So I’ve been trying to tackle how to start the series, for years really. Though I originally liked the first beginning—with a boy just meeting a magical fox in the forest—I feel we need some more. There is a deeper lore here. Rick doesn’t meet Mistel for the first time, but because he keeps forgetting, he and we the readers think it’s the first time. There should be hints that they’ve met before, and for those who are following me, they met as kids and had a lot of adventures together. But all of that just stopped overnight, and the dark page you can see hints of what happened.
So I’ve shuffled around some of the dream sequences and put in a beginning with Rick’s mother telling an old fairy tale, then Rick falling asleep, having a nightmare, and now we’re in modern times. I’ve added more struggle as Rick sees Mistel and tries to get away—and as you can see, he forgets what he’s running away from right away. This part is actually based on a real-life event that kinda inspired Vettirfolk. I was walking in the forest and when I came home I suddenly had two deep claw marks. They seemed fresh, they didn’t hurt (but they should have), and I had no clue where I’d gotten them from.