The world is a strange place, filled with mysteries large and small. Some of the most peculiar things can be found in the tiniest of puzzles.

For example, the case of the missing spoon, or sock, or dignity. Most humans seem to lose these small objects frequently, but justify it as a misplacement, or a case of extreme short term memory. And most of the time, this is the truth.

But ever so occasionally, the lost object was never truly theirs to begin with. In every household, there lives a population of shapeshifting pests known as boglets. These creatures masquerade as everyday items, and mischievously transform into something else just as they are required. They especially prefer doing this when their hosts have some kind of important event, such as a job interview or a date.

These creatures go unnoticed by the general public, but are well known to the magical community as a true danger. After all, it only takes one unstable explosive disappearing to cause extreme paranoia. It is standard practice for wizards to exterminate all boglets before they move into a house.

One day, many, many years ago, a sorcerous hermit built a house in the woods, and carried out this procedure. However, while he made a mistake while performing the ritual, and a single boglet escaped. This is normally not a problem, but this boglet kept running, further into the forest, miraculously escaping all the threats that surrounded it, until it reached the safe haven known as the Witches’ Grove.

There, it was accepted with open arms, as are all creatures that find themselves hunted or persecuted by humanity. Over the many, many years, it multiplied rapidly, developing a rather large boglet community in the forested area. The ecosystem thrived off of confusing the larger beasts by moving flowers, leaves, or the occasional small animal corpse.

Not all shapeshifters are born equal, however. While all boglets can mimic objects of any size, each one has a different preference as to the size and shape of their ideal model. Most find out what they want almost immediately, upon first sight. On the day that poor Joshua died, one boglet found out exactly what he wanted to be.

The small tree that held up the shining, glittering cape was an oddity within the community. He always transformed into something awkwardly large, and he enjoyed moving around, something the majority of boglets looked upon with disgust. His name was Boggy, because his progenitor was not terribly creative, and he had finally figured out what he wanted to be. A human.

The taboo of the thought sent shivers down his branches. Boggy had never heard of humans outside of the occasional horror story told between beasts, but as soon as he had laid eyes upon the strange bipedal creature, his heart told him that that was what he wanted to be. The seeds of an idea were planted in his mind, and he shuffled off, in anticipation of executing it. But to do so, he would need help.

#####

A long time ago, in the deepest part of a cave, where darkness ruled over all, there was a thought. It was difficult to figure out where it had come from, or how it had gotten there, but it sparked a reply. And then a reply to that. And then so on, and so on, until a consciousness had formed.

A terribly miserable consciousness. Borne of nothing but shade, it rarely had a physical form. The few that knew of its existence called it Darkness, which was not a creative name, but that was not where the being’s depression came from.

On the day of Joshua’s death, Darkness was sitting at the bottom of his cave, scratching into the walls as he always did. Upon the stone walls were hundreds, if not thousands of murals, each one made with the finest of marks. Any one of them could have had the curator of a gallery weeping in the fetal position, but no eyes had ever been laid upon them.

Darkness scratched another line into the wall with stunning precision, and finished his carving of Yggdrasil, a flawless replica. It was not pleased in any way. If it had legs, it would have kicked the wall until the sculpture was flattened and destroyed. With a hiss, it went to go sulk in the corner.

Every time that it created something, something was always a little bit off. And although it had no lungs, it let out an imaginary exhalation of frustration. It knew what was missing, from conversations with its friends, but there was no way for Darkness to obtain it.

What Darkness wanted, more than anything else in the world, was color. From what it’d heard, it was everything that was missing from its art, but it was unable to experience it. Any time that any kind of light touched Darkness, it felt an intense agony. Whether it be from the sun, the moon, or even a torch, it felt itself disappearing.

Which made the desire to know even stronger. Maybe, just maybe, if it could understand what color was, it could finally perfect its art. It shot a longful stare towards the exit of the cave, where the answers to all of its problems lay. A forbidden place, full of pain, but maybe the perfection of its craft as well.

Darkness began to slide around its chamber, agitated. It could try going above the surface once more, but it would almost certainly die. If only, if only there was some sort of way to avoid light!

There was a sharp knock near the entrance, and Darkness hid itself into a crevice, keeping far away from any being that could be foolish enough to bring light into its lair.

Slow, steady thumps echoed through the cave as his visitor came closer and closer to his quarters, and with relief Darkness recognized who it was. Boggy thumped down the cave, clumsily striding across the floor with his roots.

Enthusiastically, Darkness left its little crevice, and went to go meet with the boglet. There was nothing better than a quick bout of venting to release the stress that imperfection placed on it.

It slid up, through the narrow passages of the cave, flying through the shadows it lived its life in. It sensed the boglet standing to its right, and cautiously whispered in a raspy voice, “Hello.” The first few times that it had spoken to Boggy, the shock had almost killed the poor thing. Darkness had quickly learned to keep its distance before speaking to people, for fear of surprising them too badly.

Boggy had grown used to the quirks and unpredictability of his friend, and turned his trunk to face the entity. It being pitch dark, he had no idea where anything was, but he had walked this path more than enough times to memorize his surroundings. “Hello, Darkness. How are you doing today?”

Darkness gave another breathless exhalation. “Not so well, I’m afraid. My most recent mural was another failure.” This was a conversation that they had had many times in the past, but Darkness nudged it into unfamiliar ground. “What is it that you’re carrying? You’ve never brought anything like it into the cave before.” It tugged at the strange cloth curiously, lifting one of the corners up.

“I have the most interesting story.” Boggy quickly related his experiences to Darkness, who listened with a passive interest. “That’s where this thing came from.”

Giving it another nudge, Darkness asked, “And what color did you say it was?”

“It is red with golden flecks scattered across it. It’s quite beautiful.”

Concentrating as hard as it could, the formless being tried its best to imagine what that would look like. Boggy had explained the concept of golden as ‘shiny’, but as something that had never seen light, it couldn’t picture anything but the dull, floppy rectangle that it saw before it. “Sorry, Boggy. That didn’t work either.”

“Oh.” The boglet’s voice was dispirited for a second, but immediately popped back up. “That isn’t the only reason I came here.” He edged closer to where he thought Darkness was. “How would you like to leave your cave?”

A silence followed that sentence, quiet enough to hear the drips of water fall off the ceiling. Darkness stood as still as he could, as if any sort of movement would break the dream that had come to life. Very slowly, he asked, “What do you mean?”

Boggy shook his branches with excitement. “I think that if you hide in this cape, I could bring you outside, and you could meet everybody else.”

Darkness deflated a little bit. “Oh. So I wouldn’t be able to see anything.”

“Not yet.” Boggy seemed to be more animated. “We just need to find something that will let you survive light.”

“That won’t work. The witches already told me that there’s nothing inside the Grove that could help me.” Darkness felt like crawling back into its crevice and hiding for a decade.

“That means we just need to go outside of the Grove.”

Another silence, this time for much, much longer. “...Outside the grove?”

Boggy gave a small nod with one of his branches.

Darkness took a second to think about this development. He’d never thought about going outside of the Grove. “But what if something happens? Aren’t there...humans?” It whispered the last word as though one of them was liable to interrupt their conversation.

“I saw one of them, and I think that we’ll survive. I think that I can turn into one pretty well.” Boggy said defensively. He hadn’t tried yet, but in his heart of hearts, he knew it was what he was meant to be.

A minute passed, and then another. After what felt like an eternity, the bodiless voice sounded right next to Boggy’s face and asked, “When do we leave?”