magic from the elders and his own parents, but as he learned, the paranoia began setting in, and he grew irritable and scared of everyone around him.

“What’s wrong with you?” His mother once asked.

“Don’t hurt me!” He would reply.

After a while, it all came to be too much, and so one night he packed his belongings and left the village. He walked all day and night following a northern path, and at some point, he ran off of the path and straight into the woods.

“They won’t find me this way!” He told himself.

He walked and walked until he grew tired. He didn’t know how many days had passed, but the more he walked the colder it got and the safer he felt being alone. Eventually he came across the massive tree that had the hole under its trunk. There he built his home with whatever he had and could create, and from then on, he filled notebook after notebook of research on various animals and creatures that he came across.

As he finished his tea, Bukka got up and went back into his home and washed his cup. When he settled at his desk and pulled out his notebook, he felt a shift in his chest.

It was that curiosity again.

“No, Bukka, we will not go to the river.”

“Why not?”

Bukka shook his head and ignored the sensation. He opened his notebook up to where he left off, which was an illustration of a panther-like creature with eight legs. He hadn’t seen the creature itself— it was a malevolent kind— but he had collected stories from some of the oldest animals he was able to talk to in the woods. It came from the east from where the woods met the mountains. The mountains have always been a dangerous place to be, so Bukka had limited his curiosity only to the woods in the north. He’s never been to the edge of the woods either.

He felt another tug in his chest.

“Dang it!” Bukka exclaimed. “No!”

“Why not?” it asked again.

Bukka didn’t respond.

“What if I’m found?”

“It won’t hurt.”

“What—”

“It won’t hurt.”

“You’re right!” Bukka stood up from his seat. “It won’t hurt to explore a bit! Who knows, maybe there’s something new to research by the river.”

Bukka excitedly threw on his jacket and exited his home. He began walking towards the direction of the river and hummed along as he went. It was awfully quiet in the forest today, but this didn’t seem to bother Bukka as he went on. All the animals have hidden away into their nests and burrows and only peaked out to watch the humming Bukka walk towards the river, exposed and open to everything around him.

The louder the sound of flowing water got, the quieter and more careful Bukka got as he hopped from foliage to foliage hiding away from view. At the edge of the woods, he poked his head out carefully from the bushes and scanned the shore of the river. On the other side of the river he saw the rest of the woods stretched out, and in the far distance, the mountains looming over the horizon. At first he saw nothing on the shore and wondered if the old badger was just seeing things, but then when he turned his head to the right, that’s when he saw it.

Standing at the edge of the water was a tall creature— much taller than the halfing— and it was as black as night, with eight elongated limbs extending from its torso. As soon as he saw the panther-like head of the creature, Buka dove back into the bushes in fright.

“Nope! Nope! Nope!” Bukka scrambled to his feet and began marching away from the river, but just as he took the first few steps, he was suddenly viciously lifted from the ground. Bukka struggled to get down from the grip, but the panther-like spider creature held a firm grip on his clothes as it brought him close to its face.

Bukka screamed in terror as the creature sniffed him, turning him around in its legs the same way Bukka would a newly discovered mushroom. He braced himself for the worst, struggling still as the creature observed him. After a little while of doing so, the creature roared, turned, and began running straight towards the river. Bukka screamed and flailed around as the creature dove into the water. He held his breath— or at least tried to— as the creature kept on diving, diving, and diving until it landed on the bottom of the river.

Bukka’s lungs were now screaming as he tried to release the grip off of his torso, but the creature held on tight as the bottom of the river opened up beneath them and sucked them in. Bukka couldn’t help but scream as they fell into a tunnel that splashed around with water as the creature tried to swim with Bukka in his arms, and as soon as this whole thing started, they went from the pitch black tunnel and stumbled out onto dry land. Bukka was flung from the creature’s hand as it rolled onto its back, and he landed hard on his back a few feet in front of it.

“Bukka! This is the last time you do something because you’re curious. How foolish of you to wander out this far for something like this.” Bukka was mumbling to himself as he sat upright and cleaned himself of algae and other plants that attached to him during the whole ordeal. It wasn’t until he stood up that he noticed he was surrounded. He felt his anxiety grow as he stared around only to have hundreds of pairs of eyes staring back at him, and they weren’t the kindest of stares either.

They were monsters. Countless monsters of every size, shape, combination that he could think of. Some of them licked their lips as they watched Bukka stumble around in a circle.

“Oh gosh, what is happening?” Bukka gripped his hair in frustration.

A few of these monsters lashed out and tried to grab at Bukka, but he was just quick enough to jump away, only that they were closing in on him with each movement, and Bukka began to panic even more.

“Step away from it!”

The deep voice rang out over the entire cavern and the group opened back up, leaving Bukka in the middle and exposed to whatever was making its way to him. It was a large creature, ugly, and looked like a cross between a dragon in its top half and a goat in its bottom half. It smiled when its eyes met Bukka’s, and its mouth revealed a mass amount of sharpened fangs that didn’t all fit where they were supposed to.

“Well, well, well.” It said as it stepped out into the clearing, crawling on all fours. “What do we have here?”

Bukka didn’t say anything as he tried to step away from the creature. It laughed as he stumbled back, snatching him up by one leg and lifting him up for all the monsters to see.

“A halfling!” It exclaimed, dangling Bukka in the air. “We haven’t seen these in years!”

The monsters around him cheered, and the thing dropped Bukka to the ground.

“Take him to a cell!” It said as it left the clearing. “I want him alive.”

At that, the monsters bunched up around him and the panther-like creature snatched him back up, and soon he was in a moving swarm of monsters. Up in the air he got a good look at the place he was in, and it was a massive cavern with a series of levels, all of which had bridges and other openings in the walls. The swarm was moving down the only road cutting through into a ravine and before he knew it, Bukka was thrown into a moist little cell and locked in.

“Oh, darn, Bukka, you’ve done it now.” He talked to himself as he sat upright. “You could be in your little home finishing off your notebook by now, but no! You were curious and look: now they’ve got you!”

fantasy
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