Love is not unlike a mushroom. It appears in the most unexpected places, requiring little to sprout but a lot to thrive. To reach its full potential it needs warmth, patience, and plenty of moisture. Given enough time and room to grow it can break down years worth of accumulated detritus, enriching soil and soul and rewarding its cultivators with a blooming garden of unique sights and smells.

Also like a mushroom, love can be poisonous. Rubbing it in the wrong place may give you an uncomfortable rash. A small taste could have you laid up in bed for a week with swollen eyes and puffy cheeks. It could bend your mind so severely that your world becomes a terrifying kaleidoscope of phantasms and paranoia. In the very worst cases it can be deadly.

These thoughts and more swirled about in Mycal’s mind as he sat alone on a rotting tree trunk. It had been three days since he’d left the caverns and the doubts were creeping in. Life there hadn’t been terrible, but it hadn’t been great either. It was stable, efficient, even fun at times, especially during fruiting season. The colony was also safe, protected from the outside world by the dreadspores and fungal spears of the warriors.

Yet there precisely was the problem. It was so safe, so easy, so agreeable that it bored him. Mycal wanted something more, and he had finally realised that he was never going to find it in the colony. So now here he sat, beneath a vibrant canopy of oak and maple, listening to the dawn chorus of a thousand songbirds and pondering what he should do next.

Shadows shortened and lengthened as the spiral sun spun from horizon to horizon, and before he knew it another day had passed. Darkness fell, and he could feel the threads of his mycelium taking root in the soft wood.

A sharp sensation on his back brought him out of his reverie. Something had pierced one of the ancillary mushrooms that grew behind his shoulders, not technically a part of his body but still threaded into his own nervous system by their entwined hyphae. It was a painfully pleasant feeling, amplified tenfold as whatever thing had him hooked began to pull at the stem, gently at first, then with growing pressure as the base of the stalk slowly tore away. It came free with a soft pop, and Mycal shuddered as his gill-fronds reflexively discharged a cloud of spores. A sparkling flood of satisfaction engulfed his entire body, from the flared pads of his footstalks to the brim of his headcap.

While he basked in the delicious afterglow, Mycal noticed a strange animal noise behind him, softer and more complex than the simple grunts and growls of the boars and bears. It was like a babbling brook, a long unbroken torrent of yips and yaps with a singsong quality as beautiful as any bird. He turned his head slowly, not wanting to startle whatever creature made such enchanting sounds.

Black on black eyes stared at him from under a cowl of sinspider silk. Pale skin shone with an inner light, crisp and silver like the moon on a winter’s night. The thing held up a hand and he saw his mushroom dangling from a long talon, dark as a raven’s wit and twice as sharp. He didn’t know many human words, but there was one that every animal, monster, tree and plant in the forest knew. It gurgled from the small slit of his mouth. “Witch!”

Mycal tried to flee, but he was rooted too deeply in the log and unable to stand, leaving him completely at the strangers’ mercy. Thick, spore-laden tears rolled down his cheeks as he cowered before her. He’d heard stories about witches, none of them good. He begged her not to hurt him, begged her not to boil his innards or pluck out his eyeballs. Mycal didn’t want to be roasted in an oven and served as a side to a slow-cooked lost child.

Through his pleading and spluttering he was dimly aware that she was moving her arms about and making more noises. They were different to her other sounds, these ones as harsh and black as the cawing of a crow. She glowed brighter for an instant, bright enough to create shadows of her own, and it seemed as if all the light of a full moon shone through her. Mycal shuddered and his skin tightened as a wave of cold swept through him, then the light and the crows faded away like the fog of a forgotten dream.

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“Can you understand me now?” Her voice was again that exquisite birdsong, but they were no longer mere animal sounds. Mycal’s blubbering subsided as he realised he could understand her. He looked up at the woman warily, still expecting at any moment to be turned into something horrible like a toad or a mammal. “Well? Going quiet on me now?” She sighed. “Waste of a good spell, really.”

Mycal fought to control his breathing, wrestling with his terror and forcing it down as best he could. After a long silence he managed to find his tongue and squeaked, “You…you’re a witch?”

The woman rolled her eyes and her posture shifted, giving Mycal the impression that she didn’t appreciate the question. “Yeh, I’m a witch. So what? Is that a problem?”

“N-No! No!” He raised his hands to protect his face, fearing he had angered her. “I’m sorry! I’m just…surprised. I don’t…none of the stories ever said that you could speak the language of flowers.”

The young woman grunted and shook her head. “Just relax, okay? I’m not going to hurt you.” She sat down next to him and lowered her hood, revealing a mane of dark, soft feathers. “No, I don’t speak Pollenesian…well, not very well, I never could get the hang of all those branching root words. This is just magic, it’s much easier.” She turned to look at him with narrowed eyes, and Mycal felt helpless beneath her piercing gaze. It was as if she were looking through him, inside him, compelling him to reveal every hidden spore and secret. “What are you doing out here? You’re a long way from Bunchberry Grove, I’ve never seen a Shrooman out this far.”

Mycal tilted his head, not understanding what she meant. “Bunch…what?”

“Berry. Bunchberry Grove. I guess you probably have a different name for it?” He stared blankly at her, still not comprehending. She sighed and pointed a talon toward the deep forest where he’d come from. “You know, the wet place with all the caves and weeds and mud. Where all the mushroom caves are.”

“Oh! You mean Sprouthome! I…“ Mycal paused, reminding himself that despite her apparent friendliness, he was still talking to a witch. A witch! This could be some kind of trick, and once she finished her interrogation he would be cursed, or killed, or something even worse. “I…I left...” He trailed off, not sure what else to say.

“Oh did you? Truly? I never would have guessed, considering you are sitting here next to me, seven leagues from Sprouthome.” She stood and spun to face him, one clawed hand resting on her hip and the other pointing at him, his mushroom still dangling from the outstretched talon. “Why did you leave, Mister Mushroom? Why are you in my forest?” Mycal flinched but willed himself to remain calm, not sensing any real hostility. Still, he knew she wanted an answer, but he’d caught a hint of her lithe form beneath the silk robe. A firm, shapely stem, and very distracting. He realised he was staring and quickly looked away.

“Umm…I got lost?” He didn’t think it sounded very convincing. Desperate to change the subject, he gestured at the mushroom “What are you going to do with that?”

“Lost, huh? Okay, sure. As for this…” she slid the mushroom off her claw and dropped it in a pouch, “it’s for a potion. Those blue ones are very hard to find, you know? I thought I’d be out here all night, so I guess I should thank you.” She lowered her head, feathered mane spilling out over her shoulders, shimmering like a moonlit lake. “Thank you, Mister Mushroom.”

Mycal felt his spore chamber skip a beat. No one had ever thanked him in the colony, not ever, not even once. You were just expected to do what you did, and the only time your efforts were acknowledged was when they fell short. This felt good, and he suddenly wanted more. Before he could consider what he was saying, he blurted, “I have more! You can have them all! They grow back nearly every night! And it felt good when you plucked me, you can pluck me whenever you want!”

The faintest smile touched her dark lips. “Oh, is that so?” The witch lifted one leg and planted a black boot on the log beside him, leaning forward until they were eye to eye. “You like to be plucked huh?” She reached out a clawed finger and touched the bulb of a small mushroom cap on the back of his neck. “Tell me, Mister Mushroom, do you like to be plucked hard?”

Mycal found he couldn’t speak, but he nodded eagerly.

“I could pluck you clean right now, if you want?”

He nodded again.

“Very well. You just relax. It must be my lucky night, these green ones are fantastic for invisibility potions.” She pierced the emerald pileus, and Mycal shuddered.