[Posted a picture and no text] -- Anon Guest
[AN: Nonny doesn't know that I don't use pictures submitted to me. Text only, dearies]
Do you know of the Nisse? They're what you might call House Spirits. Some know them as Borrowers. Some say they are House Trolls. Some call them names that are not polite. Sometimes, they are helpful. Sometimes, they are malevolent. Most of the time, they are mischievous.
They all have the same name, which is convenient for them. Not so convenient for others, but the Nisse don't truly seem to care. They are all named Tontu, and know who they're talking about when they use it.
This Tontu doesn't like their current homeowner. They've been trying to get them to move away. All the usual tricks, of course. Souring the milk, blunting the knives, misplacing precious things, and of course, letting in bugs. They have even, in desperation, relocated shoes at random. Nothing seems to have worked.
Lurking in one of the forgotten spaces, looking out at the human, Tontu tries to figure out why it's all gone wrong.
Tontu would have taken the laptop, but the human was a little more glued to it than any other thing. There were rules, after all. The first rule of the Nisse was, Never be obvious.
"Must'a put my phone somewhere silly again," the human muttered. They tapped some keys on the computer and the phone in Tontu's hand started beeping.
Tontu was forced to drop it behind the cupboard.
"Huh. How'd it get there?" They picked it up and silenced the alert. Then stuffed it in their pocket. "Forget my own head, next."
It had to be the devices. This human was messy, absent-minded, and seemed to gloss over every trick that Tontu pulled to get rid of them. Even unpleasant substances left in shoes were blamed on the cat.
The cat that was now staring at Tontu and growling.
Tontu picked a different vantage point, trying to work out what to do. Misplacing the wallets, misplacing the keys... they all had electrickery involved. Chargers. Plugs.
Mythological beings and electrickery didn't go well together. Tontu barely understood it as human magic, but they could work out one thing. They needed a plug in the wall to work.
Maybe... if the things were unplugged, and unplugged often, then the human might find somewhere else to exist. And go bother a different Tontu.
Their first effort caused a short that also hurt them. Tontu could barely crawl into the Betwixt to get away in time.
Paperclips. They weren't always good tools against human things.
The human, for the record, fixed the issue and reset one of their magic boxes.
Maybe Tontu could find a different home?
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / viledevil]
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