Mordvor

DEAR MAGNUS, LETTER 6

Dear Magnus the Magic,

Congratulations on the loss of your most recent tooth. It will be a joy to collect it and the gnarled habit you may place within its center. It may be more important now than ever.

While I was able to hatch the eggs of many of the dart frogs and kept the wood where their eggs had lain well-protected in order to season it, it was only one part of a long battle ahead. This quest to combat Mordvor is far from over.

On the seventh of September, with the help of your mother's fairy, we were able to carve a meager few lutes from the seasoned wood where dart frogs had hatched, and these we used to wake several fairies from my tribe. I was so glad to see them alert and playing.

Of course, once they awoke, they wished to join in the task of fighting Mordvor as well. The only question was how? It was some time before we discovered the source of the curse, and in that, the means to fight!

We began noticing that no new geodes were hatching. While the dart frog eggs remained protected by me, hatching as they do, the mud skippers had not been held off by the fairy, Aelfric Emeraldhorn. You see, Aelfric's job had been warding off mudskippers and this was more important than I'd known.

Without Aelfric, mudskippers danced in dozens over the rocks and scree fields and I admit, at first, I thought nothing of it. But over time I realized, where mudskippers sleuthed by the dozens, there was no more glitter or sheen of crystals. The blackened rocks remained, but none sprouted new life.

In short, the mudskippers sully the imaginations of the children by leaving their slime and impurities on the rocks. That slime seeps through and destroys the crystallization where the geodes would otherwise form into the wombs of fairies.

This was our first hint at the source of Mordvor's nature. For you see, wonder and joy are kindred spirits of whimsy and the ability to follow an idea is vital to their continuation. Children dream and imagine and their light ideas, followed long and far, become the shimmer of geode crystals and then the birthplace of fairies. Bright, pure childhood imagination is how fairies form within geodes and then are born. But distraction and greed stifle the light of imagination and it is within the muck of mudskippers' slime that Mordvor grows.

Instead of new fairies, Mordvor festers amid the squelch of ill-advised impulse and the more mudskippers that gather, the more light of future fairies is snuffed out. Children don't imagine deeply, brightly. Instead, they sneak together in the dark. Children who would play long hours away with light swords and otherworldly magic, instead influence one another in darker ways. Children's minds and ideas and friendships darken in the muck and Mordvor thrives.

Those on the side of Good fight valiantly with integrity and we shall prevail in the end.

Still it is not a simple thing to battle such a curse. We need all the help we can get from children with big, bright imaginations like yours. I hope you will continue drawing dragons and writing songs. I know I shall continue fighting Mordvor on my end. And before long, we shall see a fairy born again here.

Until next tooth, Magnus.

With Love,

Tobias Hawthorne Gigglefoot VonRassmusson, III