Where the lush southern jungles meet the mountains, there exists a region of particular and unique terrain where life seems to have taken a rare and unusual path.

The Greenmaw Gorges, as a location, are defined primarily by one word above all: verticality. Immense natural stone pillars encircle long yet narrow valleys in which dizzyingly tall, thin trees fill every available space with branches and leaves. The lowest layers are treacherous pitfalls of narrow passages and holes, almost entirely obstructed by thick brambles and roots. It is no exaggeration to suggest that in this region in particular, it is easier to travel up and down than horizontally.

It is, it seems, for this reason that the local yinglet population has adapted to a much more acrobatic means of daily locomotion. Visiting the area, one can catch glimpses of them; furtive shadows clambering up the trunks, quick flashes of movement in the upper branches.

It only took me a few days to make contact; a small hunting party who had just come up from a raid on the local abundance of leeches and slugs all-too-commonly found in the deepest crevices of the valley, saw me and my expedition struggling to traverse a particularly obnoxious knot of brambles and decided to laugh at our difficulties. I initiated dialogue and managed to convince them to guide us towards their enclave.

Their enclave, it turns out, was built on the very top of an isolated pillar not too far. “Not too far” for them, however, ended up representing several hours of difficult trek through the maze of roots and canyons. I could tell the yinglets guiding us were growing restless due to the difference between our modes of locomotion. The long trip we took on foot would surely have taken them no more than a handful of minutes thanks to their incredible method of travel; Aerial gliding.

These yinglets would climb the trunks of the local trees and jump from one to the next, effortlessly hopping over even the trickiest obstacles in a matter of seconds. Whenever a gap would be too great to simply jump, they would make use of the strange “clothing” they wore, slipping their lower limbs’ thumbs into wooden rings tied to the bottoms of the large flowing drapes attached to their forelegs, and near-instantly becoming akin to living kites. The light yet durable woven plant fibers of their clothes allowing them to glide impressive distances, their flight guided by simple movements of their tails (finned by long, stiff hairs) giving them incredible amounts of maneuverability.

When we reached the foot of the pillar on which their enclave was set, our guides quickly scrambled up the sheer rock to go speak to their leaders on our behalf, and ask permission to meet with them.

Permission was thankfully granted, but the problem of reaching them was not so easy to overcome; no stairs or ladders were available to use, as the yinglets had no need of such and any they might have had would have been of no use to us.

I elected to go by myself, along with any volunteers who might want to make the climb. Only one decided to come forward, a jolly fellow named Callum. The rest of our group cleared some space and began making a camp on the driest bit of land they could find while myself and Callum prepared for the arduous climb ahead of us.

I cannot say the ascent was easy, and certainly not amusing was it either; not only was the stone difficult to find purchase upon, it was also often covered in treacherously loose vines or slippery moss. It definitely did not help that many of the yinglets failed to resist the temptation to witness the oddity of our presence, so we were constantly surrounded by a small crowd of entirely unhelpful little critters. The younger ones and the most impolite adults wittingly mocked us for our climbing abilities, while the rest simply mocked us accidentally by the ease with which they clambered around us in their efforts to continue watching the spectacle we offered.

Finally we crested the summit, and found ourselves on a surprisingly pleasant plateau; cooler winds greeted us for the first time in weeks, freed from the cover of treetops. The breeze flowed freely between the small yinglet-made huts of woven branches, each one looking like an oversized and overturned bird nest. The view over the valley was breathtaking, with a sea of green foliage broken only by small islands of stone pillars like the one we were standing upon, stretching as far as the eye could see.

We met with the yinglets, their “matriarch” and a few “patriarchs”, and discussed at length of their daily lives. The matriarch (named Alkii) seemed both amused and surprised that any human would go so far and travel such long distances to simply meet with them. I suspect she was trying to discern some malicious hidden agenda on our part, but I assured her we meant no harm and were simply exploring the region in the name of adventure and scientific discovery, and were genuinely interested in learning of their ways.

We decided not to return to the lower camp just yet, and to spend at least another day up there even if just to postpone the dreaded descent back to the rest of our group. We arranged to have our expedition prepare small packages of supplies and have us lift them to the top with rope, using the yinglets as messengers and to carry the ropes. We then camped for the night, too exhausted by the previous day for the noisy inhabitants of the enclave to prevent our slumber.

Our decision to stay another day proved fortuitous, as it let us be witness to a momentous event. In our discussions the previous day, I had been informed that yinglet enclaves occasionally “trade” some of their rare and precious female members, to reduce the inbreeding problems inherent to their methods of reproduction and the particulars of their population. It was thus a great and welcome surprise to be there for the arrival of one such trade.

I doubt these trades are commonly received as this one was: this particular female seemed sickly and of rather poor value for the well-being of this enclave, and several of the locals seemed to share my evaluation. Despite this the entire enclave was buzzing in excitement over the new arrivals, mostly due to one member of the female’s escort.

His name was “Cheeb”, and even at a glance everyone present could tell he was of extreme value to the local populace thanks to his rather unique traits. His skin stretched unnaturally far from his sides, forming natural webbed sails between his knees and elbows and giving him the unique ability to glide like his brethren, but without any form of hand-crafted assistance. His gliding ability was ironically much poorer than his artificially-enhanced fellows, but the obvious possibility of sharing and nurturing this trait for future generations was of indubitable value. It is almost certain that his enclave included him in this expedition to soften the blow of delivering such a sub-par female.

We made our descent in the early afternoon after parting amicably with the yinglet enclave, and camped with the rest of our expedition for the night, before setting out again in the morning.

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Yinglets are the invention of Valsalia, I merely came up with some weird new subspecies for the funs. And then I threw in some quick and rough creative writing because why not.