"Living in the Cheshire woods is pretty great.

I mean, not to, ya know, brag, or anything, but if I want to eat cake for breakfast at a diner, or wear a bathing suit in the middle of Winter, or hunt for giant, glowing bugs with a sling, I can do those things pretty much whenever I want. And everyone is cool with it.

A lot of Nodd has a kinda live and let live unspoken motto, but in the Cheshire woods it's not just 'do what you want', it's 'lets work together to make your idea a fantastic reality'. Everyone is so supportive.

When I wanted to know if I could make bug hunting, rendering, and mounting a living, no one had ever tried it, but everyone in Heretofore, the town I live in, did what they could to lend a hand. Soon I had hand drawn maps of bug gathering places, suggestions for bait, bug predators to look out for, offers from local artists to visit their studios and workshops to see how they rendered their pant, requests from shop fronts to display my mounts, once they were made. No one knew if it was gonna work, but if it was possible everyone wanted to do what they could to help me make it work.

And not even to brag about helping! Helping because the help gave them joy, and because I would pass the help along.

And I have. Bug hunting has been super successful. I make my own hours depending on what I feel like hunting, eat a meal in Heretofore, then head down toward the Whereby River and then make my way out from there. When I feel like it's time to go home I bag my catches, and depending on what I got, I head to a studio, or to my workshop. If the hunting that day wasn't good I check on the shops selling my wares and collect my portion of sales, and once a week I offer classes to teach other people bug hunting. The classes are super popular with kids my age, which is nice. Leaving schooling behind to do this instead got kinda lonely at first, but the classes are helping me connect with people my age. Sometimes I even see Kiran. That's always the highlight of my week, no matter what bugs I managed to bag.

Recently I've been seeing Kiran walking through town with a dark furred Felis. I asked the cafe owner if she knew who he was, and she told me he was a member of the Cheshire family, that Storm had taken on a protege. And boy was that a relief, 'cause I intend on asking Kiran out. Sometime. Sometime soon.

Hopefully the next time I see them alone."

World: Knights of Nodd.
Characters: Alice.
Media: Easy Paint Tool SAI and Microsoft Paint.
Art, ideas, partial design, and character © me.

-Topknot