The Wyldgarden

Okay then! Down the side trail some more. The trail becomes narrower and narrower, in places barely the width of your foot, though the brush gets less prickly. After a time, the trail ends in a roughly circular clearing. What's odd about this clearing, though, is that it's filled with scaled-down plants!! It's a garden, if a slightly unkempt-looking one, with flowers two or three inches across.

You kneel carefully to get a better look. Directly in front of you is a 1'X1' garden-within-a-garden, filled with small vegetables. A head of lettuce is maybe five inches across, and a string of peppers growing on a tiny metal trellis along the back of the mini-garden is about the length of your forearm. Everything around here, in fact, is sized as if for a child. Your eyes rove over the area some more, not daring to set foot in it lest you squish something.

There are more mini-gardens scattered around the area, some vegetables, others flowers. The largest of these flower gardens has bloodred roses and is circular in shape, around a miniature maple roughly your height that is planted in the very center of the clearing. At the base of this tree is another roughly circular area, trodden flat with a firepit in the middle.

"Aww, look at what you've done!" says a quiet male voice. "You've got your knee in my Midrose patch!!"

You blink and look to your right to see a green centaurish creature, about a foot tall, with long red hair and a miniature rose clutched in one hand. He flicks one green ear, barely visible over his red mane, and sighs.
"Lean back very, very slowly, and sit down," he instructs you. You do so, and then pull your knees in to your chest.
"Clumsy travelers," sighs the centaurish creature, cantering over to the Midrose patch to see what damage you've done. His equine hindlegs tap the ground slowly as he surveys the flowers with critical ruby eyes. His voice, although he is small, is rather like that of a grown man, not at all high-pitched or squeaky like you would expect. "Always blundering through the Wyldgarden without a care as to watch your step... I really should post Don't Step On The Flowers signs."
Fortunately, it seems that the patch of roses seems to have survived, only a little squished. The creature fusses over the rose blossoms, the largest of which is the size of his fist, before turning to you and cocking one eyebrow.
"Sorry," you say meekly. The stallion seems to accept this. He shrugs, then smiles.
"I'm Shuu. A mini-half. Nice to meet you."

He turns around and trots to the vegetable garden, eyes keenly observing the growth of each plant.
"What's a mini-half?" you ask him. Shuu continues about his rounds, moving as he speaks.
"Well, I suppose we're similar to what you call centaurs," says Shuu. "But with a few major differences. Size and coloring being the biggest one."
He smirks, still moving through the rows of plants.
"If there were at least two others of my kind here, it would be called a carebond. My role would be forager and gardener, specialty being roses."
He finishes with the vegetable patch and continues on to the circular hedgelike area about the tree, which is made up of teeny tiny little roses.
"Carebonds, by the way, are completely male. The females are sort of the lone wolves of our breed, keeping to themselves and living by themselves. That's why the veggies are on the outskirts of the Wyldgarden - in case any females wander by and don't want to get closer than they have to for food. Jess's idea."
He shrugs.

"The exit," says Shuu, gesturing, "is back the way you came. There's a turnoff, you must have missed it the first time you passed. You can find Luka along the way."

Luka again, eh? You thank the mini-half and turn back. You soon come to the turnoff, an opening in the trees half-hidden behind a break in the leaves. Do you follow the turnoff, or walk back towards the seraphil's glade?

Name	Shuu
Gender	Stallion
Parents	??? X ???
Role	Forager/gardener
Personality	Very sweet guy, but can get very protective of friends/foals.
Notes	Loves roses, both the normal and the miniature types. Has traded interesting hybrid seeds with Jaysen. ^.^
Type	Mini-half

Tárakyna (C) me, Jessica Dragontamer. Critters (C) their respective creators. Background courtesy of ABTA.