Chap 9 : Little Moo Moo and the Extremely Unfair Universe
In the realm of Thornveil Hollow—a place where shadows had teeth and the trees whispered things so unsettling that even demons politely avoided eye contact—there lived a creature who was, by all accounts, a mistake.
He was small.He was fuzzy.He was green.
And he was crying.
Again.
Moo Moo sat beneath a weeping willow whose branches literally wept, because Thornveil Hollow was not a realm that believed in subtlety. His tiny body trembled where it curled against the roots, his little round ears drooping, his stubby arms wrapped around his knees.
His enormous eyes leaked a steady, unstoppable stream of tears onto the moss below.
His fur—a soft mossy green that might have been considered fashionable in certain celestial circles—was damp with sadness.
He had been crying for approximately three hours.
This was not unusual.
Moo Moo had spent most of his existence crying.
He cried when he was scared, which was always.He cried when he was happy, which was rarer but still inconvenient.He cried when he was confused, which was frequently.He once cried because he saw a particularly beautiful flower and was overcome by the fleeting nature of beauty.
The flower had not survived the experience.
According to a forest healer who had given up on him rather quickly, Moo Moo’s tear ducts wereconstitutionally overactive.
According to that same healer, his personality wasconstitutionally terrified.
Thornveil Hollow was not kind to the constitutionally terrified.
Creatures with too many legs lurked in the undergrowth.Creatures with no legs at all slithered through the trees.And everyone—everyone—thought Moo Moo looked delicious.
He was, after all, small.Green.And completely defenceless.
He had been crying beneath the willow for nearly a week when they found him.
The bullies.
Three shadow hounds with teeth like daggers and breath like a slaughterhouse.
They cornered him against the tree trunk, their massive bodies blocking out what little light filtered through the canopy.
“Well, well,” said the largest, its voice a gravelly rumble that made Moo Moo’s fur stand on end. “What do we have here?”
“A snack,” said the second, licking its lips.
“A crying snack,” said the third, and laughed—a sound like snapping bones.
Moo Moo tried to speak. Tried to explain that he was not food. That he was a creature of this realm too. That he had fears and thoughts and a name, even if that name was also the only sound he knew how to make.
“Moo,” he managed.
It came out as a squeak.
The hounds laughed harder.
“He can only saymoo,” the largest said. “How pathetic.”
“He’s probably too stupid to know any other words,” said the second.
“Let’s eat him before his tears make him soggy,” said the third.
They advanced.
Moo Moo squeezed his eyes shut.
He waited for teeth.For darkness.For the end of a life that had been, if he was being honest, mostly crying and very little else.
Instead—
He heard a voice.
“Move.”
It was not loud.
It did not need to be.
The word cracked through the forest like thunder wrapped in silk.
Moo Moo’s eyes snapped open.
A figure stood between him and the hounds.
Tall.Terrible.Radiating heat that made the air shimmer.
Her hair moved even though there was no wind. Her eyes burned with something that was not quite fire but was certainly not mortal. Power rolled off her in waves, cold and sharp and ancient enough to make the shadows pull back.
She did not look at the hounds.
She looked at him.
And Moo Moo, in the middle of his terror, had the deeply inconvenient thought that her eyes were beautiful.
Silver Green.
Bright and sharp like the stars above Mount Caelestis-Sol—the ones the Linchpin King had once shown him when he accidentally wandered into that realm while fleeing a swamp beast with seventeen elbows.
And her hair—
Her hair a colour of ash purple like someone had dipped in lavender and let it drip dry.
She was fierce. Terrifying. Untouchable. And above all, beautiful.
And yet something in her expression—something very small and very soft—made Moo Moo’s tears flow faster.
“I said,” she repeated, her voice cutting like a whip, “move.”
The hounds did not argue.
They ran.
They ran so quickly that one of them left a claw embedded in the dirt from the force of its own panic.
The woman turned toward him fully. Her flames dimmed. Her hair settled.
She looked down at him with an expression that would later become very familiar to Moo Moo.
It was not affection.
Not yet.
It was exasperation.
“You’re crying,” she said.
“Moo,” he agreed, because this was objectively true.
“You’re always crying, aren’t you?”
“Moo.”
She sighed.
It was the sigh of someone who had been burdened with celestial responsibility for far too long and had now been confronted with a tiny green disaster who leaked emotions like a broken fountain.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Moo Moo.”
She stared at him.
“Moo Moo,” she repeated.
“Moo Moo,” he nodded.
She stared a moment longer.
Then—for reasons Moo Moo never fully understood—she smiled.
It was not a warm smile. At that point in her existence, she did not possess warmth in any reliable quantity.
But it was not cruel either.
It was simply… there.
“You’re pathetic,” she said.
“Moo.”
“You’re tiny. No bigger than my thumb. You’re weak. You can’t defend yourself against anything larger than a migileaf eaters.”
“Moo.”
“And you cry constantly. I can see the puddle forming beneath you. It’s been three minutes.”
“Moo Moo.”
She crouched and picked him up.
Moo Moo froze.
Her hands were warm.
Not soft—she did not feel like softness—but steady. Solid. Real.
She brought him to eye level, and up close she was even more terrifying.
And yet—
And yet she had come.
She had made the hounds run.
She was looking at him like he was an inconvenience she had not expected and did not particularly want… but also could not quite leave behind.
“No one will bother you again,” she said.
Moo Moo blinked.
“Moo?”
“I’m staying.”
She placed him gently back on the ground and stood, dusting off her hands.
“Someone has to make sure you don’t get eaten,” she said. “It would be embarrassing for the forest to lose a resident to something as mundane as digestion.”
And that—
That was how Moo Moo met SeSe.
Or Seraphyne, as she had been known then.
The daughter of heaven and hell.The most terrifying being in Thornveil Hollow.Possibly the most terrifying being in several other realms as well.
And eventually—
His best friend.
Years passed.
Moo Moo stopped crying quite as much.
Not because he was braver.
He was not.
But because SeSe stayed.
She drove away the creatures that hunted him. She scared off the things that crept too close. She stopped setting entire sections of forest on fire when he was nearby, though she insisted this was only because he was “too damp to risk.”
Moo Moo noticed she was careful anyway.
They were not what anyone would call a normal pair.
But they were a pair.
And then—
The sky split open.
The words boomed across the Celestial Tribunal like a death sentence.
“You are banished.”
Moo Moo was there.
He had been waiting at the edge of the Tribunal’s court, as he always did when SeSe had to attend official matters. He disliked the Tribunal immensely. The angels were too bright. The demons were too loud. And everyone looked at him like he had wandered in from a picnic rather than existing there on purpose.
He had been chewing on a piece of starlight—it tasted like static and regret—when the words echoed through the heavens.
“You will fall to the human world.”
His head snapped up.
“You will learn what it means to be human. You will learn the weight of a soul. You will learn—”
He didn’t hear the rest.
Because SeSe was falling.
Her real body—the one made of arrogance and fire and something hidden beneath both—was plummeting through the void.
Her flames guttered.
Her light dimmed.
No.
Moo Moo’s tiny legs moved before his thoughts did. His little wings fluttered wildly, frantic and useless but trying anyway as he raced to the edge of the platform and looked down into the endless drop.
He turned back toward the Tribunal just in time to hear their final decree.
“You will return when you understand humanity.”
That was it.
That was the key.
Moo Moo did not understand much.
He did not understand why the sky was blue in some realms and red in others. He did not understand why his eyes produced so much moisture. He did not understand why the universe had decided he, of all beings, should be small and green and made almost entirely of fear.
But he understood this:
SeSe would return when she understood humans.
And Moo Moo could help with that.
He had to.
Without her, the shadows would return. The hounds would return. The world would remember he was small and green and made of nothing but fur and terror.
Without her—
He was nothing.
So Moo Moo jumped.
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