azure_mischief | The Giving Season

Characters: Count Razoff; Begoniax (mentioned)
Summary: A true aristocrat sure knows how to indulge in sweets. First off, take off the fancy garb so no berry juice gets on it...

Eat all that grows high, while you still can stand;
eat all that grows low, while you still can sit;
and enjoy your fullness, when you can only lie down.

Count Razoff had taken this saying to heart since he was a wee Swamp Garganteensie, and always obeyed it every time the Season of Giving came to the Glade of Dreams. This year, the Count also happening to be about to shed his old skin during it. And was glad that it’ll happen far away from everyone’s eyes...

...Shedding an old skin is a long and tedious thing. Sometimes it may make you wish you were a plain old gray Teensie, for they don't have to shed like their larger swamp relatives. But once the skin comes off... It feels like a whole mountain falling off your shoulders, and you forget everything that's been upsetting you. Almost like being born again. Both you and the whole world feel so new and fresh you barely even want to get back into your fancy clothes.

But today was different. Today was the tenth day of the Giving Season, almost the equator of it, the “cream of the time”, so Razoff didn’t even need his hunting garment. He left it it at home: it was going to take him a good while before he fits back into it anyway.

No one even noticed the green-skinned Count sneaking through the reeds to his secret spot. Wonderful, isn’t it. Razoff wouldn’t dare to even think of accidentally giving this spot away with his bright red jacket...

...He woke up in the shade of a schmaple tree, feeling thirty years younger and really... really, horribly hungry. Sure, he’d long eaten his old shed skin, but what was the use?

The heat made the trees sap, dark amber droplets beginning to fall off the branches. A sweet rain was falling on the clearing, rustling in the grass, dripping down Razoff’s body. (“Heh heh, wouldn’t you look at that Count Carambar!” – Murfy would quip now, being a jokester he is.)

Soon the rain stopped, and Razoff, having licked the sweet sap off his skin, set to work on the amber smudges on the trunks and branches of the four schmaples.

When the sap ran out and the Count’s hungry excitement subsided, he no longer resembled the same green whip he was a day before. Last time Razoff got fed that well at Globox's house; he remembered himself laughing at how he couldn’t buckle his belt back that time... That was back then; what would be the reason for the Count to limit himself now that he doesn’t have to worry about the buckle?

Neither he had to stand under these trees when plenty of other sweets besides the schmaple sap awaits just a stone’s throw away. Behind the bushes, Razoff knew, lay a lingonberry meadow. All his.

Eating lingonberries at a dinner party and eating them alone isn’t the same. At a dinner party, you always have to watch like a hawk that no juice gets on your jacket, no berries get spilled on your pants – or a handful gets swiped off by the sneaky Murfy. Now, with the table manners left behind, it was quite another thing. There was no need to worry even about Murfy accidentally spotting Razoff in his birthday suit and mocking him around the entire Glade: it was hard to even see the swamp-green Count on just as swamp-green moss from the sky… Or perhaps not as hard as Razoff thought at first: only his back was green and spotted, but the belly – his pride and beauty – was light, the color of fresh cream. So light that it could catch anyone’s eye even in the twilight.

The Count, however, barely cared about this very pride and beauty slowly getting heavier, bloating to the size of a good drum. The Glade of Dreams, both suns above his head, the time itself – all seemed to have disappeared and stopped, with only delicious lingonberries and Razoff remaining in the whole world.

He and them.

...Razoff gave a thin, empty stem of the lingonberry plant a final, gentle bite and opened his eyes.

“…Whoa,” he gasped, rising slightly on his elbow.

Whoa it was indeed. Razoff wouldn’t even be able to rise to his feet now: his stomach wouldn't allow it. It definitely wasn’t the right size for hefting. But just the right size to let it rest heavily on his lap and fall asleep sitting. Both the Count's long arms (just perfect for embracing that pliable sloshy orb) and short legs (as if specially tailored for said orb to rest on) came in handy for that...

The tenth day of the Giving Season was slowly reaching evening, and a fog had descended on the razoffy – formerly lingonberry – clearing. The green Count was about to sleep on a bed of luscious green moss, under a blanket of white fog, barely even understanding why did he deserve this much good. A rain of sweet sap, then, the countless lingonberries, and a canopy of evening fog to top it all off.

“Huh?!” Razoff suddenly shuddered.

A rustle came from behind the bushes. Please, let it not be Begoniax… Not that old hag, Polokus forbid… Not when the Count got nothing to even defend himself with...

...It was Begoniax all right. Who knows what she was looking for around here: some roots for her potions or… the green hunter himself… no, better not even think about it.

Razoff froze, squeezed his eyes shut, huddled in the moss, listening intently. The witch's gaze seemed to slip through the swamp bushes, clinging to his new skin like cold mud.

“Ugh!” Behind the bushes there was heard a spit, and then a hoarse, exhausted voice: “No! No way, I’ve had enough of it. Gotta go home... Been all over this dern swamp, haven’t found anything, hadn’t even eaten, and now seeing things at that... Three moons; wouldn’t ya lookit that... Nah...”

The rustle was heard again, growing weaker this time: the witch was leaving.

The Count's heart was finally relieved. To think she was three steps away from him and didn’t notice anything… Must’ve mistaken him for the third moon...

“Third moon,” Razoff grinned, glancing at himself again.

Well then, so be it. May he be a third moon tonight, he doesn't mind that at all. A round moon that can lie back and laugh softly while the light of two real moons shines on him from above, giving him silver dreams and wiping all dirt of an unwanted gaze off his body and memory.

For it was the Time of Giving.