If you climb high enough, into the mountains, into the trees, you can almost see past the Night Forest. Just barely. The Night Forest is not only night, just as the bright forest is not only the daytime, and the man forest is not only wartime.

Long ago, there were wars, between high and low, huge and tiny, middle and all. 

The sparking people were the first to be afraid that they would not have enough. They learned to make tricks and cast spells. The hairy people became good at concealing themselves and learned to be immune to illusion. And the middlemen, who felt beset by nature on all sides, vulnerable to forces they did not understand, learned to make fire.

Understandably, the wars were ugly and drove all living things from their safe places, their homes. And when the creators of worlds looked out and saw the hungry chaos, they separated the worlds into three component homes: The Night Forest for the big people, The light meadows for the little people, and the middlemen were allowed fire because they had no pelts to keep them warm. 

The worlds were drawn apart, shielded from each other by many veils, each safe inside their own territory.

Once in a very great while, a creature would be born into the wrong world, and a rescue party was gathered to bring them home. 

Mighty Nizz was such a foundling. No one really knew which world she belonged to, but it was decided that the night forest would be the safest place for her.

Nizz was very small, it was difficult to tell what age she was. She was smart and strong, so Da, the tallest and strongest of the big people, was chosen as the best guardian of the night forest.

Nizz clung to his fur like a baby possum at first. Gradually he set her down in the safe spaces in the night forest floor. It was not long until Nizz could outpace him with her short chubby legs which pumped her along like pistons. She learned to jump, climb, and ambush the animals who tried to frighten her, or meant her harm.

However fast she might be, she was always under Da’s protective eye.

The large oak was probably her favorite climb. 

And if you happen to be hiking, and you don’t wish a shower of leaves to obscure your vision, if you don’t want to wake up accidentally in the night forest, remember to look up for a “harmless” little girl in a red wolf’s cape.

Mostly harmless.

Wanna Play?

Playing With Bears!

Every boundary in the Night Forest was patrolled by grizzly bears and black bears. Usually solitary creatures, mama bears have been known to adopt people, and Nizz smelled more like a bear than a people. 

Luckily, Nizz spoke bear, because Fox had taught her all the animal languages. Every animal in the Night Forest spoke their own languages. Fox, Nizz and Da spoke all of them, as did most creatures in the Night Forest.

Life in the Night Forest was typically peaceful and pleasant, with the occasional territorial skirmish between apex predators, but Nizz had managed to negotiate a treaty with all the big cats, the wolves were terrified of Nizz, and the wild boars loved her because she was the only creature in the forest that they didn’t have to worry about hurting accidentally. Nizz seemed to be fearless because she was unbreakable!

The bears loved to play with Nizz. Like an enormous cat, she was agile and springy. She always landed on her feet. Her curled toes held tight without digging in claws that drew blood.

So often, in the latest hour of the night, Nizz would find a favorite bear to ride patrol with.

She has six favorite bears, and named each by color.

Midnight 

Inky

Charcoal

Brown Gray

Tanny

And

Tawny 

Tonight she rode Tawny! 

Human beings were the primary threat to the Night Forest. The occasional group of poachers or campers would wander into the Night Forest and it was up to Nizz and the bears to scare them off.

Tonight Nizz and Tawny ran into a group of people camping around a messy fire, with garbage and bottles strewn about. Tawny ran up on them, standing on her hind two feet, roaring for all her worth. As Nizz held onto her fur like a rodeo rider, Tawny knocked the tents down with her giant paws. Nizz jumped down and poured the liquid from the bottles over the fire, putting it out. Then Tawny ran up on their cars, as they scrambled to get away, and backed up towards them, spraying them with pee as they fled. They would not be back!

Not long ago, a small group of poachers started wandering in, dressed in camouflage, making too much noise to actually achieve stealth. Together with the bears, Nizz realized they needed a plan to discourage the poachers before someone got hurt.

The bears started out the next night, carving out a deep hole with their massive claws. It took them all night, but when they were done, they covered the pit with pine branches and spent the day sleeping, to rest enough for the night to come.

Just after the first star appeared in the sky, the poachers struggled their way through the branches of an animal trail. As they stumbled through the dark and the underbrush, one fell downward with a great scream.

“Ahhhh!!!”

“Jack, Fred! Help!”

As Jack and Fred reached their arms down into the fifteen foot pit, the poachers were pushed into the pit from the outside by the rest of the bears, with no one left to help them up.

Nizz and the bears let them sit in the hole day and a night, as it rained and the temperature fell, just to teach them a lesson. Then, when she thought they had shivered enough, Nizz hopped down. She stripped them of their gear, and then with one powerful arm, she threw them up out of the hole, one by one.

The bears and Nizz walked them to the edge of the Night Forest in their underwear, growling the whole way. The poachers, also, never told the story of what happened in the Night Forest.

No one ever did.

Who would believe them?

This site will be quiet for a while. There is much work to be done and, at the moment, little time to attend to it.

I would ask for patience but patience is not one of Nizzibet’s virtues.