“Shit!” Ben exploded, sitting bolt upright, his face twisted into a grimace.

Spidena grumbled at his side as she tried to steal more of the blanket.

“We forgot to tell the robbers about The Fey Way!”

“Why… Would Daffy want us… Telling those kinds of people…?” Spidena muttered sleepily.

“They aren’t all that choosy with clientele! Remember they rented rooms to Oleg.”

“Daffy and Obbie don’t have eyes everywhere. We’ll just–” Spidena yawned– “Tell the next people we… kick in the balls and drug.”

Ben sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. “Easy for you to say. If Obbie gets pissed with me, you said he could meddle in my life.”

“Obbie isn’t nearly as interested in you as you think.”

“I don’t really want to goad additional problems into my life. Besides, aren’t you the one saying we’re more appealing to magical beings?”

Sitting up groggily, Spidena looked at Ben through half lidded eyes, but said nothing.

“What?”

“I… don’t have thoughts… I just want to sleep,” Spidena explained with a pitiful groan as she flopped back onto her pillow. Her hair was a wild entity that nearly swallowed her face every time she moved, and her face looked a mite pale.

“We’ve slept long enough. We have to start walking again or it’ll take even longer to get to the road,” Ben explained while giving his neck a crack.

Spidena rolled over, grumbled into her pillow, and made no move to get up.

“Come on, it’s stopped raining.”

“My boots are still wet.”

“We can try and dry them off tonight when we make camp, but until then let’s cover as much ground as possible.” Ben peeled back the toasty blanket he had been under and fought off a grimace as he shifted and acknowledged that his own clothes and boots were still horribly soggy.

Still, he pushed himself up to stand with a grunt, arched his back into a stretch, then turned to grab his pack again.

Only to find that in those few seconds it had taken him to do this, Spidena had successfully absorbed his half of the wool blanket into a cocoon around herself, and she appeared half asleep.

Sighing, Ben sidled over to where she lay while slipping his hands into his pockets. “Should I make you a cup of tea?”

“Don’t touch my bag.” Amazingly, from the depths of her slumber, the witch was still able to respond.

“Spidena, come on. I’m going to start walking ahead of you again.”

“I’ll sicc Wolf on you.”

“Spidena, it’s going to take us that much longer to get to the road, and those two men might be gaining ground on us.”

“Uugh,” Spidena sat up, her disaster of wavy and curly hair making her look wild and maybe just a little bit unhinged. “I doubt they can track us. They didn’t seem all that bright.”

“You’re the one who is so paranoid about us getting into trouble,” Ben reminded impatiently.

“From magical creatures! Not from—Did you hear that?” Spidena held up a finger, her exasperated expression crunching down into a frown.

Ben straightened and turned his head in the same direction Spidena was looking.

At first he heard nothing…

Then he heard a rustle. A faint slucking of wet leaves and snapping twigs.

He was about to make a sarcastic comment on the deadliness of squirrels, when he heard the rise and fall of a giggle. He waited in tense silence to see if it was a trick of his mind, but another one drifted closer.

His toes rounded toward the sound; dried pine needles grinding under his boots.

The giggles stopped.

Spidena hastily shoved the blanket in her bag, then the pillow, and stood. She drew herself over to Ben’s side.

When he opened his mouth to ask what the hells she thought it might be, she held up her finger, quieting him.

They stood, perfectly still, waiting.

The taut silence carried on for so long, that Ben started to wonder if she was simply toying with him out of revenge for waking her up… She could have cast some kind of spell to trick him.

But she suddenly gave a huff of exasperation and said a short. “Oh.”

Shooting her a puzzled look, Ben didn’t get the chance to follow it up with the question of what was wrong, before she strode over to a spot thirty feet ahead, then placed her hands on her hips.

Ben cautiously followed, until a soft fluttering brushed against his right cheek.

Startled into motionlessness, he didn’t even dare to turn his head, only slid his eyes slowly over to confirm that it was Wolf sitting on his shoulder.

“Spidena!” Ben called out in a strained, excited whisper. “Spidena look at this!”

Spidena didn’t look. She stayed staring at whatever it was that had caught her attention with her bushy hair fluttering in the wind.

Keeping his back as straight as possible, Ben carefully took a stiff step closer to where she stood. Then another one, and another… Until he stood at her side.

“Do you see this? I think Wolf likes me!”

Spidena flicked a brief distracted glance at him. “That’s not Wolf.”

“What?!” Ben flailed in panic. The bird made a garbled croak of displeasure before ruffling its feathers indignantly and launching itself into the air.

Spidena cackled as Ben wiped his coat, and stared at the bird that perched on a nearby fir tree branch… Was it glaring?

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“That is Wolf!” he realized loudly.

Spidena continued to laugh.

“You can be a real hag,” he muttered before following her eyeline and finding what had her so concerned.

“A mushroom ring?” Ben stared at the tiny white capped mushrooms poking up through the moss that was a beautiful bright, lush green after the rains the previous day. The roots of a fir tree caging the ground just behind it that arched over the earth.

Spidena’s head tilted. “Sprites.”

“Where?” Ben looked around frantically in alarm.

“Just wait.”

It took another full minute of standing perfectly still, but then there was a shift of dirt from within the shadowy roots of the fir tree. At first it just looked like a patch of moss falling open… Until…

There stood a little creature Ben had never seen the likes of before.

It stood under three feet, and had a pale white face that matched the mushrooms that made up the circle. His eyes took up far too much of his round face that was like a sideways oval. The eyes were black as pitch, yet streaks of fine, brown lines ran through them… Almost like the gills on the underside of a mushroom cap.

And the reason mushrooms kept coming to Ben’s mind?

The little figure had hair… Or a hat… That was made of moss and brush that had different varietals of mushrooms sprouting up sporadically on his head, and on random other parts of its body. The being wore a light brown cloth coat, a dirty loose white shirt, and brown pants that had patches of different colored cloth sewn on. Ben looked down at the sprite’s feet and found that instead of toes, there were mushroom caps.

The little creature smiled up at him without revealing any teeth.

“Uh… Sp-Spidena?”

“He’s a mushroom sprite,” Spidena explained in a lowered voice before plastering a smile on her face.

Blinking, Ben found he had to squint as there was a telling silvery glow that would occasionally pulse from the sprite. “He’s hard to look at.”

Spidena turned her head to stare at Ben. “He is made of pure magic. That makes sense.”

“Wait. So when you are bargaining to make a spell, o-or an incantation, you’re bargaining with him?”

“No.”

Ben looked at Spidena.

He was beginning to suspect he would develop a nasty twitch any day now. “I think I was too judgmental of the alcoholics I knew in my life. One minute things can be normal. The next you could be staring down a sprite made of pure magic with a witch and her raven. While also worrying a psychotic fairy might decide to torment you for the rest of your life–”

Spidena reached over and grasped Ben’s wrist. “Could you… Have a mental breakdown on your own time? Maybe tonight while I dry my boots?”

“You know I think it is perfectly reasonable that I–” Ben rounded on Spidena in exasperation, only for her to cut him off again.

“You’re being rude to the sprite,”Spidena informed him sternly before returning her gaze to the little mushroom being. “Hi there. My name is Spidena, I’m a witch. This is my… That’s Ben. We are just traveling through the woods to get to the main road. How are you?”

Ben listened as she clearly pronounced each of her words, and watched as she continued trying to consistently smile down at the sprite.

The sprite blinked very slowly up at her, then turned its head to look at Ben who squinted, blinked some more, and tried to smile, only for it to come out looking like an uncertain grimace.

The sprite’s smile grew and his mushrooms rustled as though he were silently laughing.

“Can we help you with something?” Spidena pressed while her own smile started to look pained.

The sprite blinked up at her.

“What’s your name?” Ben interjected, more so out of curiosity to see if this new being was capable of talking.

The sprite lifted his hand (that actually looked quite human save for the soft white nails), and beckoned to Spidena.

The witch barely hid her reticent reaction as she obeyed, slowly lowering herself down to a kneel.

Ben watched, confused, until the sprite dropped the brim of his mossy hair hat onto Spidena’s forehead with a small ‘bap’. A shudder ran through Spidena and a powerful tickling twinge rushed through Ben instantly that wasn’t entirely unlike the time Spidena had worked the magic into her potion.

“His name is Filif,” Spidena announced as she leaned back from the sprite who smiled at her and then at Ben appearing perfectly innocent while clasping his hands in front of himself.

“Okay… And… Does Filif need something?” he ventured.

The sprite shook his head.

Spidena slowly rose to her feet. “Did you just want to… Follow us?”

The sprite clapped its hands fervidly and jumped up and down while giggling, his mushrooms bobbing.

“Oh… Do you promise… Do you promise not to… Not to be mischievous with us?” Spidena asked, her tone treading the line of wanting to sound firm but also gentle, which resulted in her sounding all the more uncertain.

The sprite gave a little growl and put his hands on, presumably, his hips.

Spidena held up her hands in nervous surrender, and Ben couldn’t help but wonder just why she was utterly terrified of this creature that was little more than a mushroom nugget.

He remembered Spidena and Daffy talking about how they could be annoying, but to be fearful of them seemed odd.

“Alright, well, we’re trying to get to the road to Kintel like I said before, so we have a long way to walk, is this fine?” Ben’s tone was relatively flat as he accepted that if he tried to object to Filif’s company, he would probably get another earful on the dreadful consequences of spiting magic or something to that effect from Spidena.

The sprite beamed up at him once more, and waved his arm toward them while scampering ahead.

Ben took in a very long breath, and proceeded to follow the sprite named Filif.

“Ah—wait, we should—Oh.” Spidena called out, cringing.

Ben looked over his shoulder at her, wondering what else was there to know. Was the sprite going to eat them at the first chance it got?

Spidena’s eyes darted to his feet then back up at him. “Well. I guess it can’t be helped.”

Turning his attention downward, Ben noticed that Spidena was staring at him standing in the middle of the mushroom circle.

“Wait… Is that an actual thing…? The dangers of mushroom circles? The Hounds thought that bit was made up!”

Spidena breezed past him. “Doesn’t matter now! You’ve already crossed it. Come on! We don’t have all day!”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ben did his best to mentally prepare himself for whatever came next. Which was remarkably hard to do when he hadn’t the faintest clue what it may be.

Regardless, he already knew beyond a shadow of a doubt there was no stopping whatever it was, and so, he followed after the sprite and the witch while trying to be optimistic that, at the very least, Filif had motivated Spidena to get moving better than even the promise of a cup of tea.