Faer Fools and Darv Delvers
It's been six years since she first created Kabos and the Monstervores, but I'm still making use of the fragmentary ideas she came up with when she was much littler.
Back then, I asked her if there were dwarves or elves in her fantasy world, and she said yes but then asked what those were. Rather than give a full explanation, I wanted to delve into what they might be in her mind, unexposed to all the books, movies, and tales that we've all heard when we're older. Luckily, all I had to do was give her the most basic answer to her question--dwarves are bearded underground diggers looking for gold and gems, elves are immortal creatures of magic, kind of like fairies--and as always she came up with her own amazing takes springboarding off them. No dwarves and elves for her: they were 'darvs' and the 'Faer'.
In the years since, between her brainstorming and my writing, we've fleshed out more of the world and its history, and as a craft project this week when she wanted to make "Kabos figures" I suggested we make a darv and one of the Faer...not least because I wanted to draw a few last bits of information out of her about them as I worked on writing their entries for the Monstervore Dictionary over the last few days.
Darvs are an ancient race that was actually hibernating in gemstone shells deep inside the monstergod Sobak when it was eaten by the godventurer Rukos and the world was created. Awakening after the pair petrified into a planet, they now dig around inside the world, trading crystalized digestive acids and rare minerals from inside the world for the tools and supplies they need from the surface. They have gemstone eyes and a beard of the same color in which they tie up their tools to carry them. Their quest continues to find the gembies, their still-sleeping children, who have their own complex mythology.
The Faer were some of the first fairy children sent down by the sun-goddess Daemelani to help her beloved Rukos, promising to tell him stories while he slept. They whispered sleepsongs to the world, causing the slumbering Rukos and Sobak to create the Dreamlands that nappers still can visit. But as the gods slept, when the Faer were supposed to return to the sun....they stayed. They were literally pregnant with stories, and as long as they spread their tales in the world they wouldn't die. So in the thousands of years since the Faer have snuck through the shadows of history, sometimes helpers and sometimes tricksters, telling stories and singing songs, loving life and the living too much to leave them behind, and always, always, always hiding from the sun beneath their broad-brimmed hats.
Crafting and decorating our figures of the Faer and the Darv.
I've been finding other gems as I dig through old notes. Writing up 'nixbees' and their sleep-sting, I found notes about another near-immortal, the magic bee who turns normal hives into nixbees. That bee dies once in a while, but it is immediately reborn in a distant fire to live again and spread its magic. Its name: the Beenix. I'm not sure I even caught the joke at the time, but now, five years later, her shaggy pun on 'phoenix' finally landed in my brain and I laughed so loud that I think I startled some of the people near me in the coffeeshop.
Other entries completed recently include a bit on the alternate worlds in miniature called the Alphabet Islands, the mysterious dream-travelers Graycloak and Brownbritches, the incredibly useful sky rope, and what's currently the final entry in the alphabetically-organized Dictionary, the blasted wastes of the magically dead Zyuva Ruinsands.
We also finished our figures of a darv and one of the Faer, and stopped to take some pictures of them on the way to school this morning. The darv has his gemstone eyes, a glow crystal on top of his helmet so he can see underground, and some tools he can hold in his pipe-cleaner beard. The Faer is visibly pregnant with her stories (apparently they glow under the skin and swell until they're told), carries an ancient leather-bound Talebook, is wrapped in a 'promise chain' and has the broad hat that hides her as Daemelani looks down from inside the sun. They're crudely made, sloppily painted, and barely held together with blobs of hot glue. I couldn't love them more.
She has friends and schoolwork to keep her busy these days, and I always have plenty on my plate. But I'm glad we have Kabos to remind us of the time we were together almost all the time, and to still bring us together to tell each other stories. I have no doubt the ideas are going to keep coming, and I'll keep writing them all down.
Our darv preparing to dig in a nearby park.
The Faer hiding from the sun, ready to give birth to a new crop of stories, jokes, and riddles.
