Chapter Text
✦𓂃☽◯☾𓂃✦
You expected mothmen when you moved in. Some clans of them called the woods around here their home. It was good luck to see one, or so your neighbors said. Better to be warned of imminent disaster than to stumble blind into danger.
You did not expect to find one stealing your pumpkins.
You woke up to a thread of your magic being tugged, a discomfort like hair being plucked from your head. You ran to your window, and there he was-
There was at least seven feet of pale fuzz and roughly-stitched patchwork on the guy, not counting the antennae that sprouted from his head. Those feathery appendages twitched your way, there was a monochrome blur, and he was gone.
And that would be fine. So the harbingers of doom or whatever around the town took things sometimes. Fair enough trade. You were careful the next day, wary of any dangers that might beset you, of whatever could prompt a visit from such a being.
Only, he kept coming back. And when he did, he took a lantern. Every. Fucking. Time. And nothing at all was happening in your life to warrant any warning visits from fluffy, fiendish pumpkin-stealing omens.
Two weeks after the first accidental offering-turned-what-you-were-convinced-was-a-pumpkin-protection-racket, you did not lay in bed waiting anxiously for another scrap of your magic and hard work to be taken. No, you'd had enough. You waited on your porch with a broom, jack-o-lanterns you'd carved and lit not for the collection of spiritual energies in the season but for the capture of that moth bastard spread before you (because the moth had taken all the spiritual vessel ones, the menace!) The hours ticked by, and you stayed very, very still in your single-use store-bought stealth shroud.
Like clockwork, he decended upon your yard, soft as nightfall, and began examining the goods.
Like any veritably-vexed victim of consecutive decorative vegetable larceny, you promptly charged at him, screaming bloody murder.
✦𓂃☽◯☾𓂃✦
He was surprisingly cooperative, which you attributed to your excellent ambush tactics terrifying him into submission despite your comparatively diminutive stature. He hung his head as he led you through the woods at broompoint, and eventually, reluctantly, he took you to a clearing.
There, scattered before you, were exactly fourteen pumpkins. All your fourteen pumpkins.
You stared at them. "You really were screwing with me specifically, huh?"
He made some sheepish squeaking sound, averting his gaze.
You examined your lanterns, found their wicks still alight and most of your spell still intact. You could touch up whatever parts must have gotten smudged or moth-eaten. You floated your property, turned back the way you came, and began your march back home. You would have merrily set them in their places and gone to bed, but you made one terrible mistake-
You looked back.
Giant fluffy omen of thievery though he was, he wasn't the least bit intimidating. The moth gazed at you and your departing pumpkin patch's worth of lanterns with a most pathetic look in his orange eyes. His antennae drooped, and so did his wings, and damn it all to voidheart he was cute.
He was cute and pathetic and miserable and he looked like a kicked puppy and you wanted to kick him for it but mostly yourself as you groaned-
"Fine, you can have one !"
His feelers picked up.
Instead of examining and plucking one of your lanterns already bobbing in the air and disappearing, he slowly walked up to you. You watched him expectantly. He looked back expectantly.
. . .did he want a new one? Of course he did. Greedy moth prick, of course he'd want a new one-
You trudged back home with fourteen carved, lit pumpkins and a giant moth in tow.
✦𓂃☽◯☾𓂃✦