Introduction
In this magic-filled froth of misted air, trolls lie and stalk. In this land, it is always autumn, the season so spicy. Every day sees reddish orange leaves burning in winded trees. Their branches are exacerbated by a constant chill and a decline of sunshine. Instead of bright hot evenings, every day ends in yellower leaves stuck to the branches above.
Humans with their diminutive size live in the hills like birds in nests on stilts. Fat wooden flamingoes of red and brown are held up high on four-by-four wooden posts buried 16-foot deep in the ground.
The year and time are not important or relevant. This is a metaphysically set novel, and the story has layers that weave through the Loom of Lifecycles.
Beneath these taller than human homes are animals―livestock and wild. These animals are all free-ranging, coming and going as they need to feast or find shelter. Even a chicken knows when to get in out of the rain.
As a result, all flowers and gardening is kept up top on the surrounding decks. Not that a person can garden well in the woodlands, but they all try their pansies and their zinnias, their marigolds and their aloes. All have a home on somebody’s upper deck.
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Indoors the owner of the tall, tall house on stilts sits on the living room sofa, watching a football game. His tongue navigating a cavernous field of teeth, rubbing over his ribbed gums.
The bug wants to get out, but he refuses to let it go. The critter is burrowing in the hole in his gums where a tooth was rotten and had been yanked out. The tiny seed beetle gives him information, and he swears to the Epics it also predicts activities.
Like any loyal pet, the bug becomes more alert and is responsive to vibrations and energies that humans are too big and dull to manage.
The old man doesn’t have to feed the seed bug or take it out for a walk. He never has to clean up after it or wash away its poop.
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If you ever go to a Bothy, it’ll be full of dead people or you will go there to die alone. All the Bothy visitors want to escape from life. The witches of Bothy feel differently. You enter a Bothy door, your life is no more. Everyone else is jealous. Everyone else is curious. But everyone else wishes it were them. Death is a gem. We are all gold diggers.
A free at a Bothy, a free stay that is not. You simply cannot have 1. A free stay and 2. Not check in with a person in the world where others do when they live in a hut, house, trailer, or mansion. You automatically lower yourself. The de-leveling will kill you―knock you off your kilter. So the waiting witch of the Bothy can eat your lost soul.