Welcome to the Wizard’s Woods an ongoing illustrated story updated monthly on Patreon. Join The Wizard's Woods tier to experience the story in real-time as it is written, illustrated and released or join Moth Mail to additionally receive the featured illustrations as a postcard and sticker. Chapter One is posted below!

Chapter One: The Wizard’s Woods

irl-creature finds herself lying in a meadow quiet with mist. There are two enormous green eyes looking down at her from above.

“Who are you?” she asks the green-eyed being.

“You don’t know?” he replies.

Girl-creature thinks as hard as she can, but her head is full of fog.

“Should I know who you are?”

“Never mind,” the green-eyed being says, the green suddenly dark. “Meet me at the cabin. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“The cabin?” Girl-creature asks, but the green-eyed being is gone, the tall grasses left swishing in their wake.

Girl-creature sits up. It’s a nice meadow, if a little cold. The way the stiff and bowed plants are breathing billows into the air suggests fall or dawn or twilight. Girl-creature decides dawn because some of the green is unfurling in the same way someone might unfurl from a nap.

Girl-creature’s feet are bare and so is the rest of her and she begins to feel a bit shivery as she steps tentatively through the wet grass. There are faint voices coming from up ahead.

“Hello?” Girl-creature calls. The voices stop.

Girl-creature continues across the meadow until she reaches a blackberry bush where a moth and a spider are sitting on a leaf.

“I guess it’s too late now,” Moth says. “The scarred one is here.”

Girl-creature touches her left cheek and feels a raised line on her skin running beneath her eye.

“Hello there,” Moth calls up to Girl-creature. “Come a little closer.”

Girl-creature takes another step forward. 

“Are you here alone?” Moth asks.

Girl-creature looks back towards where she came from, an empty snarl of flowers, grasses and weeds.

“I guess so?”

“Very well,” says Moth. “What is your name?”

Girl-creature thinks as hard as she can, but once again, she finds nothing but fog where her memory should be.

“I don’t know.” she admits.

“So mysterious,” Spider chimes in.

“We have to call you something,” Moth says.

“The Nameless Mist,” Spider offers.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Moth says at the same time that Girl-creature says, “I could be the Nameless Mist.”

“I will call you Girl-creature.” Moth says with finality.

Girl-creature thinks that is fine, although she’d kind of liked the idea of being called The Nameless Mist.

“We have something for you,” Spider says and indicates a dark lump lying in the grass at the base of the blackberry bush.

“I apologize in advance for the unfinished edges, Spider and I disagree about–” Moth begins.

“It’s supposed to look like that.” Spider interrupts. “It’s artfully distressed.”

Girl-creature kneels to pick up the thing in the grass which turns out to be a shaggy garment with tattered sleeves and a tattered hem.

“Spider can hem the edges, just say the word–” Moth tries again.

“I wove it from my inkiest silk!” Spider beams.

“I love it.” Girl-creature says and puts it on immediately.

Moth seems like she has more to say about the apparent shabbiness of the garment, but instead she says, “well I have something even better for you. Peak inside the bramble.”

Girl-creature looks between the blackberry stems and tooth-edged leaves and sees a thin silver chain hanging from a thorny finger in the center of the bush. She reaches in and pulls it out. A crescent-shaped pendant dangles from one end of the necklace.

“I made this from a piece of the moon,” Moth says solemnly, “It was a long way to fly, but I think the end result was worth it. Don’t you?”

“Thank you,” Girl-creature says, genuinely moved.

Moth acknowledges the thanks with a moth-nod. “Very good. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to leave the Forbidden Meadow. There is a sinister structure near here that I would prefer to avoid.’

“Oh, yeah,” Girl-creature says, suddenly dizzy as if her body is moving too-quickly through space. “I think I’m supposed to go to a cabin?”

“A cabin?” Moth says. “I know of no cabin, but it is probably somewhere in the Wizard’s Woods. Spider and I are heading back to Bug City, we can travel with you part of the way and maybe point you in the right direction.”

“We should summon The Bravest Knight!” Spider says. “He will know where the cabin is and he can protect Girl-creature on her journey through the Wizard’s Woods.”

Spider begins lowering herself from the leaf on a delicate gossamer thread.

“Follow me!” she says and scuttles away towards a wall of trees that looms beyond the blackberry bush.

“That’s not the only reason you want to summon the Bravest Knight!” Moth calls after Spider in a teasing tone. To Girl-creature she says, “Ulterior motives aside, Spider is right, the Wizard’s Woods are dangerous, especially at this hour when the sun has not yet fully risen.” With that, Moth leaps from the leaf and flits soundlessly after Spider.

Girl-creature hesitates. Behind her, a flattened patch of grass marks the spot where she’d been lying when she awoke and met the green-eyed being. Beyond the blackberry bush the dark-wooded trees glower crookedly.

“Come on!” Spider calls from somewhere up ahead.

Girl-creature doesn’t look back again. At the threshold she steps from the pale dawn-meadow into a realm of creaking, sighing shadows. For the first time since she opened her eyes, Girl-creature wonders where she is. More pressingly, she wonders WHO she is. Maybe the Wizard’s Woods will bring her answers.

In the dim forest light, Girl-creature can just make out the shapes of Moth and Spider sitting on a raised root up ahead. A few more steps into the forest and Girl-creature feels as if she’s been swallowed into the belly of it. Spider’s eyes twinkle.

“Welcome to the Wizard’s Wood’s.”

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