#being chased by an unknowable monster brought people together nicely until it didn’t

[pluto-the-chinchilla]

Sometimes I wonder where certain YouTube and blog creators ended up after their Slender Man series ended or were dropped. Did the 004 Steps boys keep hanging out? Did Dahlia grow up enough to watch TJAprojects? Where did the folks behind The Little Fears end up — is that wiki even still around? Is the tulpaproject couple still together? Did jonclubs111 ever do any other projects? Did any of them?

Dreams in Darkness gave me so many banger bands and songs to enjoy - “Girlfriend” by Say Anything, “Orestes” by A Perfect Circle, “The Chosen Pessimist” by In Flames…

The Mystic and The Tutorial were so good. Are any of the folks from the blogspot multiverse still buddies working on bigger better things?

Idk. If you ever made a small Slender Man channel (that WASNT “The Missing”), know you had at least one biggest fan out there who kept you on a repeated playlist.

God and Pennswoods. I dunno why but I really liked that.

Thanks for existing, whether you popped off or not. You were cool to me.

[minorthaliamusings]

The Hoard of Stories

Once, in the world of stories that are always happening somewhere, there was a dragon.

This dragon had found herself a nice dark cave, as dragons did, with lots of nice small corners to tuck herself into when the world felt too big, and a wonderful mountain peak to stand on and stretch out her wings when the world felt too small. Burning villages and kidnapping princesses weren’t quite her cup of tea, so she settled down and established herself as a Highwaydragon of sorts. The foolhardy, the unknowing, the lost, and the practically minded, would take the road that passed beneath her cave, either ignorant of or resigned to the dragon that would soar down, roar loudly, and announce,

“This road is my domain. You must pay the tax to pass.”

Those who knew the deal would have their tithe ready, because the dragon did indeed keep the road otherwise clear of monsters and bandits, making it the safest route over the mountains. Those who did not might protest, but ultimately matters would be resolved, peacefully or involving a light roasting.

One day, the dragon heard the telltale tramp of feet on the road below. She shifted herself off her pile of gold, silver, copper and jewels and clambered out of her cave, where she stretched her wings to feel the sun and took off to stop the traveller below.

“This road is my domain. You must pay the tax to pass.”

“Oh, goodness.” The dragon looked down upon the traveller, and saw they were alone, and a hobbit. 

She was dressed snugly in warm woollen things and had a walking stave, and a small pack on her back. Her large soft-haired feet were bare, and lightly coated in dirt from many hours happy tramping. The only rich thing about her appeared to be the warmth in her eyes. “I didn’t know there was a tax on this road. I don’t have any money.”

The dragon had heard that excuse before. “What do you have?”

“My packed lunch? Cheese, apples, mushrooms-”

“What are those?” 

“My books? Oh no, you can’t have those.”

The dragon drew up sharply. The hobbit had spoken so matter-of-factly, not out of ill-advised bravado. “This is my domain, you must-”

“You can borrow them, you just can’t keep them.” She held them out, offering them to the dragon. “They’re some of my favourites. Do you like pirate stories?”

The dragon tried to stay righteously indignant, but curiosity, as ever, was getting the better of her. “How do they work?”

“How do they-” The hobbit frowned, and opened the book, showing her the page. The dragon saw only little shapes and squiggles, and could not see how these had anything to do with pirates at all. 

“Can you not read?” asked the hobbit.

“This tax is unacceptable,” announced the dragon firmly, trying not to look embarrassed. “You must return and bring back a treasure of some kind.”

“But these are treasure. Look, I’ll read it to you.”

Before the dragon could say anything, the hobbit was taking off her cloak and spreading it as a blanket on the ground, and unpacking her lunch around her as she settled herself and opened the book. “Make yourself comfy,” ordered the hobbit, “And don’t fidget too much.”

The dragon just stared in disbelief. She tried to protest, uncertainty creeping in, “This is my-” 

“Captain Verity Seasinger strolled into the port town just as the sun was blazing down into the waves of the horizon,” the hobbit began to read loudly, ignoring her, “She needed a drink, a ship, a crew, and revenge on her treacherous first mate, preferably in that order. Mutiny she could forgive, but not the ancient and terrible curse that her reckless greed had awoken….”

Hours passed, and the dragon listened, enthralled. The hobbit’s words painted images of faraway places, of people she had never met on her mountain road. She didn’t speak a single word as the hobbit read, but as she closed the book, late enough that the stars were peeking into view in the darkest parts of the sky, she blurted out, “You’re a wizard.”

“Sorry?”

“Or a witch. A sorcerer. You weave enchantments with your words.”

“Oh no. I think it’s the people who do the writing that weave the enchantments. I just read them out.”

The dragon got to her feet, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed, and shook out her wings. “Your tithe has been acceptable,” she declared. “Your revelation of your magic and labour to display it so have been pleasing. You may go on your way. Do not be so unprepared next time.”

“I won’t,” smiled the hobbit. And the dragon flew away back to her cave, and the hobbit continued on her way.

She came back that way the very next week. By the time the dragon had emerged from the cave, she was already laying out a blanket and more food, and taking out a book to read. “Is this still acceptable?” she asked as the dragon landed down next to her.

“It’ll do,” sniffed the dragon, settling herself comfortably. “Proceed.”

The next week she came back again, and the week after that, and after that. But winter was closing in, and the next week was full of driving cold sleet and rain. The dragon stayed huddled in her cave and watched the empty road below. She did not pass by on her usual day, or the day after. The dragon told herself it didn’t matter, and thought about the stories she’d already heard, and tried to enjoy the images that had already been enchanted into her mind.

However, shortly after the sun had risen on the third day, when frost still clung to the grass and the dragon’s breath billowed in great clouds of vapour from her nostrils, she saw her - her hobbit, hurrying up the path so quickly her own breath puffed out in great clouds as well, bundled up in so many cloaks that the dragon thought, if she fell, she’d roll all the way back down the road.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” gasped the hobbit, trying to catch her breath as the dragon landed in front of her, awkwardly stumbling in her haste. “I couldn’t get up the mountain pass before, they only just cleared the snow.”

“You’re freezing,” said the dragon, because indeed, the hobbit’s usual rosy cheeks were instead pale with cold. “Come up to my cave, there’s a fire.”

They hurried back to the dragon’s cave, where the hobbit could take off all of her cold wet layers and spread them on the warm rocks to dry, and her face was soon glowing with the warmth. This time she had brought two books for the dragon to choose from: one about friendly witches trying to figure out why all the local vegetables were coming to life; and one about a pickpocket who accidentally stole a letter revealing a plot against the king. “Which one would you prefer?” asked the hobbit.

“Both,” said the dragon, settling in.

The hobbit continued to visit over the winter, as and when the weather allowed. Sometimes it would turn foul when she was already in the cave, forcing her to stay until it cleared. The dragon started to trying to make things a little nicer for the hobbit, bringing in less smoky wood for the fire and sweeping out the dirt with her tail, and in return the hobbit started bringing rugs, and pictures, and shelves to keep the books on so the dragon could look at each of them even when she wasn’t there. And so, when they ran out of books, they would talk of other things, about their lives and the stories they themselves lived. 

“Not all hobbits like walking,” she confessed around her twelfth visit, “They prefer staying at home and drinking tea and growing things and talking in the tavern. Which is all lovely, but just, I sometimes want to go and lose myself in the hills and in the mountains. It’s nice to see what grows without us.”

After she confessed that, the dragon waited until the first clear day of spring. She then hesitantly offered to the hobbit to take her flying, to see the mountains and her home from above - which she gleefully accepted. They stayed in the air, soaring over lakes and chasing birds, until the dragon’s wings got too tired to continue.

“I hoard gold and jewels because they last forever,” the dragon confessed herself around their twenty-sixth visit. “Dragons last a very long time. Everything else fades or withers or decays or breaks. But my mother dragons, they still had jewels from the beginning of the world, and they still knew everything about them.”

“Stories last forever as well,” pointed out the hobbit, “As long as someone is around to tell them.”

The dragon considered this, and nodded. “I don’t know any other dragons with hoard of stories. Perhaps I can be the first. Can you keep bringing me more?”

“Of course I can. But everyone else who passes this way knows stories as well. They probably know far more than me.”

The weather grew warmer, but the hobbit was still never in any rush to leave. And so the merchant caravans of spring were surprised to find their way blocked by the dragon, as usual, but now with a hobbit on her shoulder - demanding not gold and jewels, but a story from their travels, or a tale from their childhood. The dragon eagerly rewarded the best ones with gold and jewels from her trove, so it was by no means an unwelcome arrangement.

Bards began to hear rumour of this dragon collecting stories and made their own way up the mountain to share their work. And then bards heard about this dragon collecting stories and so made their way up the mountain to learn what they could. Scholars and historians heard of this hobbit, sat patiently at the dragon’s side and scribing everything she heard into a vastly growing library stretching back deep into the mountain’s heart, and travelled, begging to get a glimpse of this vast hoard of stories that was being collected. Soon, her quiet dark little cave was neither quiet nor dark at all.

The dragon herself never learned to read. She didn’t care to, when she had her hobbit to read for her. And it turned out, a mind so excellent at the meticulous recall of the coins and jewels of a trove had no problem memorising every single word of every story it heard. And the hobbit, soon enough, stopped even going home - she stayed with her dragon, living together in their hoard of stories, and helping add to it, and still reading to the dragon every night.

It was her eighty-fourth visit, which had currently lasted three years and eight months, when the two of them were curled up together by the remnants of the fire, listening to a couple of young bards arguing over the finer points of the story of the Curse of Verity Seasinger, when the dragon drowsily asked, “Traveller?”

“Yes, my dragon?”

“You’re staying here forever, aren’t you?”

“As long as I can, yes.”

“But when we first met.” The dragon spoke slowly, afraid of reminding her of something she’d lost. “You were always on your way somewhere important. Something that brought you up the mountain past me every week, despite the dangers and the tax.”

“Oh yes, it was terribly important.”

“But what was it?”

“Why,” said the hobbit, “To see you, of course.”

****

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/minorthalia