-Hapsan 101-
It so happened that Rulatani and Quip, who in their early days together had yet to travel the length and breadth of the Great Wood, found themselves in regions no more than a few leagues from the border of the Underwood most of the time. Ever since the passing of the Elderbuns that place had been known as a source of nightmares, and thus most sane creatures sought to avoid it. For Rulatani’s part, he could recall little if anything of the age in which he wandered there, alone, and though he shuddered to think of it, there was a certain attraction all the same. Like moths to a flame or rats to the piper it was not a healthy attention, and he spent many clear summer nights peering towards the dark wood’s edge, lost in the memories that had made him.
© 2026 Scott McCloskey ("Bunzoi", "Bunzoi.com").
(Click above to find this story on Facebook, or listen to the audio adaptation on YouTube.)
Grimmypop!
-Lalen 67-
So it was that Rulatani the Wildbun and Barzan Quip became fast friends and traveling companions. They knew not where they went in the world, but always found themselves there together.
The remainder of their tales are recorded in the Balsamic Ballads, as performed by legendary songstress Anastasia the Whippoorwill, who is said to have known the Two Friends personally and heard each story from their very lips. Regretfully these tales are presented in no particular order save that which came to Quip and Rulatani at the time.
It so happened that Quip, who was a Borzoi and suited nicely to the cold, cared little for it, as it served to her a reminder of all she had lost. Rulatani’s bulk was proof against a hard chill, but upon learning of his friend’s discomfort, suggested they travel south at the first true signs of subotal. This they did, until the crunch of golden leaves gave way to wetlands, and those wetlands grew up into a jungle. The curious plants and giant water lilies there were new to them, and they had trouble discerning the fairest game.
You might think sustenance a mere trifle to the ageless, but aside from their persistent days they were otherwise quite mortal, being spared neither pangs of hunger nor dryness of thirst. Their wanderings in the humid south set Rulatani’s ears up and Quip’s tongue to lolling so badly that they were obliged to seek the hospitality of a wayhouse on the road one night.
This house—called the ‘Blue Cockatoo’—was nightly host to scores of avian patrons, who were prideful of their colorful plumage and curved, solid beaks. They were friendly enough, if not raucous, and repeated one another’s words such that Quip was reminded of a game the bearded folk used to play called badminton, in which nothing much happened but passing the shuttlecock around without end. They served acorn rum and cashews in bowls without utensils, for unlike ourselves, they saw neither vulgarity nor ridiculousness in eating with one’s face.
“Your pardon, Keeper,” said Quip on their third night in attendance, “but my drink has gone cold even before I received it. Might I have another?”
The keeper’s plumage rose up high on his crown, and he was heard to shout: “Grimmypop!”
The other birds took up the word, shouting it in chorus, until poor Quip felt embarrassed for even having asked. Rulatani, whose ears doubled his overall height when they were fully perked, laid his paw on the bar with some authority.
“No self-respecting creature drinks acorn rum cold!” he insisted. “What will you do about it?”
“Grimmypop!” they all said. “Grimmypop! Grimmypop! Grimmypop-pop-pop!”
Quip receded into her mantle as far as her long snout would allow “It’s alright. Let it be.”
On the morrow they left that place, but wherever else they went things ended up the same. If ever they were misunderstood or misdirected and gave voice to their troubles, the birds all shouted “Grimmypop!”
Soon they became afraid to speak up at all.
On a certain afternoon while the Two Friends walked, Rulatani trod before a pair of ant colonies, where workers went about their toil. A plump anteater had come out to take her place in the circle of life, but this strange, long-eared creature stood in her way.
“Pardon me, Sir,” said the anteater, “but would you kindly make way to the fire ants’ nest?”
She made this request specifically, but Rulatani, who knew nothing of ants, instead made a path to the other. When she pointed out his error and asked him to rectify it, he might as well have burst into plumage on the spot, for he had this to say:
“Grimmypop! You complain and complain, and whine like reeds in the wind! Grimmypop-pop-pop!”
The anteater wilted with embarrassment, and abashedly she scurried away.
For a fortnight Rulatani made many booming utterances of the strange new word, and each time he did the parrots backed him up from their high branches. He renounced every indiscretion with cries of ‘grimmypop’, and his breast swelled with the comfort of belonging, for he had no kin to call his own.
Quip, who was as lonesome for her own folk as he, began to feel feathers growing in her coat too. She nearly said the word herself one day, but was interrupted by the sound of a pitiable song. Her ears swiveled towards it, and she turned Rulatani’s attention that way.
“Someone is in trouble,” said she. “Let us see if we can help.”
Amid the lilies they came upon a green-backed sparrow who was neither injured nor emaciated. They asked her what was the matter, and she explained it to them in a most maudlin tone.
“I’m called Grimmypop. It was my mother’s name and her mother’s before. It is a beautiful name you see, and I wanted very much to share it with my hatchlings, but that can’t happen now, for they would only end up a laughing stock like me. I will never give my name again. There will be no more Grimmypops.”
“Why do they use your name this way?” asked Quip.
“I do not know,” the sparrow lamented. “One of them decided that a ‘grimmypop’ is any creature who askes for correction or makes complaint, and the rest of them normalized it with their mimicry. One can scarcely refuse to use it these days, nor can anyone stand against it. I am ashamed just to be me. How can I ever fly high again, with my name to weigh me down?”
Rulatani was sore ashamed. He bade the little sparrow ride on his girthy shoulder, and hopped with her back to the Blue Cockatoo with haste. When the rum was again served cold, he made a point of it.
“Grimmypop!” said the birds. “Grimmypop-pop-pop!”
“You want so badly to belong that you make it so others cannot,” Rulatani declared. “I have done the same. Because of my words, this sparrow cannot love herself anymore.”
“It is only a joke,” said the Keeper. “You are too worked up over it.”
“A joke that brings harm is no joke at all,” quipped Quip. “What if we called all dirty and disorderly establishments ‘blue cockatoos’?”
The birds began to repeat that phrase, but the keeper cried: “No fair, no fair! My place is not like that!”
“And neither is Grimmypop,” rumbled the Wildbun. His ire was focused on himself and so he raised no paw against them, but his countenance was imposing, and the parrots parted in his wake.
“It is better to find fellowship in kindness,” said Quip, recalling a lesson given by her absent prince. “If you use a word often, make it always a good one, and never take them from where they are needed.”
The confused parrots continued to pop for some time thereafter, and so Quip, who was well-read and knew many good words, went among them and gave out better ones to use (none of which were other creatures’ names). The keeper staked his reputation on warm acorn rum, and Grimmypop gave her firstborn hatching a wondrous gift that may very well have outlived the Two Friends themselves.
As for Quip and Rulatani (who apologized and was forgiven), their plumage fell out, and they went on their way.
So it was that Rulatani the Wildbun and Barzan Quip became fast friends and traveling companions. They knew not where they went in the world, but always found themselves there together.
The remainder of their tales are recorded in the Balsamic Ballads, as performed by legendary songstress Anastasia the Whippoorwill, who is said to have known the Two Friends personally and heard each story from their very lips. Regretfully these tales are presented in no particular order save that which came to Quip and Rulatani at the time.
It so happened that Quip, who was a Borzoi and suited nicely to the cold, cared little for it, as it served to her a reminder of all she had lost. Rulatani’s bulk was proof against a hard chill, but upon learning of his friend’s discomfort, suggested they travel south at the first true signs of subotal. This they did, until the crunch of golden leaves gave way to wetlands, and those wetlands grew up into a jungle. The curious plants and giant water lilies there were new to them, and they had trouble discerning the fairest game.
You might think sustenance a mere trifle to the ageless, but aside from their persistent days they were otherwise quite mortal, being spared neither pangs of hunger nor dryness of thirst. Their wanderings in the humid south set Rulatani’s ears up and Quip’s tongue to lolling so badly that they were obliged to seek the hospitality of a wayhouse on the road one night.
This house—called the ‘Blue Cockatoo’—was nightly host to scores of avian patrons, who were prideful of their colorful plumage and curved, solid beaks. They were friendly enough, if not raucous, and repeated one another’s words such that Quip was reminded of a game the bearded folk used to play called badminton, in which nothing much happened but passing the shuttlecock around without end. They served acorn rum and cashews in bowls without utensils, for unlike ourselves, they saw neither vulgarity nor ridiculousness in eating with one’s face.
“Your pardon, Keeper,” said Quip on their third night in attendance, “but my drink has gone cold even before I received it. Might I have another?”
The keeper’s plumage rose up high on his crown, and he was heard to shout: “Grimmypop!”
The other birds took up the word, shouting it in chorus, until poor Quip felt embarrassed for even having asked. Rulatani, whose ears doubled his overall height when they were fully perked, laid his paw on the bar with some authority.
“No self-respecting creature drinks acorn rum cold!” he insisted. “What will you do about it?”
“Grimmypop!” they all said. “Grimmypop! Grimmypop! Grimmypop-pop-pop!”
Quip receded into her mantle as far as her long snout would allow “It’s alright. Let it be.”
On the morrow they left that place, but wherever else they went things ended up the same. If ever they were misunderstood or misdirected and gave voice to their troubles, the birds all shouted “Grimmypop!”
Soon they became afraid to speak up at all.
On a certain afternoon while the Two Friends walked, Rulatani trod before a pair of ant colonies, where workers went about their toil. A plump anteater had come out to take her place in the circle of life, but this strange, long-eared creature stood in her way.
“Pardon me, Sir,” said the anteater, “but would you kindly make way to the fire ants’ nest?”
She made this request specifically, but Rulatani, who knew nothing of ants, instead made a path to the other. When she pointed out his error and asked him to rectify it, he might as well have burst into plumage on the spot, for he had this to say:
“Grimmypop! You complain and complain, and whine like reeds in the wind! Grimmypop-pop-pop!”
The anteater wilted with embarrassment, and abashedly she scurried away.
For a fortnight Rulatani made many booming utterances of the strange new word, and each time he did the parrots backed him up from their high branches. He renounced every indiscretion with cries of ‘grimmypop’, and his breast swelled with the comfort of belonging, for he had no kin to call his own.
Quip, who was as lonesome for her own folk as he, began to feel feathers growing in her coat too. She nearly said the word herself one day, but was interrupted by the sound of a pitiable song. Her ears swiveled towards it, and she turned Rulatani’s attention that way.
“Someone is in trouble,” said she. “Let us see if we can help.”
Amid the lilies they came upon a green-backed sparrow who was neither injured nor emaciated. They asked her what was the matter, and she explained it to them in a most maudlin tone.
“I’m called Grimmypop. It was my mother’s name and her mother’s before. It is a beautiful name you see, and I wanted very much to share it with my hatchlings, but that can’t happen now, for they would only end up a laughing stock like me. I will never give my name again. There will be no more Grimmypops.”
“Why do they use your name this way?” asked Quip.
“I do not know,” the sparrow lamented. “One of them decided that a ‘grimmypop’ is any creature who askes for correction or makes complaint, and the rest of them normalized it with their mimicry. One can scarcely refuse to use it these days, nor can anyone stand against it. I am ashamed just to be me. How can I ever fly high again, with my name to weigh me down?”
Rulatani was sore ashamed. He bade the little sparrow ride on his girthy shoulder, and hopped with her back to the Blue Cockatoo with haste. When the rum was again served cold, he made a point of it.
“Grimmypop!” said the birds. “Grimmypop-pop-pop!”
“You want so badly to belong that you make it so others cannot,” Rulatani declared. “I have done the same. Because of my words, this sparrow cannot love herself anymore.”
“It is only a joke,” said the Keeper. “You are too worked up over it.”
“A joke that brings harm is no joke at all,” quipped Quip. “What if we called all dirty and disorderly establishments ‘blue cockatoos’?”
The birds began to repeat that phrase, but the keeper cried: “No fair, no fair! My place is not like that!”
“And neither is Grimmypop,” rumbled the Wildbun. His ire was focused on himself and so he raised no paw against them, but his countenance was imposing, and the parrots parted in his wake.
“It is better to find fellowship in kindness,” said Quip, recalling a lesson given by her absent prince. “If you use a word often, make it always a good one, and never take them from where they are needed.”
The confused parrots continued to pop for some time thereafter, and so Quip, who was well-read and knew many good words, went among them and gave out better ones to use (none of which were other creatures’ names). The keeper staked his reputation on warm acorn rum, and Grimmypop gave her firstborn hatching a wondrous gift that may very well have outlived the Two Friends themselves.
As for Quip and Rulatani (who apologized and was forgiven), their plumage fell out, and they went on their way.
© 2026 Scott McCloskey ("Bunzoi", "Bunzoi.com").
Image created with GIMP/CSP support; Character designs by Jessie Greenhalgh. Bunzoi is committed to the avoidance of generated text and/or images.
(Click above to find this story on Facebook, or listen to the audio adaptation on YouTube.)
All I Have to Give
-Vendru 12, New Calendar-
For uncounted centuries, the known world slept.
The horned beast of the north was a fatted boar of ice, gorging itself upon the land until there was nothing left but raging blizzards and a wasteland of white. It devoured Barzan, toppling her spires and sending her survivors scattering in all directions. When it had made the already inhospitable northlands into a brutish pall it turned its attention south, and the Great Wood was no match. Soon the downs became too as white, and the emerald straits became a landbridge between them. Entire species fled across solid oceans to far off places in the west and east, never to be heard from again. The hardiest of prey buried themselves in deep burrows to dream of better times, while starving predators turned upon their own for every scrap of bloodied flesh.
So came upon the land this age of ice, which gave no quarter until the sun broke through fifteen hundred years later. For four decades thereafter life sought to reassert itself, and the seas churned anew.
When last we engaged with them, Rulatani the Wildbun and Barzan Quip had each met their doom in the service of something beyond themselves. If you think them gone from this world by the simple turn of millennia, remember the prayers offered to the darkened moon on their behalf:
“My light and my life for you, o darkened moon, if my own but shines for me.”
Those tender few who sought to love when no one else would paid an ultimate sacrifice, but blinded by affection, they could not know the pain their wishes would cause. There is a certain cycle of rebirth in which souls are renewed from one existence to the next; re-shelled in life to leave new marks upon the world. While life everlasting in the same form may sound like the most precious of gifts, it is in fact a most fetid stagnation. To linger too long is to watch everything around us become unrecognizable as we are thrust towards an existence in which we do not belong.
Such was the way for Rulatani and Quip.
On the first day of the first vendru of the new millennia, Rulatani the Wildbun, confused and disoriented, emerged from the deepest part of the Underwood where sane life no longer made its home. Creatures great and small were unrecognizable to him, as was he to them, for the elderbuns and their kits had fled to their destiny centuries ago. They spoke of his strange ears and powderpuff tail, inquiring of him what he was, but when he talked about the legendary beings called ‘rabbit’ they recoiled in fear. Surely nothing could actually be alive in the underwood, and anything that would lurch forth from it must therefore be an abomination of dark sorcery.
He wandered, lost and alone, for twelve more days, until chancing upon a group of shrews in panicked flight who spoke to him thus:
“There is fanged beast on the path ahead! Oh save us, save us! It gnashes its jaws and is hungrier than the dead season!”
Rulatani, whose gentle heart outstripped his oafish frame by many times, wanted only to be of use again, and was obliged to investigate. In a golden clearing, where the rays of a newborn sun peeled back the icy grip of a glacier one finger at a time by patient inches every year, he came upon an elegant creature with a long muzzle and windswept core, partially frozen in a block of solid ice. At first he saw her not, for stunned was he by the red mantle she wore.
“Mother…?” said he, his voice hoarse, for he had but scarcely made use of it these past thousand years.
The creature, whose coat was as red as her hood, tried in vain to bite ice from her toes. She perked her floppy ears at the strange utterance and paused to reply. “I am a canine. We come in b(i)tches and dogs, but invariably are referred to as the latter. What are you?”
“I am a bun—a hopper,” Rulatani replied. “We come in does and bucks, of which I am the latter. I stand for my people.”
Barzan Quip offered her name, as was polite to, then looked all around. “Where are your people now?”
Rulatani offered his name in return, then hung his head low. “I don’t know.”
“Then we are the same Hopper Rulatani, for neither do I know where my people have gone, and when last I saw them they were in suffering. I am no less lonesome for it.”
With the one unable to go and the other nowhere to be, the pair found themselves in conversation. True to her name Quip spoke on and on, telling him of the goblinfolk, her bearded prince, and the icy tomb which bore her at merciful rest through the whole age of ice. Rulatani, who was a taciturn sort, said less, for mysteriously he could remember little of his wanderings beyond the time he fell in battle so many generations ago. At length Quip’s stomach growled, and she let out a whine of distress.
“I have not eaten in so many years,” she lamented. “I fear I will starve before this ice lets me go.”
Rulatani brought her fresh forage and berries, but as a carnivore these could not sate her. She grew emaciated, her features sunken, and feared perhaps she would finally meet her end.
“I would have fallen gratefully at the feet of my master, but he chased me out, and now I will never know why.” She reached out weakly to Rulatani, who stepped closer to allow their cheeks to touch. “I thank you, my friend, for trying, but it is my time. If there is another life for me across the bridge of rainbows, I hope only to find him there waiting.”
But Rulatani the Wildbun, who had saved his people from the raging stoats, was a stubborn sort when it came to those few he could call friends. He fell then and there at her feet, and had this to say:
“This house is not my home anymore and I have wandered it too long. The land is strange and I am every day afraid to be here. Take my strength for your own, dear friend, as it is all I have to give.”
Quip, touched beyond words, wept. When she could cry no more she said unto him: “You can pledge to me your life, Hopper Rulatani, but it means very little should you lose it in the process. Life can be sometimes frightening, but it is worth every moment. Do not die for me. Instead I ask you to live.”
They pledged their final moments together to each other, and huddled for warmth that night until sleep took them. The creatures of the Great Wood gathered round, amazed by the spectacle of predator and prey. Moved by an affection that transcended the natural order, creatures great and small worked through the night. In the morning they were gone, and Barzan Quip was free.
Rulatani the Wildbun and Barzan Quip left that place together to wander the wilds, never checking to see if their hearts still beat. The forage they ate and the tracks they left stood to say they were there, but what truly defined them was their friendship.
For uncounted centuries, the known world slept.
The horned beast of the north was a fatted boar of ice, gorging itself upon the land until there was nothing left but raging blizzards and a wasteland of white. It devoured Barzan, toppling her spires and sending her survivors scattering in all directions. When it had made the already inhospitable northlands into a brutish pall it turned its attention south, and the Great Wood was no match. Soon the downs became too as white, and the emerald straits became a landbridge between them. Entire species fled across solid oceans to far off places in the west and east, never to be heard from again. The hardiest of prey buried themselves in deep burrows to dream of better times, while starving predators turned upon their own for every scrap of bloodied flesh.
So came upon the land this age of ice, which gave no quarter until the sun broke through fifteen hundred years later. For four decades thereafter life sought to reassert itself, and the seas churned anew.
When last we engaged with them, Rulatani the Wildbun and Barzan Quip had each met their doom in the service of something beyond themselves. If you think them gone from this world by the simple turn of millennia, remember the prayers offered to the darkened moon on their behalf:
“My light and my life for you, o darkened moon, if my own but shines for me.”
Those tender few who sought to love when no one else would paid an ultimate sacrifice, but blinded by affection, they could not know the pain their wishes would cause. There is a certain cycle of rebirth in which souls are renewed from one existence to the next; re-shelled in life to leave new marks upon the world. While life everlasting in the same form may sound like the most precious of gifts, it is in fact a most fetid stagnation. To linger too long is to watch everything around us become unrecognizable as we are thrust towards an existence in which we do not belong.
Such was the way for Rulatani and Quip.
On the first day of the first vendru of the new millennia, Rulatani the Wildbun, confused and disoriented, emerged from the deepest part of the Underwood where sane life no longer made its home. Creatures great and small were unrecognizable to him, as was he to them, for the elderbuns and their kits had fled to their destiny centuries ago. They spoke of his strange ears and powderpuff tail, inquiring of him what he was, but when he talked about the legendary beings called ‘rabbit’ they recoiled in fear. Surely nothing could actually be alive in the underwood, and anything that would lurch forth from it must therefore be an abomination of dark sorcery.
He wandered, lost and alone, for twelve more days, until chancing upon a group of shrews in panicked flight who spoke to him thus:
“There is fanged beast on the path ahead! Oh save us, save us! It gnashes its jaws and is hungrier than the dead season!”
Rulatani, whose gentle heart outstripped his oafish frame by many times, wanted only to be of use again, and was obliged to investigate. In a golden clearing, where the rays of a newborn sun peeled back the icy grip of a glacier one finger at a time by patient inches every year, he came upon an elegant creature with a long muzzle and windswept core, partially frozen in a block of solid ice. At first he saw her not, for stunned was he by the red mantle she wore.
“Mother…?” said he, his voice hoarse, for he had but scarcely made use of it these past thousand years.
The creature, whose coat was as red as her hood, tried in vain to bite ice from her toes. She perked her floppy ears at the strange utterance and paused to reply. “I am a canine. We come in b(i)tches and dogs, but invariably are referred to as the latter. What are you?”
“I am a bun—a hopper,” Rulatani replied. “We come in does and bucks, of which I am the latter. I stand for my people.”
Barzan Quip offered her name, as was polite to, then looked all around. “Where are your people now?”
Rulatani offered his name in return, then hung his head low. “I don’t know.”
“Then we are the same Hopper Rulatani, for neither do I know where my people have gone, and when last I saw them they were in suffering. I am no less lonesome for it.”
With the one unable to go and the other nowhere to be, the pair found themselves in conversation. True to her name Quip spoke on and on, telling him of the goblinfolk, her bearded prince, and the icy tomb which bore her at merciful rest through the whole age of ice. Rulatani, who was a taciturn sort, said less, for mysteriously he could remember little of his wanderings beyond the time he fell in battle so many generations ago. At length Quip’s stomach growled, and she let out a whine of distress.
“I have not eaten in so many years,” she lamented. “I fear I will starve before this ice lets me go.”
Rulatani brought her fresh forage and berries, but as a carnivore these could not sate her. She grew emaciated, her features sunken, and feared perhaps she would finally meet her end.
“I would have fallen gratefully at the feet of my master, but he chased me out, and now I will never know why.” She reached out weakly to Rulatani, who stepped closer to allow their cheeks to touch. “I thank you, my friend, for trying, but it is my time. If there is another life for me across the bridge of rainbows, I hope only to find him there waiting.”
But Rulatani the Wildbun, who had saved his people from the raging stoats, was a stubborn sort when it came to those few he could call friends. He fell then and there at her feet, and had this to say:
“This house is not my home anymore and I have wandered it too long. The land is strange and I am every day afraid to be here. Take my strength for your own, dear friend, as it is all I have to give.”
Quip, touched beyond words, wept. When she could cry no more she said unto him: “You can pledge to me your life, Hopper Rulatani, but it means very little should you lose it in the process. Life can be sometimes frightening, but it is worth every moment. Do not die for me. Instead I ask you to live.”
They pledged their final moments together to each other, and huddled for warmth that night until sleep took them. The creatures of the Great Wood gathered round, amazed by the spectacle of predator and prey. Moved by an affection that transcended the natural order, creatures great and small worked through the night. In the morning they were gone, and Barzan Quip was free.
Rulatani the Wildbun and Barzan Quip left that place together to wander the wilds, never checking to see if their hearts still beat. The forage they ate and the tracks they left stood to say they were there, but what truly defined them was their friendship.
© 2026 Scott McCloskey ("Bunzoi", "Bunzoi.com").
Image created with GIMP/CSP support; Character designs by Jessie Greenhalgh. Bunzoi is committed to the avoidance of generated text and/or images.
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