Page 17 of Mushy Stuff
“Do you know how to do the spell?”
“Yes, my nursemaid taught me. She wanted me to be able to escape my birth mother if I needed to, even if it meant going into the human world,” he says.
“You keep calling her your nursemaid, did she have a name?”
I can see the pain on his face when he says, “Yes, I called her Nanni when my birth mother wasn’t around. I wasn’t allowed to call her anything other than nursemaid when anyone else could hear us.”
“That’s so sad, Wold. I’m sorry that you had to grow up like that.” I pause, then say, “Well, I guess we have a plan. So what do you usually do during the day, er, I mean night?”
“We need to eat, so I will hunt for some more hoppers. Then I usually spend time in the cave tending to the mushrooms. I also survey my territory to make sure nothing is amiss.”
“Oh, I would love to see your territory! Can I come with you for that?” I say excitedly.
He looks at me curiously. “Yes.”
“Would it be all right if I went for a swim to rinse off and try to get clean first?”
“That will be fine. I will go hunt for hoppers.”
Chapter 11
Ihuntdowntwomore hoppers for us.
All I can think about is Lydia while I work. I think about the way that she smiles at me. I think about the noises she made when my cock was buried inside her. And her scent, oh gods, her scent. Those thoughts make my cock stiffen. I can feel it press against the seam of its pouch. It’s just waiting to pop out at any moment, so I switch to thinking about something else.
I make a mental list of the items I will need for the spell to send Lydia back home.
Lydia. The way she curled into me to sleep, I’ve never felt so comfortable. It just feels good being near her. How can I send her home? Now that I have her, I don’t know if I can let her go.
When I get back to the cave, Lydia is walking around looking at everything. Her hair is still very wet, so she must have recently finished bathing.
Her face brightens when she sees me return. As I watch her, she picks up the false antlers that she wore in her hair yesterday, and she puts them back on.
Watching her casually slip them on her head makes me think about yesterday when I carried her to the cave while she was unconscious. I was horrified when those little antlers fell off. I was worried that it meant she was badly injured. I carefully carried them back with us while I was also carrying her. When I laid her down in the cave, I spent a long time trying to figure out how to reattach them to her head. Imagine my surprise when I realized the stiff band that they were attached to went around her head. Although it doesn’t seem like it would be very comfortable to wear, it makes me smile to see her put them on.
“Hey, Wold!” she says. “Did you get more rabbits?”
“Yes, two hoppers.”
I light the fire and set them up on the spit to cook. Then I walk back toward the cave and Lydia follows. I begin checking on the mushrooms and feeding them magic if needed. Lydia watches me with a look of wonder on her face.
She finally asks, “Do you do anything withall of them?”
“Some of them I spread around my territory so that they can thrive. All of them are important to nature, but some of them can be used by the fae for different things. Some are edible, and there are others that you can make teas with. There are also some that are used in spells. I can harvest them and sell them to vendors at the fae market.”
“Oh wow! Does each territory have its own thing they can grow or make and sell?”
“I do not know. Probably.” I’ve never really thought that much about what other territories might be doing. I’ve always just tried to survive on mine. Maybe I have isolated myself too much.
“You mentioned a spell; do you mean the kind of spells that witches do?” she asks.
“I do not know what a witch is.”
“It’s usually a woman that can make magic by mixing herbs and different things, like bones or snakeskin or teeth, into potions or spells for casting magic,” she explains. “I don’t know if they can actually do magic. They are more like a fairy tale; you just hear stories about them.”
I reply, “That sounds a lot like some of the of magic that the fae can do. Perhaps the witches that your tales are about were actually Elven fae that left the Fae Realm to live in your world. Or maybe they were the child of an Elven anda human. I do not know if they can have children with humans, though.”
She looks surprised. “Why would they want to leave this world for the human world? Surely my world looks so dull compared to this one.”
