Taduque-ery

The creature-kin of Brambleberry have a story they like to tell their children about the dangers of the outside world.

The green people of the outside world can be a frightened bunch. Often looking at outsiders like they were a threat to their very way of life. Now the cities were not always cities and the towns not always towns, but the people were always people. And people get scared of what they don't know and can't control.

It was in one of the smaller towns that this story is usually set. The town and the houses around had a small collection of "wild" families, creature-kin that had not fully put on the markings of civility and embraced the culture of the town. But in this town, the long empty town of Taduque, there existed a slight animosity between the wild families and those of the folk that considered themselves civilised. And mostly this animosity came about in "those pesky kids".

Now the wild kids of the town had a love of the water birds around the river edge, often playing in and around the reeds and scaring them off as they did the things normal to children their age. They would flap their arms and make sounds that mimiced the birds, though their young minds were more about joy and laughter than accuracy. But being loud, being young and being strange led to some of the older people of the town dragging the wild children back to their families for discipline. Which the parent felt compelled to bring lest they be run from town, or a Hunter brought down upon them in return.

Now within the town there existed a woman, touched by somewhere beyond. A mage of unorthodox magic who longed for her long lost family. Family lost to the town and its ways of all thing. But with her odd dress in robes of dark Greshire , and her body plastered in unfamiliar spell circuits - she was as much an outsider as the wild families.

Despite all this, damage does not always thing logically, and when the Outsider heard the cries from the disciplined children a hardness and a need formed in her heart. She went to the centre of town and drew a complex circuit, powered by her own grief and rage, and drew the young wild children from their homes. They followed with glassy eyes, making water bird noises and flapping their arms in vacant joy, until the Outsider was surrounded by the children of the creature-kin, those who were too loud and made too much of a fuss for their community.

And singing a slow and mournful lullaby, the Outsider led the children away, the townfolk too judging to stop her, the parents too afraid of what breaking the spell would do to their young. The children followed, waddling in a little cloud of eagar feet, continueing to make those childish sounds as they went, their parents following at a stunned distance, wanting to make sure their young were safe. And yet, at the edge of town, they vanished, leaving the sounds of quacking on the wind.

duckuary-2025-badge-participant by Tillerz using MJ

Entered in the duck challenge - a little pied piper.