Taddle Tale No. 2
“Echoes in Slime”
as recorded by the Hollow, though it swears it never spoke it aloud.
It began with a scent.
A faint trace of memory curled through the ferns one dew-heavy morning. Sweet, fungal, familiar. The kind of scent that slips beneath thought and stirs the shadows where longing hides.
Taddle awoke to it. Or perhaps he was already awake—no one could be sure.
“Bernadette…” he whispered, eyes wide with sudden clarity—or was it madness?
He hopped. Once. Twice. The trail was there. Faint, glistening across a moss-worn root. It pulsed softly in the gloom.
He followed.
“Not a dream,” he croaked. “I knew it wasn’t.”
Tongue flick. Sniff. Sniff again.
Was it a trail? Or a trick of light? Or his own fevered longing made visible? Taddle no longer cared. The Hollow spun gently around him. Leaves seemed to lean closer. The earth hummed beneath his feet.
Flick. Sniff. Sniff.
He reached a puddle.
A perfect mirror of the canopy above, rippling with each breath of the wind. And across its glassy skin—a single line of shimmering slime.
Taddle stared.
“She was here.”
He leaned closer. Closer still. Eyes wide, breath held.
“Bernadette…”
And then—without hesitation—he licked the puddle.
The Hollow held its breath.
The puddle tasted of mud, leaf, and regret. His tongue tingled. His mind spun. The stars above seemed to wink knowingly.
He blinked. Blinked again.
In the puddle’s reflection… a snail.
Slow. Elegant. Impossible.
“Bernadette!”
He croaked. He leapt. He landed—tongue outstretched—on a stone.
The snail was gone.
Or perhaps it had never been.
Taddle lay there for a time, belly cool against the mossy rock, eyes glazed.
“She was here,” he murmured. “I saw her. I… tasted her trail.”
A firefly drifted past, blinking softly.
Taddle’s gaze followed it, dreamy.
“…Ooh. Look. A firefly.”
And with that, he hopped away—content, for now, in the echoes of slime.
Scriblet’s Note:
Some tales cling like burrs to the edges of the Hollow. This one returns more often than most.
Was she there? Did he truly see her?
Or is longing itself a trail that loops upon itself?
I shall ask the moss. It remembers more than I do.
