Mustn't Panic

20250422

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

It was starting again. That Conversation. Ailbhe ["AELVah"] shuddered, their twig-like fingers unable to block their long ears. The brownie was forced to wrap their arms around their head instead. It wasn’t enough.
“…better for the children.”
Better? How could it be better, being trapped in a maze of iron and concrete? Who would choose air choked with smog and dust? Imagine living where the rain wasn’t safe to drink.
Laoise was silent. Her gaze fixed on the baby she was rocking.
“And with what they’re offering for the place-”
Money, money, money! Ailbhe wanted to scream. You can’t eat gold, or silver, or paper, or whatever those festering notes were made of these days! There was food aplenty wherever you looked but humans fenced it off and boxed it and demanded that money be used to access it.
And those graspers, those walking gullets who skulked and appraised and licked their lips, they only wanted the land. Not the life in and on and under the land, not the cosy house which Ailbhe had watched over for six human generations, not even the soil. Only what they could fit in their bank accounts and scoreboards.
Ailbhe gave up trying to block out the horrible words and instead wrapped their hands over their mouth to hold in gasping sobs.
“I know you’re attached to the place-”
He spoke as if that attachment was a fleeting fancy. As if she hadn’t been born here, like her mother and grandfather and-
“-but this village is good as dead.”
It wasn’t dead! It was cornered and surrounded by hunters! Could he really not see? Not grasp whose fingers he was making himself into?
“Everyone else is selling up. Do you really want to live in a golf resort?”
Golf? Ailbhe couldn’t keep in a groan. That meant flowers and brush torn up for an unwelcoming carpet of barren grass. Ponds sucked dry and air filled with poison to keep the false fields green.
Baby Liam stirred. The only human who could hear the brownie quaking under the thatch. His face screwed up and a gurgle grew into a sympathetic wail.
Laoise bent over him, as if she could shield him from this fate. Humming a soothing song the walls had heard a million times.
The tune and familiarity comforted Ailbhe as well as the baby, and the brownie managed a slow, shaky breath.
They mustn’t panic. Mustn’t panic.
Once you went Boggort there was no coming back.
If the fear turned the rage, and the rage took root…
Mustn’t panic.
“See? This place isn’t good for him.”
Laoise’s voice was soft-wrapped ice. “He only cries like this when you talk about making us leave.”
“I’m not making you do anything, woman! Christ!”
Ailbhe shuddered and screwed their eyes shut. Trying to hold onto that soothing tune. To the echoes of all the lives they’d watched over.
Trying to hold down the tight rumbling in their chest which made their fur sizzle.
Mustn’t panic.

Prompt was “Your character overhears a conversation which throws them into a panic”.