Do Not Go To Town

Chapter 17



Morning came quietly to the cabin.
Sunlight slipped through the trees and stretched across the porch. Nifty pushed open the front door and stopped.
Thicket was still there.
The little Bramblekin was curled against the porch post, arms tucked against his chest, one long ear folded awkwardly beneath his head.
Nifty stared at him.
"Huh."
One of Thicket's eyes opened.
"What?" Thicket asked.
"You're still here."
Thicket slowly sat up. "You said I could stay."
"I know."
"Then why are you surprised?"
Nifty looked past him toward the trees. "I'm getting used to things disappearing."
That took the irritation out of Thicket's face.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
"Where's the human?" Thicket finally asked.
"Corey went home. He'll be gone a few days."
Thicket glanced toward the cabin. "This isn't his home?"
"No." Replied nifty
"Then why is he always here?" Asked thicket
Nifty considered the question. "I've been asking myself that for months."
Thicket smiled.
Nifty did too.
With Corey gone, the cabin changed.
For the first time since Nifty had arrived in the human world, he shared the place with someone who did not need the strange parts explained. Thicket understood why Nifty's ears moved before he turned his head.
He understood why certain smells carried farther than others, why silence in a forest was sometimes louder than noise, and why a gremlin never sat with his back to an open door.
But Thicket did not understand the human world.
That gave Nifty an uncomfortable realization.
Somehow, after a year here, he did.
"How long?" Thicket asked later that morning.
They sat outside with food between them, watching mist lift from the trees.
"How long what?"
"How long have you been here?"
Nifty looked down at his hands. "About a year."
Thicket stopped eating. "A year?"
"Yeah."
"Alone?"
"Most of it."
Thicket stared toward the woods. "That's a long time."
"How long have you been here?" Nifty asked.
Thicket shook his head. "I don't know. Days. Maybe longer."
"You don't know?"
"Your sky moves wrong."thicket saidn
Nifty frowned. "The sky is fine."
"No. It's wrong." replied thicket
"I've been here a year. Trust me." Said nifty
Thicket pointed at him. "That doesn't make you right. It makes you used to wrong."
Nifty stared at him.
Then the computer inside the cabin chimed.
Thicket nearly came off the porch.
"What was that?"
Nifty grinned. "Computer."
"What's a computer?"
Nifty stood.
"Oh, you're going to hate this."
Thicket did, in fact, hate it.
At first.
Nifty showed him the screen, the keyboard, the little glowing windows, the way humans could send words and pictures across distances so large that Thicket accused him of lying twice.
Then Nifty opened one of the online forums.
Thicket leaned closer.
"So those are humans?"
"Mostly."
"And they're talking to each other?"
"Yes."
"From different places?"
"Yes."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
Thicket stared at the screen.
"That's awful."
Nifty laughed. "Wait until you see social media."
Over the next few days, the lessons continued.
Nifty showed Thicket digital drawing. He showed him the website. He explained NFTs, tokens, wallets and the strange little online world that had grown around the art.
Tokens were easier.
"It's sort of like money," Nifty explained.
Thicket looked offended. "I know what money is."
"You do?"
"We have currency, Nifty."
"Right."
"We're not animals."
"You slept under my porch."
"I was hiding."
"You stole my food."
"I was hungry."
Nifty pointed at the little thorn-like ridges along Thicket's arm. "You grow thorns."
Thicket looked down at himself. "What does that have to do with currency?"
Nifty thought about it. "Nothing. I ran out of examples."
Their world had no computers. No glowing screens. No worldwide networks.
But it had markets, trade, currency, craftsmen, roads, settlements and old rules that had existed longer than either of them could remember.
The more Thicket talked, the more pieces of home returned to Nifty.
Sometimes a the name of a place hit him like a bell.
Sometimes Thicket described a food and Nifty could almost taste it.
Sometimes they remembered the same thing differently.
And sometimes Nifty reached for a memory and found nothing there at all.
Thicket had the same problem.
Neither of them liked talking about that part.
On the third evening, Nifty brought out the old drawings.
Not the polished digital pieces.
The first ones.
Wrinkled paper. Smudged pencil. Bent corners. Memories made when Nifty had been terrified that forgetting one detail meant losing it forever.
Thicket became quiet.
Nifty turned a page.
Thicket grabbed his wrist.
"Wait."
Nifty stopped.
Thicket carefully took the paper from him.
"I know this place."
Nifty's chest tightened. "You do?"
"I've been there."
For a year, Nifty had wondered whether time had changed his memories. Whether he had drawn streets too wide, roofs too tall, plants the wrong shape.
Now another gremlin was looking at one of those memories and recognizing it.
It was real.
Nifty turned another page.
Then another.
Thicket recognized a market. A stone road. A stand of twisted trees. He knew some of the kinds of gremlins Nifty had drawn, even when he did not know their names.
Then Nifty showed him Rook.
Thicket studied the page.
Nothing.
"You've never seen him?" Nifty asked.
"No."
Nifty nodded and reached for the next drawing.
He tried not to look disappointed.
Thicket noticed anyway.
Several pages later, Thicket stopped him.
"Can you draw someone you haven't seen?"
Nifty looked up. "What?"
"If I tell you what someone looks like, can you draw them?"
"Probably."
Thicket did not answer.
Nifty understood.
"Who?"
Thicket looked down at the papers. "My wife."
Nifty blinked. "You're married?"
Thicket's ears flattened. "Your face is doing it again."
"Doing what?" Replied nifty
"Being surprised that I have a life." Thicket said
"I didn't say anything." Said nifty
"Your face did." Replied thicket
Nifty tried to fix his expression.
It did not work.
Thicket looked back at the blank sheet.
"I haven't seen her since I woke up here," he said quietly. "I keep trying to remember exactly how her face looks."
The room changed.
Nifty knew that fear.
"I'm afraid I'll start forgetting," Thicket said.
Nifty pulled the paper toward himself and picked up a pencil.
"Tell me everything."
They worked slowly.
Thicket described the shape of her face, the way her ears tilted when she was irritated, the little notch near one edge, the way her hair never stayed where she put it.
Nifty sketched.
Thicket corrected him.
Nifty erased.
They tried again.
At one point Thicket laughed because Nifty had made her look angry.
"She does look angry," Nifty said.
"Not like that."
"How many kinds of angry does she have?"
Thicket thought about it. "Several."
"Helpful." Replied nifty
Eventually the laughter faded.
Nifty worked on the eyes.
He had been listening to Thicket for hours, but something about this part came easier than it should have.
A line.
A shape.
A tiny adjustment.
Thicket went completely still.
Nifty looked up. "What?"
Thicket stared at the page.
"You got them."
"The eyes?"
Thicket nodded.
Nifty looked back at the drawing.
For just a moment, the cabin smelled different.
Not like old wood, pencil shavings or the damp human forest outside.
Something greener.
Warmer.
A smell Thicket recognized before Nifty did.
Thicket's head snapped toward the window.
Then it was gone.
Neither of them spoke for several seconds.
"What was that?" Nifty asked.
Thicket shook his head.
"I don't know."
Later, when the portrait was nearly finished, Nifty set the pencil down.
"Can I ask you something?" Said nifty
"You already are."
Nifty ignored him. "Can she be part of the collection?"
Thicket looked up.
"An NFT," Nifty explained.
"That means humans would see her?"
"Yeah."
"They might own the picture?"
"One of them could collect it. The pencil drawing is still ours."
Thicket looked at his wife's face.
"Would they know who she is?"
"No."
"Would they know she's real?"
Nifty shook his head. "They'd think she's another digital gremlin I drew."
Thicket was quiet for a long time.
Then he smiled.
"Humans really are strange."
"I've been telling you." Said nifty
"Okay."Replied Thicket
Nifty picked up his pencil again.
"Nifty?"
"Yeah?"
"Get her ears right."
Nifty smiled.
"Tell me about them."

Chapter 17

Corey returned two days later.
Nifty knew something was wrong before the human said a word.
Corey carried his things inside, set them down, then looked toward the window.
"What?" Nifty asked.
Corey hesitated. "People in town are talking."
Thicket's ears rose.
"About what?" Nifty asked.
"Something in the woods. Something around town too. Nobody knows what it is. I've heard everything from some kind of animal to somebody pulling a prank."
Corey looked between the two gremlins.
"Problem is, some of the descriptions sound a little too familiar."
"It wasn't me," Thicket said immediately.
"I didn't say it was." Corey replied
"Your face did." Nifty said
Nifty would have laughed another day.
Instead, his mind moved backward.
The footprint.
The noises Thicket had not made.
The leaf.
The stone.
The crack.
Himself.
Thicket.
Nifty looked toward the woods.
"Maybe it's not us, weve been here the whole time."
Corey sighed. "What?"
"You think there are more."
Corey did not like where Nifty's thoughts went next.
"If people are looking for strange creatures, you two need to stay out of town until we figure this out”
Nifty nodded.
Corey stared at him. "That was too easy."
"I agreed with you."Nifty said
"Exactly." Corey smirked
Nifty looked innocent.
Corey pointed at him. "Do not go into town."