The Hunter and the Forest of Sorrow

One plutonian evening, a hunter of fickle means entered the Sorrow Forests which lie beyond the northern territories of the wild women. He searching the barren winterlands for rations with which to feed his many starving illegitimate children. The approaching winter whispered at his neck like the fickle breath of Hades and the crows upon his windowsills gurgled contentedly at the sight of his empty cupboards. In the obsidian blackness of the forest, the hunter’s moccasins crushed through the snow and fallen limbs of trees to a small rodent enclave.
“Stop, yon cursed hu-man!” The oldest and most wise rodent leader protested, “What ungainly businesses hath ye for mine kin?!”
“I search for sustenance with which to feed the illegitimate children of faithless wandering. It hath been an eon since mine homely mistress’ teat hath run dry.” The hunter announced, his hunter’s bludgeon hanging pendulously from his hip. “Return to your mewling, fickle fay mouse. Seven years hunger shall not be sated with the ungainly taste of mousen flesh.”
The hunter began to move on, deeper into the barren forest but the mouse followed him, fuming, “Ye were a foolish hu-man to come to Sorrow Forest in famine. Ye shall find no beasts more comely than mine kin in her obsidian blackness.” Feeling the brewings of treachery at his back, the hunter turned upon the mouse and drove his hunter’s bludgeon through his fool’s skull, causing it’s spirits to abandon the body and rise into the miserly air. With a fickle chuckle the hunter sloughed the gore from his bludgeon and continued deeper into the forest where no beast uncomely or otherwise was to be found.
With the passing of time, the hunter found the rodent’s sage words to be truth. The stench of winter death hung in the trees. Clutching his fool’s gut, the hunter collapsed upon the winter wastes, certain the children at home had already fallen into the fevered madness of cannibalism. Before him appeared an apparition, the slain elder mouse of the rodent’s enclave. “Foolish hu-man. Can you not see now that though you would surely starve upon only the flesh of one of my brethren, with the scraps of many you could have fed yourself and your fickle bride’s brood.”
“Inhumane gods,” cried the hunter, clawing his innards, “had I merely taken the offer of many small, hideous beasts I could have had the sustenance provided by only the most rotund and vaunted of bears! If it were not for my fool’s eyes, me and mine illegitimate children would now be curled round the fire rather than enclosed in the fickle grasp of Hades!” And with this, he expired and the forest devils claimed him as their own.