#firgrove

It's summer, and there's a western camp opened up down at Sunshine Ranch. I didn't waste any time getting me and Mythcare registered for it. It's different than stable care, or working with the druids, or any of the other various things I do around Jorvik. It's herding animals and helping with repairs and doing deliveries.

There's something sweetly wild about the mountains and hilly forest around Firgrove where the ranch lays. The wolves here are still wild enough and uncowed enough to be willing to hunt farm animals without fear, and a large enough pack will certainly go after a horse. There's no hunting the wolves, of course. This is Jorvik. There's beast repellant, sold by the man who works with the wild horses in the wild woods. It works better than it should for repelling the wolves, I think he uses some magic in it.

Scott Buttergood has his own camp of "outlaws" that are roughing it. They're not far from the ranch, and are set up in wagons instead of the cabins the ranch offers. I've joined them camping out there a few times, it feels good to have the campfire out and spend it telling wild stories. Scott knows a lot of old tall tales that were told by cowboys back when cattle used to be driven across the land instead of loaded up in trains and trailers.

The story he picked to tell this time was different. It wasn't a story he'd heard, but one he'd experienced himself. A jackalope! It'd be easy to shrug off as Scott being wild eyed and spooking at nothing. He's a bit of a gullible conspiracy theorist after all. But this is Jorvik. Magic bleeds through everywhere. There's every chance there's jackalopes running around the area. I'm more than happy to join in the hunt.

Scott speaks of the jackalope as a giant terrifying creature that's oversized with ferocious antlers and eager to tear someone apart. When I went out looking for jackalopes, I first found nothing but bunnies and shadows to jump at that looked like what Scott had described. I couldn't say if that was just me being too vulnerable to imagining his tall tales or being tired with how early I set off on this exploration.

I had to have gone halfway up the hills where it was getting too rocky for rabbits before I found anything. A young jackalope, happy as could be, loping across. It was so cute! It certainly wasn't anything like what Scott had described. It was perhaps twice as big as the regular rabbits, and had a small set of antlers still growing in.

I lured it in with some carrots and apples I had packed for Mythcare, and got to cuddle it for a bit. It really was a sweet little thing. I got to go back and show Scott evidence jackalopes were real - and they weren't the monsters he'd imagined.