Mao’s first harvest festival had the child starry eyed. The colorful paper lanterns, the many smells of seasonal food, the market stalls with their toys and masks and games a plenty. He was still too little to do much on his own but Josei made sure he was entertained.

She took him on a themed walk through the woods, following a trail of lanterns with stained glass that shed their glowing patterns on every surface. She let him point out a toy he liked and bought it for him, a small horse carved from wood, painted red with flowery patterns on its back and face. She let him enjoy hot autumn food with her, stews of root vegetables and game meat, baked apples, and soft sweet bread. His teeth had increased in quantity and quality the last few weeks so he got to try firmer foods and seemed to enjoy it plenty.

Once they got home Mao dozed off in her arms as Josei read him a tale from the ‘Autumn Wilds’ book.

“Merchant Crow is a greedy bird. So greedy that he’s forgotten how to fly. You see, one day he and his brothers swept down from the sky to pluck pearls a lady had spilled when her necklace broke. They plucked and plucked and plucked, so many that the weight kept them down.

Merchant Crow did not care how heavy they were, he only saw how they glittered when the sun touched them just right. He wanted them all! So he stayed and he plucked and heavier he grew.

By the time he had to leave he could no longer lift off the ground. It confused him at first, but he refused to let go of his glittering treasures. He might have considered it after many failed tries to take off, but a shiny pebble caught his attention first. He grabbed it and added it to his hoard, growing heavier yet.

A trader knocked over a glass vase, enraging its owner. Merchant Crow swept in to steal the shiny shards. The owner grew so tilted at the trader that he threw a punch, and soon the pair were brawling. Merchant Crow watched it all, knowing he should flee, but the belt buckle of the trader was so very shiny…

He stayed to watch, biding his time. When the vase owner tore a pouch off the trader’s belt, Merchant Crow swept in to nab it. Now he had a place to put all his shiny things!

The pair broke up and Merchant Crow hopped on. He found more shiny pebbles and added them to his pouch. He found a dead beetle with a shell like emeralds and grabbed it too. When a rat ran by clutching a cat’s pearl in its jaw, Merchant Crow swept in and demanded it.

“Give me that pearl! It is so shiny and bright, I must have it!”

The rat refused of course, but not before eyeing the beetle poking out of the crow’s full pouch.

“I’ll trade it for your beetle,” it said. Merchant Crow thought this over, hesitant to part with his treasure…

But a cat’s pearl is a precious thing indeed. Only the vainest of cats sometimes coughs one up, and they only have one. They guard it fiercely because it has a part of their soul. The rat must have fought hard to get it.

Merchant Crow eventually nodded and traded the beetle for the pearl. The rat ran off with it, chittering in delight over the easy meal. One couldn’t eat a pearl, so this was a good trade indeed.

This gave Merchant Crow an idea. “I will trade for more shiny things!” He said, and that’s what he tried to do. But beasts have few shiny things you see, and fewer yet that they might give away, even for a trade. Merchant Crow would have to try somewhere else if he wanted to trade.

That’s why he learned how to turn human. Some beasts can do that, you see, if they’re clever enough. It is harder yet for a human to turn into a beast, but some know how to do that too.

Merchant Crow now walks among us all, peddling his wares, hoping to trade lesser things for the shiniest of stuff. Perhaps he’ll remember the wonder of flight one day, but to fly he must lose some of his hard earned hoard.

If he decides to return to the sky, we should be kind to him. If you think you’ve met a Merchant Crow, don’t offer him anything shiny. No gems, no polished metals, not even colorful glass. He’ll add it to his hoard and he’ll go another day without remembering how to fly.

So sad, so sad. But be nice to him and maybe he’ll share his hoard with you when it’s time for him at last.”

Josei smiled at her son as he slept in her arms. She closed the book as gently as she could, then set it aside on the table. Her bones complained when she stood up, child in her arms and sleep in her eyes. Even now her precious Mao brought her such joy. To think that she could be so blessed. And soon she would see her husband too. It was almost that time of year again.

It was a secret only they could know, for such was the nature of her love. He would visit her dreams at the change of seasons each year and the two would catch up. She couldn’t wait to tell him about Mao, about the most precious gift from Mother Wolf. If only time wouldn’t move so slowly.

Sometimes time moved a bit too fast. Mao grew like a sprout, small when she found him, now able to walk. He grew more creative in his babbling, mixing in words with the gibberish.

Winter swept over Redlog like a cold wind. It rained a lot at first, as it tended to do during that season, then it began to snow, a rare sight. All the houses with their red roofs and dark wood blanketed in a sheet of white. Mao loved to toddle around in his thick winter clothes, bouncing through the snow with Josei hot on his heels.

He didn’t get to play around their house, goodness no, there were stairs and steep falls on that street! She found plenty of company for him and her down by the farm lands though, both kids Mao’s age and watchful parents that were all too happy sharing their experiences with a new mother.

Josei found herself bundled up with both advice and spare clothes, sets other families’ children had outgrown that Mao could inherit. She also got invited to a dinner or two, which she happily accepted. She felt some shame over not being able to invite the families back, seeing how her tiny house barely had space for two, let alone guests. Her new friends reassured her that it was no issue though, so Josei lived in bliss.

Jul came upon Redlog eventually, cloaking the entire city in bright lanterns of red, silver, and gold. Mao and her went to a public activity, a workshop of a kind where you got to make little decorations of pinecones, shiny paper, and dried citrus fruits. Their home smelled of spice and forest for weeks to come.

Mao experienced his first spring with remarkable delight, almost more so than the past seasons. He loved their walks through the forest at the Foot and near the farm lands, constantly skipping around, inspecting sprouting plants, the first blooms of the season, and nesting birds.

Josei let him stray a bit further as spring came and went, trusting him to stay close enough while they wandered about. To see him learning how to jump and run was a delight to see.

Summer was upon them soon enough and Mao spent some of it hanging out with new friends. Always with watchful parents nearby of course, but Josei found herself alone at times when another family offered to watch the kids for a day. It turned out to be an invaluable aid, because running a store and keeping her stock up to date became harder and harder the more Mao grew.

Business bloomed and so did Mao. At one year old he was already running about, a bit too nimble and fast for his age, but no one really noticed aside from Josei. She’d started seeing how he surpassed the other children quickly, learning words and gestures at a much faster rate than his playmates.

She had to laugh it off at times when someone pointed out how well he was learning to pronounce simple words like ‘Hello, thank you, goodnight,’ and ‘bye bye’. It helped that she didn’t know his exact age. Perhaps he was older than he looked? Then again she couldn’t really tell people she didn’t know the age of her own son… it became a tricky topic.

It was at 3 years old that the first real issues started cropping up. Mao caught a pigeon. It was one of the fat kinds, the lazy sort that had grown too used to people to fly off when one got near. Josei was bartering at the market square at the time. Mao had a handful of oats to feed the birds with while he waited.

She saw him out of the corner of her eye, feeding the birds one moment, then leaping with a snarl in the next. The poor bird was blinking in disbelief as he brought it over to her at a run, showing her his prize while happily chirping “I catch food!”

He’d let the bird go after a scolding and Josei had hurried them both home right after that. No one seemed to have noticed but it still rattled Josei something fierce. Did her son have a trace of the wilds in him since he came from Mother Wolf? She started to worry.

Mao tried to catch rats next. A nest of them had moved in nearby and intended to feast on Josei’s stock of herbs. Mao caught onto their schemes and found himself a rock. When she found him with it and asked what it was, the child just stared at her for a moment. Then he made a hitting motion with it and said “catch”. The implication horrified her.

Thankfully for all that Mao was quick and spry, the rats were quicker yet. He didn’t manage to catch any and Josei scolded him every time she caught him trying.

It became a daily conundrum how to impart the importance of kindness to animals upon her hunter of a son. He seemed to make a game out of it, but not one he took lightly. When asked why he wanted to catch animals, he always answered ‘food’, which was… maybe not reassuring, but better than violence for violence’s sake, right? Perhaps her son had Mother Wolf’s wild instincts and he now craved a hunt… Josei didn’t know how to solve this issue.

The solution presented itself one winter evening. Mao was now 4 and his mastery over simple sentences grew. He would slip out of the house at times to play, a habit Josei had tried to stop to no avail. When the bell at the door chimed and Mao returned with a rooster held tightly in his arms, Josei had feared for the worst.

‘This is it’ she’d thought, ‘he’s killed his first animal, and a revered one at that’. Not that the farmers didn’t kill chickens, but it was a different thing to kill for sport and to do it for food. No, Mao’s insistence that he would eat what he caught did not justify a child playing at being a hunter.

Josei had her heart in her throat when she saw the black rooster, but before she could break into a distraught scolding, the creature coughed, hissed, and looked around. Mao gave her a look that confused her at first, then as he spoke it dawned upon her what he wanted.

“Can we keep him?”

That was perhaps the hardest choice Josei had ever been faced with as a parent. Did she do the obvious and reject the request, since a rooster was hardly a pet for a child and they didn’t have the space nor knowledge to keep it properly… or did she accept her son’s first pet in the hopes that it would teach him kindness and sympathy for things not human…

She let him keep the rooster. Oh what ungodly nightmare had she set upon her home. Josei really did need to learn not to welcome any blight she came upon into her house. Sure the rooster was a far cry from the elven stranger… but it was a bloody nuisance still. And Mao loved it dearly.

He named the bird Tulip, because that was the only black flower he knew. Tulip was a scourge upon the world. For one, Tulip was lazy. That was a good thing because it meant Tulip preferred sleeping in over screaming at the sun. Odd for a rooster but Josei wouldn’t complain as long as he kept the habit.

Tulip also ate meat. She’d known that chickens might sometimes eat a rodent if given the chance- she’d seen it happen on the streets enough times, much to the horrified marvel of anyone seeing it, but Tulip hunted mice as if they owed him money. A good amount of money. As in he would gulp down a fat rat at least once a day or prowl until he found one. It took Mao just one time seeing Tulip kick a poor mouse to death before horking it down whole, to lose his interest in hunting.

That Tulip hunted was also a good thing because it meant Josei’s rat problem got solved before it could fully take root. It was a bad thing because while Mao didn’t want to do the actual hunting anymore, seeing Tulip eat raw mice got him terribly curious what they tasted like- once he got over the fright of avian violence. It opened up many arguments of “But Tulip eats them so why can’t I?”

“Tulip is a rooster, roosters get to eat mice.”

“I wanna be a rooster!”

“Mao…”

And so it went. Sometimes Tulip would go on a little dandy spree of destruction just for the hell of it, ripping up potting soil, eating Josei’s rare herbs, charging through a paper screen just to show that he could.

Most of the time Tulip just slept though, and everyone else had to tip-toe around him in the hopes that he wouldn’t wake up in a rage. His favored sleeping spots were thankfully very predictable. The rooster loved to sleep in sunny spots and Josei’s house didn’t have that many windows.

Feeding was easy enough. As a semi-wild bird he would trot off to enjoy the feed the priesthood spread around the temple on Peak Street, and the occasional scraps slipped from the table, or anything Mao refused to eat really.

Perhaps it was Tulip being a bad influence, or maybe Josei just hadn’t experienced some of the less talked about downsides of parenthood. Like tantrums. Oh you could be reasonable with your kids, for sure, but sometimes they wanted to douse their pet in cold tea for a ‘bath’, or eat a rock and scream at anyone trying to stop them, or get incredibly, unreasonable, chaotically upset if you took the wrong set of stairs home.

Josei still couldn’t wrap her head around why Mao had gotten so upset over their neighbour taking the other way home, that one time they’d met them at the cookery. Screams of “He’s not gonna find his home!” and “Stop! Stooop! That’s the wrong way! Noooo!” and hysterical bawling echoed through the streets that evening.

One time Mao was playing a word game with some kids. A rhyme you took turns finishing or something, Josei wasn’t privy to the rules and logics of organized toddlers, but she got enough to know that someone yelled Mao’s part before he could do it. Instant fight.

Tears everywhere and like a plague it spread from one kid to another, most not even knowing what they were crying about, just that their friends were upset so they better get upset too. Mao had been demanding Tulip be summoned to beat the offending kid up by the time the adults rushed in to stop the tears. Madness.

Josei might be feeling a bit overworked. Between running a medicine shop, minding Mao, and making sure Tulip didn’t turn her house into a trash heap, Josei didn’t have a lot of free time.

Then came the magical suggestion: “Have yous any plans to apprentice him?”

That came from Katja during lunch. Mao was away at a friend’s house, probably starting a riot. Josei blinked.

“Apprentice?”

“Yea y’know… sign him up for a trade?” Katja fidgeted with her chopsticks as Josei just stared at her.

“No’ as in like, trade him I mean. Sign him up to learn, I shoulda said.” Katja corrected herself. Josei blinked again.

“Oh- oh it-... It slipped my mind.” Katja gave Josei a long, meaningful look. She put a hand on the medicine maker’s shoulder.

“Josei dear, I say this with love, yous in dire need of a break. Sign him up as an apprentice. He’s about the right age soon ain’t he?”

9 now. Where had all those years gone? Josei felt a mixture of pride and dumbfounded wonder at the passage of time. “It feels like just yesterday when I found him in my house… Apprenticeship… but what would I make of him?”

Katja shrugged, slurped up a mouthful of noodles, then coughed as one decided to explore her lungs. They were at the noodle hut nextdoors, the Droopy Swan. A terrible name for many reasons, but the noodle soup was to die for so most let it slide.

“Ask him?” Katja swallowed, suppressed a burp, cleared her throat, then went on. “Most kids complain if they’s forced to do work they didn’ ask for, so ask him. Worst case he’ll say ‘nobleman’ and you’ll have to break the cold ‘ard truth to him.”

Josei made a face. Katja lifted her bowl to slurp down the dregs of her soup.

Later that night Josei and Mao had a talk. She sat him down by the shop counter and had them both busy with grinding herbs. Mao seemed to enjoy the activity and it gave them both something to do while speaking. They made a little small talk, discussing the audacity of the local teens throwing rocks at stray chickens.

Mao confessed to having sicked Tulip at them once. Josei was surprised to hear that Tulip had won that fight, driving the teens off in tears. It was hard to scold him for that without laughing.

Josei told Mao about her first apprenticeship to the late old Willow, may he rest in peace. She may have let slip the truth about man’s mortality, horrifying Mao over the prospect of people staying dead after dying. Maybe if she’d explained life and death to him early he would have ceased his early year hunting hobbies on the spot… oh well, past mistakes. Tulip was a decent plan B.

They eventually got back on track- but only after a tearful Mao had demanded Josei live forever, and a tearful Josei distracting him with a tale of her own.

Josei used to have a husband, you see. This was news to Mao but he’d started to wonder about a certain mysterious concept other kids seemed to have a grasp on by now, that being the concept of having a father. Mao lacked one but hadn’t really considered why until now.

Josei’s love had died. It was a tale of young love. Of many years of courting, of little moments spent in private, trading secrets and confessions. Of watching the sun rise from a tent in the woods. Watching birds together. Learning the names and faces of new flowers, many pressed and saved to immortalize the memory.

But Josei’s love had not been immortal. He could have been.

Josei’s love was a maple spirit. A man that was a tree. They had many names, but to Josei he had just been… Summer. He didn’t have a name before he met her. Didn’t need one. Trees rarely took names on their own. He’d met her during summer though, and the season was his favorite ever since. It was the time of year when she’d been sent out by her teacher to gather wildersun, a rare kind of mushroom. Rare not because it didn’t grow in quantity, but rare because it was sought after by both man and beast.

Wildersun was considered a delicacy you see, and its uses in medicine were vaunted. It could treat frostbite, poor circulation, and issues with the heart. It also warmed one from within, a hint of magic.

They survived by mimicking flora, often as yellow little flowers. They like to hide between the roots of maple trees. Young Josei had thought them a sad kind of mushroom, so afraid of death that they hid and pretended to be something else. She’d thought up a way to thank them for their sacrifice, promising that they would be used for good.

She would bring a book with her when she went foraging, then pick a tree that might hold them and sat down. She would read them a short tale before searching, and if she found any she would consider it an agreement. A trade for a trade. She didn’t always find wildersun due to this method, but her empty basket could be blamed on their rarity. It made her feel a little bit better about it.

Her maple had been one of the rare spots where they grew. The mushrooms themselves didn’t care much for tales, but the maple spirit did. He enjoyed the kindness, the moment of peace, of tales from afar. It was a moment just for them. He fell in love.

The wildersun started growing in abundance around his roots, an offering for the kind lady that would read for them before plucking a few. It became a bit of a yearly tradition. Eventually she would go only to his tree, knowing that he would have the mushrooms she sought.

He revealed himself a few years later. It took time for trees to build courage, you see. They don’t travel the world at the same pace as us. They may still know love though, and it blossomed beautifully.

It went from a yearly visit to several each season, then several trips a week, then nearly daily. They’d been happy. Oh it was an unexpected match with its own set of perks and inconveniences, but they’d been grateful for each others’ company.

Then a storm had rolled in over the Maple Woods and Lady Luck had cracked her wicked whip. Josei’s maple fell, roots broken and crown shattered across the ground. It hadn’t been instant death, but neither had it been painful. It simply took him a while longer to process what was happening. They made each other a promise as he faded.

She would gather maple leaves from the nearby trees each change of season, since many of those trees were sired from Summer himself. She would tie them into a lovely garland, then hang it over her bed until it withered. Summer would visit her dreams when she did, since that time of year was theirs.

It was a painful wait between each season but Josei spent it as best she could. She knew that one day she’d be joining Summer, so she’d have to gather as many great memories as she could until then, so that she may share them with him over a good cup of tea.

Perhaps the tale was a bit too heavy for little Mao… but he seemed to understand. Death came for all in time, even things as ancient as trees. It wasn’t necessarily bad, merely an end to a good tale. You would have to enjoy it while it lasted. She promised him that hers had quite a long bit left before it was time.

Mao spent the rest of the night glued to Josei’s side. They read a tale or two by the hearth, warmed up some scones from the cookery and ate them with cheese and jam. When the tired confession came, Josei wasn’t really surprised.

“I want to become a medicine maker,” Mao said.

Not surprised at all.