The undersized dwende rummaged in his oversized bag of trinkets, then pulled out a flask of blue swirling ooze. He emptied it into a bowl of crimson extract, followed by a pinch of gumamela petals, and a caterpillar still squirming between his stubby fingers.

The concoction sparkled.

Then he scooped all the mucus and slime into a jar and laid it on a tree stump.

“Two drops in his cup of milk in the morning, and two drops in his plate of rice at night, until you notice a difference.”

“And my son will really become manlier?” the human mother asked again.

“Yes,” the dwende’s green forehead crumpled. “He will stop eyeing his male friend too stickily the next time he invites him to your house.”

Satisfied, the woman reached for the jar, but the dwende pulled it back.

“I want an additional box of kutchinta rice cakes, and another pouch of salt.”

The woman started to protest, but she hushed herself and just reached into her bag. This dwende does charge strange fees but, admittedly, still much cheaper than the kilos of gemstones most of his race demanded for their services—magical exploits widely abhorred in the Philippines.

She placed the second pouch of salt on the stump, along with the third box of orange, chewy kutchinta.

The dwende’s eyes bulged out even farther, his quaking chest barely able to contain his squeals. It’s almost comical, really; the finest alchemists across the land, yet unable to replicate even the simplest human recipes.

The woman grabbed her commissioned jar of machismo and scampered out of the cluster of trees.

Moans and groans then filled the air, as the dwende’s overcrowded mouth made love to the juicy rice cakes. They were so delightful, he almost didn’t notice the enormous horse-headed humanoid that emerged from the bushes nearby—a terrifying tikbalang.

“What was it this time?” its voice shook the air.

“A confidence potion,” the dwende giggled through his gag of cakes. “If everything goes right, the son will have his first romance in a week, and a very angry mother for quite a while longer.”

The tikbalang neighed along in laughter.

He’d indeed been guffawing the whole day over each of the dwende’s transactions, this trespasser who foolishly set up shop in the tikbalang’s corner of the forest; any other intruder, and he would’ve butchered it in a wink, but this entrepreneurial, dishonorable munchkin was too entertaining for him to evict just yet.

Prior to the human mother, there was an aswang—forest imps that morph into puppies or baby goats crying for kindhearted families to take them home, only to rip out their hosts’ innards while they slept at night.

“But no, that’s too much work for this lazy cretin,” the dwende said.

In exchange for a bucket of salt it stole from a mine, the aswang had requested an invisibility potion, so it could prey on many more victims with much less effort.

“What did you give it?” the horse-beast asked.

“A lumination potion, so it shines brighter than the sun.”

They howled in hysterics.

There was another human as well; a nasty young man who sought to trade sweet banana turon for sleeping powder so he could finally bed his neighbor’s feisty daughter.

“Dip this bag of tea into her drink, and she will even welcome you with open arms,” the dwende assured the man.

And to the tikbalang later, “because that strength elixir will grant her arms the power to fold his crotch unto his mouth.”

The tickled tikbalang brayed and brayed and brayed.

His trespasser had been such a delight, he almost felt guilty about devouring it soon. But his hunger was starting to overwhelm his affections, and dwende meat was rumored to be the tastiest in the land after all, from marinating themselves in the herbs and magical seasonings they play with all day.

But the tikbalang was still curious.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, salivating. “What do you get from deceiving your clients?”

The dwende bit the banana treat and snickered.

“Fun.”

“And if they came back to seek vengeance for your trickery?”

A gleaming gaggle of limbs suddenly smashed into the horse-brute. He was rammed into the trees, his skin shredded, his face cleaved and clawed.

It was the aswang from earlier, now resembling the sun.

“What did you do to me, dwende?!” it screamed.

The behemoth neighed in pain and brayed in confusion.

“I’m a tikbalang, you fool! The dwende is over there!”

“Quit lying to me, dwende!” the aswang’s fury shone brighter. “Turn me back to normal or I’ll rip you to shreds!”

The tikbalang, wounded but still three times the size of the glowing imp, opened his massive jaws and bit the aswang’s head off.

Then he spat it out in a hurry because it tasted horrible.

The beast slowly got back to his feet, panting; lit up by the setting sun and the dying aswang, he realized his whole body was covered in green dust.

Illusion powder, it dawned on him.

He looked around his cluster of trees. Apart from three pieces of kutchinta on the stump, nothing else was there anymore.

The oversized bag, the undersized dwende, all gone.

The tikbalang stared at the rice cakes with irritation, then chowed them down.

He’d been cheated of his dinner—by his dinner.

The thought made him neigh, softly at first, before completely braying in laughter, much like how he had spent his day.

Well—he consoled himself—at least it was fun.