"Leave It At That"

 

           Yeah, love is in the very air of the Mt. B.S.N.F.  The atmosphere just glows with it.
            We know that our friend Ralph operates as a kind of roaming wedding chapel it seems. Nobody knows how many couples he has joined. There was at least one human set! Remarkable!

             If a person were to be so inclined, they might very well bet that Benny and Lily would be next. But we probably shouldn’t get ahead of the story that way.
            On the other hand, love isn't all that’s in the air. Let me explain.
            It has to do with a skill called “Leave It At That.” I’m afraid that’s a sort of backhanded Squatch pun. I must add that once they started using human languages at least part of the time, well the puns and jokes just poured out. Maybe it has something to do with the magical essence of the wild and complicated English tongue? I believe that Saslingua is too earnest and direct for all of that foofaraw.
            Now, like the dedicated father that he is, Ralph had been teaching important skills to Twigg. Soon he would need to start with Cherry also. He had made sure the boy knew how to vanish and reappear. They worked on that special gliding Sasquatch lope that looks like a kind of moving emanation.
            He had been discussing leadership with the boy, in the guise of how to keep peace in the Great Forest among all the various sentient creatures.
            When Ramona and Thaga and Ralph himself had worked together to heal Maeve of her broken wing and foot, he made sure that Twigg and Cherry witnessed how it was done, even down to the song that put her in the air again.
            Obviously, he taught Twigg about hunting and fishing, even if Twigg wasn’t very good at it yet. He knew the maneuvers, he just needed practice
            Now we get down to the nub of today’s matter. Ralph, and in fact most Forest People, have some skills which seem to be only legends. Or lies. This isn’t about portals. Everyone has heard of portals, even if they’ve never seen one. In a way it’s much stranger.
            When it’s all Just Too Much, Ralph has a self-healing exercise that he does. It makes a clean break and gives him a chance to think in an even more disconnected way than that lying on his log Zen thing.
            It goes like this. Finding a nice quiet spot in the forest, maybe on very level ground, he picks up one of his feet and tucks it behind the opposite thigh.
            Then he says, “Leave it at that!” and picks up the other foot, tucking it up under the first thigh. I think that’s how the legs go. But the important thing is that for a little bit he is disconnected. He is peacefully “leaving it at that.” It breaks spells caused by things getting too doggone real.
            Imagine what a grand sight he must make suspended there in the forest air! You can see why nobody believes this story, I mean in addition to the whole question of whether Ralph himself exists in or out of time, or familiar space.
            This skill is also useful during times of bad earthquakes! That could be why it was developed. The ground could be shaking, rocks falling, rivers going wrong directions, all sorts of mayhem, and the Forest People would be serenely waiting it out in the air!
            This spinner of yarns thinks that is a lovely image!