Mobkin woke up one spring morning feeling refreshed enough to get out of bed without yawning. He ate his usual hearty breakfast in his small but finely built house, changed into his usual work clothes, and brushed his teeth with his usual toothpaste. It was time to plant beetroot seeds in his field. His plan was to work through the heat of the day and have lunch in the late afternoon. As a grelling, his green skin wouldn’t burn in the sun but rather supply him with enough energy to delay the onset of hunger for a while.
After planting three rows of seeds he made his way to the pond by his field to fill his brass canteen. This was when things started getting strange.
Although the breeze hadn’t subsided there wasn’t so much as a ripple on the water’s surface. Usually Mobkin would have had no trouble seeing the bottom of the pond, but as well as becoming suspiciously flat the water’s surface had become as reflective as polished silver.
“It’s like the story of Gavin the human.” Mobkin thought to himself. “I don’t know whether this would take me to Porirua, the place Gavin claimed to have come from; or Ragusan, the place where he appeared. I’d better not fall in.”
Mobkin was starting to feel rather thirsty so despite his doubts he carefully reached down to get some water.
Before his canteen reached the water’s surface the stick Mobkin was unwittingly standing on broke and he tumbled in headfirst.
To his surprise, Mobkin didn’t feel like he’d landed in water. He wondered why he felt no wind against his face as countless little lights flew by in incomprehensible directions. It seemed at once that an eternity passed and that no time passed at all.
When it ended he found himself sitting in a copper tub of tepid water. To his right he heard a scream and when he looked in that direction he saw what he was fairly certain was a startled person. From her slightly tanned skin he seemed very similar to descriptions he’d heard and read of Gavin the human but her slightly floppy pointed ears were more like Mobkin’s own and by Mobkin’s reckoning she was closer to four paces tall than three. She grabbed the cloak she seemed to have been putting on a wooden rack and ran out of the room.