✨ The Nut Chronicles Part 3 ✨

The Nut Chronicles, Part III: Quendalith the Inconvenient

 

By week two, the squirrels were fraying at the whiskers.

Quendalith — ancient spirit of the grove, temporary resident of a nut casing, and self-declared ambassador of All Things Rooted — had become a handful. Or more accurately, a nutful.

It wasn’t that they minded guests. Pibbinook had once hosted an owl chick for a week after it fell out of its tree (Thimblegruff still had the talon scars). But Quendalith? He rearranged the hoard constantly.

“Your stacking lacks symmetry,” he tutted, floating from pile to pile with a radiant hum. “These beech nuts long to face south. And honestly, this chestnut would prefer a corner with more introspective energy.”

The squirrels watched in horrified silence as a decade’s worth of methodical, borderline obsessive hoarding was undone by a glowing nut with opinions.

“Maybe he’ll leave if we ignore him,” muttered Thimblegruff, gnawing a corner of moss in defeat.

“He’s an omnipotent nut,” said Pibbinook. “They never leave when ignored.”

And so they tried to live with him. Which is how they found themselves forced into morning affirmations (“I am more than my tail fluff”), mandatory pinecone meditations, and something Quendalith called ‘nut yoga’, which mostly involved rolling downhill slowly while chanting vowel sounds.

The tipping point came when Quendalith invited guests.

Not forest creatures, mind — other talking nuts.

There was Marnibell, the Spicy Chestnut of Clarity. Glimp, a half-rotten walnut who barked like a goose. And the eerily silent pair of twin almonds who communicated only in synchronized winks. They all hovered in and took up residence like it was some kind of sacred druidic co-op.

“That’s it,” snapped Thimblegruff one evening, pacing. “We’re reclaiming our hoard.”

“I already moved half of it to the emergency stash,” whispered Pibbinook, nodding toward a suspiciously overstuffed hollow log.

Armed with determination, a broom, and several sturdy acorn helmets, the squirrels staged an eviction. But Quendalith, for all his chaos, turned out to be surprisingly reasonable.

“I didn’t mean to disrupt,” he said gently, blinking his glowing nut-body. “I just... haven’t had a home in centuries.”

The squirrels looked at each other. Pibbinook sighed. Thimblegruff looked like he’d swallowed a pinecone.

“You can stay,” said Pibbinook, “if you stop giving the almonds sage advice at 3am.”

“And no more reorganizing the hoard,” Thimblegruff added firmly.

Quendalith beamed. “Deal.”

And so, peace — tentative and nut-scented — returned to the burrow. The almonds left for a mountain retreat. Marnibell took up professional mentoring. Glimp simply rolled away one day and never returned.

As for Quendalith?

He stayed.

Mostly in his corner, occasionally muttering tree poetry, and now and then humming with faint cosmic resonance.

Which was fine.

Until the map appeared.

But that, dear reader, is a tale for next time… in Part 4: “The Burrow Beyond the Bark.”

 

✨ Inspired by the tale? You can wear a bit of nutty magic yourself with The Nut Chronicles earrings—a tiny tribute to tree spirits, squirrel drama, and sacred druidic co-ops.

Want to know what’s lurking in The Burrow Beyond the Bark? 🐿️🌿
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