“Pretty sure, yeah. It’s been happening for a few years now. First the catfish, then the myconids, the snakes and then the rats, which means it wasn’t coming from lower on the food chain. And it wasn’t the Hags — my mom went to meet with The Swamp Matron to apologize for whatever we’d done, and poor Grisla was down to about the same size I am now.” He shifts his feet uncomfortably.

“That’s a big part of why Wastri secured an ambassadorship here for my mom — we were h̶o̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶ hoping that we’d be safe here, while they tried to figure it out. But I’m still shrinking. I’ve been blaming the bullywugs of course, but I’ve just been following Wastri’s guidance and lying to myself. It couldn’t really be the bullywugs. They’re much too dumb to pull it off, and simultaneously not dumb enough to offend Wastri like this.”

“I don’t want to be food-sized!” He pouts.

“Oh, I’m also poisonous. And I...” he eyes his gorgeous friend carefully, “I like other frogs.”

t’Nee wipes his eyes and thinks for a moment before responding.

“Well, the mountains haven’t shrunk, nor the swamp itself, nor the bullywugs, though we mostly keep them out of our swamp anyway. Some birds did, others didn’t, fish and crabs and turtles did, but worms and mosquitoes stayed the same. Spiders it’s hard to say, since they already run the range from minuscule to giant drow scary things, but we’ve seen fewer larger than dogs in recent years. And our dogs have shrunk too, but less than I have. I started out almost four feet tall!”

He turns to look up at Leo as they walk towards green campus.

”Thanks for listening to me on all this. You’re pretty p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ okay, for a non-amphibian.”

"That'd be me. Howdy miss," Leo waved politely, "Leo Delgado. And this here's t'Nee. He was lookin' ta experience some natural beauty, and I think we got plenty of it right here."

"Oh," Leo chuckled, a bit embarassed, "I meant the grove! The trees, the lake, all that natural splendor. Though Dessan is a pretty boy, aren't you Dessan?" He gingerly held out his hand to the wolf, and if he approved, scritched him behind the ears.

Leo squints up at the tree, not entirely able to make out the girl in the foliage.

"Howdy uh, miss.  What'cha doin' up there?"