Page 55 of Shroom for Improvement

“You won’t fuck this up,” I said. Claude continued staring at his plate. “I don’t have any great skill with glamour either. Unless you count pickpocketing.” To prove my point, I placed Claude’s wallet on the table between us. Really, I just wanted to diffuse the tension. And in a roundabout way, show him that maybe, if he considered himself a fuck-up, he wasn’t the only one.

“But how?” He finally lifted his eyes to mine. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

I shrugged. “That about summarises all my magical abilities. But I’m not leaving this house until we find the solution to this rhizome ritual. Together. Okay?” Even if that meant abstaining from any form of self-pleasure while I was here.

Claude sucked on his bottom lip again, and I resisted the urge to think anything inappropriate about it. Inappropriate thoughts would have to wait until after the summer solstice.

“Okay?” I repeated.

He nodded, solemnly.

“Pinky promise.” I held out my baby finger and Claude eyed it. A smile ticked the corner of his mouth.

“First truth or dare, now pinky promises.” He wrapped his finger around mine, and I pretended as though the skin-on-skin spark licking up my arm didn’t feel like a bolt of lightning. “What’s next, kiss chase?”

I tried to laugh, even feign a titter, but my brain raced forward. It started concocting hypotheses, ranking them by their success potential and their likelihood of evolving naturally from the moment without raising suspicions. The result: Claude and I playing kiss chase.

Amor Sui Vitas Salvat

Sonny

Over the rest of our breakfast, we devised a list of interview questions. Well, actually, it was a bunch of topics we felt we needed answers to that we’d scribbled on a napkin.

Things like . . .

Is the ritual something we already know how to do, or do we need to learn it?

How will we know when we have it right?

And . . .Where’s the gods-damned library?

In addition to...Can you read minds? Please say you can’t.

I didn’t much fancy being the subject of another “Let’s tell Claude all about Sonny’s masturbatory habits” discussion, especially if I was unable to hear the house and therefore unable to defend myself, so I took to the walled kitchen gardens next to the bed and breakfast while Claude went back to his room.

If we were going to be here for a couple of weeks, this place would become my sanctuary. It had everything I needed. All of my favourite tools, a pee-bale, beautiful veg to tend to, and eco-friendly watering solutions.

I filled up a watering can from a butt, and watered in my newly sown tomato plants. Of the two butts available, I chose the one on the left which had wildflowers bursting into life around the leaky tap. Difficult to tell which was from Claude’s room and which was from mine, but I’d followed the pipes with my eyes, and I was eighty-five percent sure the one I’d chosen connected to Claude’s shower drain.

I’d figured the spontaneous little meadow at the base was because of his latent mushroom magic and would hopefully give the tomatoes a little injection of glamour. I couldn’t wait to tell him I’d used his butt water on my plants.

“Can you see me now?” I asked the space at large. Really, I was speaking to the house. I didn’t expect any kind of answer—didn’t get one.

I was alone, so I used my new pee-bale for the first time. After peeing, I moved to the empty beds and began ridding them of weeds.

The climate in the Kingdom of the Fae had always been a few degrees cooler than Borderlands, and Remy in particular which sat on the southern border beside the Human Realms. KOTF got colder the farther north you travelled, culminating in icy tundras and mountainsides where only the toughest animals and mythics could survive. Agaricus—and Stinkhorn Manor—sat smack bang in the middle of the Kingdom.

Compared to Remy, there was a noticeable chill in the air. Especially without the towering skyscrapers buffering the wind, and the five walls of concrete often heating to unbearable temperatures.

But in my humble opinion, it most definitely wasn’t cold enough to warrant the thick woollen coat and hat Claude wore over his three-piece suit. The sun shone directly overhead when he entered the walled gardens, and the leather of his brogues gleamed in the light.

“Hey,” I said, straightening up from my knees and shielding my eyes from the full glare of the sun. I would need to find a ballcap at some point. Maybe I should go into town to get one. Or ask the house to magic one. I didn’t know how it worked, but it seemed like suitable compensation for watching me jerk off.

“Afternoon,” Claude replied. “I have spoken with Jenny. The house,” he added, as though I could possibly forget a giant mushroom-turreted building had asked to be referred to as Jenny. “Do you have a few minutes?”

He looked around the gardens, evidently searching for somewhere to conduct this conversation. His eyes landed on the pee-bale a few metres away from us.

I threw myself between Claude and the compostable toilet. “Don’t sit there! Yeah, no, you don’t wanna be sitting there. Like, ever.”

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