It was a night wrapped in myth and memory, where the air shimmered with an electric haze. The moon hung fat and ancient above the peak of Standish Volcano, casting a pale, trembling light over Chateaugay Lake. Beneath that silver sky, the Trickster had come to play.
He appeared at the heart of the wilderness like a dream slipping through the cracks of the world. The Trickster, known as Johqu among the First People, was a being older than time—a spirit of mischief, transformation, and untold stories. His body, an amalgamation of fox and hare, shifted under the flickering glow of an impossible fire—a fire that burned not from wood, but from the earth itself, the volcano breathing beneath him.
The volcano, Standish, had slept for centuries. But tonight, it murmured as though stirred by the presence of Johqu. The fire pit before him, carved by an invisible hand, spewed forth its own tale, a dance of molten whispers curling into the night.
Johqu padded slowly around the glowing fissure, his fur radiating a dark, almost unreal red-orange hue, tinged with the light of flames that defied the laws of both heat and time. His eyes gleamed—golden, cunning—and they reflected not the moon or the fire, but the otherworldly visions beyond this dimension.
He wasn’t here to destroy. Not yet. This was a performance. And like any good story, the Trickster needed an audience.
He turned his gaze to the distant lake, to the shadowed hills where long-forgotten eyes once watched these sacred lands. He could still feel the pulse of those old stories, the ones that predated the settlers, the tourists, the miners. It was the same rhythm that kept the Standish Volcano’s heart alive, kept it simmering beneath the surface.
The Shatagee Woods had once belonged to the people who knew him. They told tales of Johqu as both creator and destroyer, weaving him into the very fabric of their songs, their rituals. They remembered how he could twist the earth, how the boundaries between reality and the spirit world bent around him.
But now, that memory was fading. The human mind was turning to steel and roads, to maps that measured the land without understanding it. They had forgotten the magic, forgotten the trick.
But the earth hadn’t.
As Johqu circled the fire, a new presence joined him. The air grew thick with the scent of pine, moss, and something far older—something prehistoric, lurking in the volcanic rock. The very ground shifted beneath his feet, groaning as if awakening to the spirit’s call. From the distant woods, the creatures of legend stirred. Their forms, half-seen through the mist, became shadows that stretched and danced around the flickering flames.
Johqu grinned, revealing sharp, fox-like teeth. The spirits of the woods were still listening. He whispered something—something ancient, an incantation that slipped through the trees like a breeze that hadn’t been felt in a millennium.
The fire roared, and from the heart of the flames emerged something new—a portal, a tear in the very fabric of the world. It swirled, glowing with the bright magma-red of the volcano’s veins, opening into another dimension, a place where stories were still alive and the air thrummed with ancient energies.
For Johqu, this was the trick of all tricks. A manifestation of his power, his ability to bend the world at its seams and create something entirely different. He could already sense the ripple in time, the subtle shift in the multiverse as this moment wrote itself into existence.
The portal hummed, alive and waiting. But it wasn’t for Johqu to pass through. No, the Trickster was inviting something—or someone—else. A traveler, lost between the worlds. The kind of human who hadn’t yet forgotten how to listen to the old stories.
And, as if answering his call, a figure began to materialize on the other side of the portal.
Johqu’s eyes glinted with anticipation, his grin widening. This was where the real story began—where the trick would unfold, and the world would be left forever changed.
But what of the human stepping through the portal?
Would they see the truth behind the Trickster’s dance? Would they recognize that the fire, the volcano, the very land itself, was alive—alive with spirits and stories, with the souls of forgotten ancestors and the wisdom of the earth?
Or would they fall into the trap? The one Johqu had set since the beginning of time, a trap woven into the very nature of existence itself. For the Trickster did not simply deceive for sport. He deceived to teach.
And the lesson was always the same: Everything is illusion.
As the figure stepped into this reality, Johqu sat back on his haunches, his eyes gleaming with the knowledge of a thousand untold tales. He watched with amusement, waiting to see how this one would play out.
But one thing was certain: the land beneath the Standish Volcano was now awake. And nothing would ever be the same again.
In the distance, Chateaugay Lake shimmered under the moonlight, unaware of the storm of stories brewing in its depths.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?