Mud and Mistakes

Dwarfs enjoy holes, but this dwarf was not always dwarf.

In fact, he used to hate holes. Especially the kind you fall into when the world gives way beneath your feet. His name was Jack and he came from a dairy farm. Not a mountain stronghold, not a world of magic, not a place of quests and EXP. He was a farm boy. And he milked cows. 

He wouldn't ever know what mana felt like, and he didn't care what EXP stood for. He didn't have the time to care. He had no idea that there was more to a cow than milk and meat. He was just a kid who made a mistake. He didn't mean for it to happen. But did that matter? No. The hole remembered. And it swallowed him for it.

All he would ever be was a farm boy. His hands were leather before his voice had cracked and his back curved towards the earth before his spine had even finished growing. On the farm, sunrise meant work, not warmth, where the softness of youth dried out in the sun alongside hay bales. These days claimed his mornings, his weekends, and whatever childhood he might have had. Milk and mud and shit soaked his boots, dried dirt baked onto his skin, and the sweet rot of silage became as familiar to him as his own flesh. 

It wasn't that he hated the cows or even disliked them, he just hated that his life revolved around them. The early mornings, the muck, the hay dust that dried his throat. When he thought about his future, it was shaped like a paddock and smelled like one too. Still, he worked. What else was there to do? His parents loved the land and said that it was honest work, the kind that fed people and built character. It just happened that Jack didn't want to build character, he wanted to escape to the city and build a life for himself. He wanted to be more than a farm boy that carried buckets and fixed fences and dragged hoses and shoveled dirt and cleaned barns and milked cows. His father would always say, "Work the land and the land will work for you!" But Jack often felt like the land was laughing at him and his dreams of something more.

Surrounding the farm was the great hulking silhouette of the mountains which penned Jack in like a calf in a crush. As a baby learning to walk, a child learning to ride a bike, and as a teen that yearned for more, he lived under their shadow where he watched the sky move and change while everything in his life stayed the same.

It was another beautiful evening where the cloudless sky seemed to taunt him with an array of colours that danced through the air. He dragged a hose across the slick concrete of the milking shed where warm slurry clung to his boots, and the sting of the acid wash caught in his throat. He scraped muck from under hooves, blasted grime from gutters, and watched as the brown runoff swirled into itself and disappeared down the drain. This task, like all the others, fell into his worn hands.

The sun crawled behind the hills and the dark crept in. 

From years of working closely with the cows, they were docile and friendly, often hanging around Jack as he worked. And it was no different today as he shut off the hose and went to coil it up. Perhaps he was rushing, eager to leave, despite knowing deep down that it didn't matter - tomorrow is just more of the same. 

Just like Jack, she didn't mean to. Her name was Daisy and she was young for a milking cow - still curious, still unaware of her own size and strength. Prone to getting underfoot, to stepping on hoses, to nudging gates open with the lazy weight of her body. She stepped on the hose again and sent a warm splash of slurry up Jack's legs. 

Something in him snapped and Jack yelled.

He lost it.

Every emotion tucked away. Every word swallowed. It all poured out like curdled milk, sharp and sour and foul and sudden. He shouted everything that he'd held back for the last year, grabbed a length of pipe, and hurled it with all the force his aching shoulders had left. The sound it made rang out like a gunshot.

The cows startled. She slipped. Her legs buckled as she collapsed under her own weight into the metal railing. Her body cracked - a wet and final sound - which made Jack's skin crawl.

The last of the light slipped away as the cows murmured, unsettled. He didn't move. Couldn't.

A final twitch. Then stillness.

He hadn't meant it. He hadn't meant any of it.

Somewhere, beyond the silence, the porch door of the house creaked open.

A voice called, "Jack!"

He stood, heart pounding. He didn't answer. He backed out of the barn, one step, two - running. Run. Run. Run.

Into the forest. Into the dark. Branches clawed at his arms, and roots chomped at his boots. Still, he ran. What else was there to do? He knew he couldn't stay.

The dark was oppressive. His breathing grew ragged with every step. He stumbled and skidded on loose stones - was the forest always this thick? Had the trees always loomed? Pressing? Judging?

Without warning, his foot caught. Jack pitched forward, face-first into a puddle of thick mud.

He thrashed, spitting earth, desperate to push himself back up. 

Couldn't.

Angry, the mud clung. It bubbled around his arms, slithered up his chest. He opened his mouth to scream, but the mud filled the cavity.

Moonlight slipped through holes in the canopy above, illuminating his dirty and worn body as he thrashed. Alone.

A groan echoed through the forest as the world around warped and disfigured. 

"YOU STRIKE IN ANGER AT THE INNOCENT. ONE WHO OFFERED YOU ONLY TRUST?"

Jack froze.

"YOU, WHO REEK OF ENTITLEMENT, WOULD RAISE YOUR HAND TO ONE WHO CANNOT FIGHT BACK?"

"A BEAST WHO LIVES TO FEED YOU."

"WHO TRUSTED YOU."

The mud swirled around his neck and seemed to tighten. His body was already gone, devoured by the mud.

"YOUR BALANCE IS... SELFISHNESS. BROKEN. BETRAYED."

Jack tried to shout, to explain, to apologise. But the mud swallowed his voice.

"I AM NOT CRUEL."

"I SEE YOUR MISTAKE FOR WHAT IT IS. BUT MISTAKE OR NOT, IT CANNOT BE EXCUSED."

"YOU MUST LEARN, AND YOU WILL LEARN THROUGH CONSEQUENCE."

The earth opened beneath and the mud surged. Jack was pulled down, down, down.

Deep. Deep. Deeper. 

A crack inside his calves, dull at first, then searing. Bones folding inward, curling back into themselves like branches snapped. Shorter. His joints thickened. His arms buckled at the elbows, muscles bulging unnaturally as his limbs compacted. His already curved spine grew only shorter, his neck thick, his chest growing and swelling.

There was no blood nor visible wounds. Just a silent reshaping, like clay. He screamed, but the mud choked it off.

Still, the earth heard.

By the time the light came back from behind the hills, Jack was something else.

He fell.

And while he fell, he was a boy.

But he landed dwarf.