text: [Themes: love & dating, socially important, animal perspective, family friendly, romance]
  
  You find the dewberries without any trouble, right where they described. Indeed, the leafy mound of brambles spreads so far and grows so high it dwarfs the tallest shrubs surrounding it, and attracts birds and rodents of all kinds.
  
  Leaping from your tree down to a shrub, you work your way around the the mound. The ripe berries are mixed in among the red and green ones, but you find a few dewberries that are a shiny black and sweet enough here and there on the surface. There aren't too many that the birds have missed however, and for most of the remaining berries you're forced to wriggle your way among the leaves to locate and reach them. The tiny thorns snag your fur, sometimes painfully.
  
  After awhile you notice that there are still a lot of berries on the lower brambles near the ground. They're big, ripe and juicy, and there's a lot of them. Any bird could easily swoop down there and eat itself sick, and even the smallest mouse could easily help themselves. Yet they're completely untouched. Weird.
  
  > just keep doing what you're doing. You'll fill the sack eventually.
  Birds may be jerks, but they're greedy jerks. If they're avoiding the free buffet down there, tempting as they are, there must be a reason.
  
  You continue meticulously searching out and retrieving the dewberries that have escaped their notice or been deemed too much trouble to get at. Afterwards you're forced to spend just as much time meticulously combing the wispy red thorns from your fur, but you tell yourself if that's the most difficulty you have to go through to reach the Forest Fairy and have her magic up a love spell for you, it will all be worthwhile.
  
  Returning to the black squirrel neighborhood, you hand over the goods, and after pouncing on the sack they wordlessly wave you on, their mouths and fur already dripping with the sweet purple juices as they stuff their faces. Not that the stains even show up with how dark their fur is. Hah! Black fur sure is funny. You could make jokes about it all day, as long as no black squirrels were around to overhear.
  
  When you arrive at the Forest Fairy's home you find her humming to herself as she throws bits of brightly colored moss into a cauldron.
  
  Fairies are sort of weird. They're like...tiny humans with dragonfly wings? But despite their hideous and terrifying appearance they really know their stuff when it comes to magic.
  
  The Forest Fairy greets you and then listens with her arms crossed as you relate all your girl troubles in exhaustive detail, tapping her foot and only interrupting you by rolling her eyes and sighing once or twice during the times you start actually crying.
  
  "Look, kid, I'm flattered you think so highly of my power, but I can't just whip up a magic spell for you. Love doesn't work that way."
  
  "Please! Surely you can do something?"
  
  She remains adamant, shaking her head. "Nope. Sorry, but I have a policy. I got animals wandering in here with these same problems and more every season. Not many of you critters can play nice together, and helping one usually means explicitly doing the opposite to another. So I stay as hands off as possible here, I don't interfere with nature."
  
  You scrabble your paws on the ground, squeaking in frustration. It doesn't sound like she can't help you so much as she won't. Does she care nothing for your inner pain?
  
  "So...you won't do anything to help me at all? After I came all this way? Please, I'm begging you!"
  
  "Well, I could offer you some advice, I guess?"
  
  > take the advice.
  You sigh. "Okay, what's your advice then? But I've already tried everything, you know. I just can't figure out how to make a girl want to be with me."
  
  "See, now there's your problem right there. It's not about the girls! That's my advice right there: instead of trying to figure out how you can 'make' them love you, why not take a look at what you can do to make yourself more worthy of being loved in the first place? Then, have confidence that you...yes, even someone as..." The fairy gestures helplessly for words for a moment, "...someone as you as you, can achieve those goals and better yourself! And after that, anything is possible!"
  
  Wow, was that supposed to make you feel better? But there's nothing you can do but insincerely thank her and trudge off. You crawl into a hole and feel sad awhile.
  
  Then, you start mentally ticking off the squirrel girls you're aware of that are still single and that you have an interest in. So, not the ugly ones of course. But, there's...let's see...there's Burblebrook, you suppose. She lives across the river and has been friendly and talkative--some would say even too talkative--the few times you've run into each other. She's a red squirrel, like the rest of her family. Not that you have anything against red squirrels of course, they're just somewhat rare around here. They keep to themselves and have some strange customs, which is probably why no one else in your neighborhood has made a move on their chieftain's daughter.
  
  And then there's always Kissberry. But whoa, talk about out of your league. She's the most desirable squirrel girl around, but all the squirrel boys you know have been too intimidated to ask her out. And of course it doesn't help that her parents set impossible tasks for any would-be suitors that usually end in grisly death.
  
  You begin thinking of what you could do to make yourself worthy of their love.
  
  The last time you spoke to Burblebrook, she had blathered on excitedly about an annual event her family participated in, something she referred to as a 'charity nutting'. There's a stand of sacred trees fiercely guarded by her tribe, trees so incredibly virile that they get their nuts out even in the early Spring, and when you go there to nut, apparently, you're nutting for the poor, the elderly, and infirm.
  
  The idea seemed ridiculous at first, of course. Why would you ever want to think about some decrepit snaggle-toothed old lady squirrels while nutting? But now, you could see yourself nutting for anyone, if it raises you in Burblebrook's esteem.
  
  As for Kissberry... Well, that's all going to depend on what her parents have to say.
  
  > Court Burblebrook.
  You straddle a fallen branch and let it carry you across the river, then seek out Burblebrook's tribe.
  
  As you understand it, red squirrels used to be quite common in this area, but then your kind arrived from the east and out competed them until much of their former habitat was taken over. But hey, that's just nature for you! Survival of the fittest, and all.
  
  So silent and stealthy are the red squirrels in their native woods that you don't see them at all until suddenly you're surrounded. A warrior with a feather tied to his tail and curious markings painted on his fur aims a twig at you menacingly. "You trespass. Friend or foe?"
  
  "Umm...hi?" You raise your paws and gulp nervously before continuing. "No harm meant! I was just looking Burblebrook, because we spoke a couple of weeks okay and she invited me to..."
  
  "Oh. My. Great Spirit. Barkbiter, is that really you?" Burblebrook suddenly leaps down from the trees. "It's fine, Pa! I invited Barkbiter to come help with the annual charity nutting, but he didn't seem interested at the time, in fact I told...you know, that shrew girl that lives at the foot of the pine, Sniffletwig? I told her 'why can't I ever find a man who wants to nut for the orphans?' It's like trying to find a hayseed in a pile of buffalo dung. Like trying to paint with all the colors of the wind! And she told me...you know what she told me? She told me that--"
  
  The squirrel girl continues on in this manner for some time, but the important thing is that her family seems to have abandoned any idea of driving you off. When you're able to get a word in edgewise, it turns out that you actually came to your decision just in time, for they're all on their way to nut together at the sacred grove now.
  
  > get those nuts off.
  It's been a good year for the harvest, and in the hours to come you get your paws on a huge selection of the tribe's nuts. Nuts of all colors, shapes and sizes. You nut like you've never nutted before, thinking of vulnerable children and the elderly all the while. It's all a bit exhausting, and 'nut' hardly even sounds like a real word anymore once you're through, but it gives you a warm, happy feeling too, and you're glad to have gotten so close to Burblebrook and her family.
  
  The sacred grove is quite a unique place. A great many grape vines weave their way among the tree, and you're told that later in the year everyone participates in a group graping here. You're invited to that as well, which you take as a sign you've really started to earn the family's esteem.
  
  By evening even the veteran nutters seem to be growing tired and the event is winding down. You're just sitting down to rest a moment, when suddenly Burblebrook's endless stream of chatter cuts off by a squeal of terror! You look over just in time to see that a rotten branch she was standing upon has snapped off, plunging her into the river!
  
  > jump in after her!
  "I'm coming for you Burbles!" you yell, running along to the end of the branch you're on and taking a heroic dive into the river.
  
  You sink deep into the icy water, sputtering for breath as you surface. Your wet fur clings to you, weighing you down. Spying a frantic Burblebrook in similar straits nearby you flail your useless paws and beat your tail frantically against the water, trying to propel yourself over to her.
  
  Miraculously, it works, and you're able to grasp her by the paw. But that's as much as the river's powerful current will allow as you're carried to the center where the water is strongest and swiftest. Losing the battle to keep your heads above water, you still cling to each other even as you're both swept helplessly along, all the way to that Happy Nutting Ground in the sky.