CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“It is a rarity meeting elf, fishfolk--even human up these cliffs.”

A mushroom bloomed outward scarlet, its underside of gold absent of scent digestion gazing across its parlor. Many appendages hung from beneath a ribbed ceiling; some occupied with tea, others fungus bread, and three supported the sides of the stalk they sprouted from as it leaned forward far from an unappealing armrest.

“But dwarf, I thought impossible.”

The dwarf, relaxed in an equally discomforting couch, blankets wrapped round his frame taut, expressed his humanity. The fungus laughed. When it shook its head, it seemed to the dwarf thousands of spores were sent on a ballet across the room. The natural light which filtered through a sole pane lit these dancers on their downward routines. The dwarf followed them to the ground where it seemed they simply vanished. He looked back up at the laughing shroom.

“My, little one, what beard you sport! What bald you have! Both so large I can’t help but laugh! Such thick arms, thick legs, muscles born from caves! You are as human as you are ‘funguay’.”

The dwarf could not dispense the energy required to argue. His eyes drifted to the window, that distant city captured within its frame glowing, heavy smokestacks rising out from the tall jewels dominating great tracts of sand. His thoughts once more drifted to the chefs and bakers and cooks who he did not doubt populated the settlement with their creations to the brim. He breathed deep and smelled the fresh fish hauled in from rough waters, his reference point a monthly ice truck with a cartoon salmon logo plastered across paint. The scent of fungus bread wormed its way as well through the dwarf’s thick nostrils, and he recoiled--but politely held his frown back.

“No dwarf has come to these parts, never. There’s no value for them, no baubles yet found, no caves worth a harvest. Perhaps to the town of fishfolk they’d visit, though the damned would be met with disappointment. For fresh fish...”

The funguay licked his lips, his thoughts clearly submerged. The dwarf glanced around the room feeling rather revitalized and renewed. His aching came and went, his strength quite sore, but the dwarf felt fine. So what seemed wrong? The dwarf narrowed his eyes--an absence. He hopped to his feet at once demanding the whereabouts of Waspig, the shroom startled, sheets unraveling undone and falling to the floor to reveal a nude form mercifully censored by hair. But it recovered.

“Ahhh. It does seem the dwarf has proven himself naturally gifted in husbandry despite such meager levels...”

The dwarf, taken aback to hear mention of that which had appeared before him countlessly since his dwarfening, became moved to shout a series of questions rapidly regarding EXP, the skills of HUSBANDRY and ATHLETICS, among others, the inconceivable resurrection made possible by a blank bible of this world--and what was this world, and where was Waspig? The mushroom hatted homeowner threw its multitude of hands up in protest and rose too from its seat to scoot the “hot headed and disruptive nudist” out the parlor’s door and onto sloshy dirt beneath blue, gras and flowers scattered in patches with one caught within the nostrils of an insect of bovine properties. The creature turned to the sudden noise of the slammed door and galloped over with a wag in its antennae. Dwarf and pigbug reunited, he rubbed his dome against the latter’s chin and accepted the reverse with a wide smile, his whiskers bouncing. The animal fluttered about its bounty of feed and seed and was quick to reveal to its owner a new trick in which it arched its back towards puddles of mud to then scatter in long arcs following the furious flutter of its wings. Waspig impressed the dwarf.

Birds--many mushroom capped--flocked to the thatched roof of the moss dominated cottage. Stains proved a long history shared between straw and all. Above, bulbous clouds wet white washed over a deeply saturated canvas hugging the earth close as if to watch over the day previous’ work, that which Waspig wicked in a flurry. The city out along the shore could not evade the dwarf’s noticing again for long, their kitchen fires’ roars unending, and the dwarf blessed his luck for capturing sight of the purported fishing vessels his imagination had desperately assured him of. Out they left in a school of three, thick smog blasting out their jets. The distance choked the finer details, quite a series of cliffs and plains to cut through between he and the seamen.

The timing proved itself doubly fruitful for the dwarf realized a series of creatures from his childhood picture books stomped before him, albeit by a great many miles, traveling in a horizontal herd with massive limbs that dwarfed his own. Indeed, such tusked creatures of thick fat and hide are known by local eyes as icons of oil, and so its nicknames range anywhere from ‘baron’ to ‘firestarter’. But by bald origins in a world where hair once sprouted atop his scalp and thick masses of black pumped at prices immune to decrease, a boy on a farm read a book that described the hefty wooly walkers as ‘mammoths’.

They marched--the mammoths--with the dwarf captivated by complete unbelievability. He weighed the notion of the sight on a similar level as to witnessing a dinosaur--and to think of his father’s thoughts on seeing either spurred laughter and embarrassment in quick succession, Waspig perplexed. His observing did not end at the one trail of tusked wanderers for four more appeared from the east and west, different tribes of the same hulking cloth visiting one another only momentarily--like cars crossing roads, the dwarf compared, conceding though they were all a bit slower. He maintained his gaze until the last of the stompers exited the stage where the dwarf’s cone of vision could travel no further. He hoped to meet one.

When the dwarf turned round to face his pet, he found the creature returned his glance with the same bared fangs it wielded within hallowed halls--or rather, his gaze felt a hair higher. The bovine beast grunted and produced air in a rush, its stance obviously adversarial. The dwarf met his pet’s hostility with confusion, raising a hand to feel over his dread-less dome in what felt a vain effort in identifying the mysterious whim of Waspig, until his thick fingers met an unexpected resistance. Rubbing along the base of his bald, he realized a thin, cylindrical tube sprouted out from the center of his scalp. Traveling not far upwards, the stem flared out under a ribbed roof, the other side smoothly imitating the top of the dwarf’s head. He sprinted to a puddle and found staring back at him a speckle dotted mushroom shot from his head. To the cottage’s back door the dwarf crashed up against, his fists banging in quick unison until an answer arrived.

“WHO DARES... Ahhh, that’s growing well. I’m glad to see it.”

The dwarf attempted to yank the interloper out from his scalp.

“Cease! Stay your hand, stout one. You won’t survive it. Leave the mud tracker for now--come.”

Reluctantly, the dwarf allowed himself shoved and escorted through a series of halls, doors, stairs, doors, halls, stairs to such a degree his toadstool topped head began rubberbanding until at last coming to rest as did the rest of him deep in the bowels of a laboratory so outlandish, its volumes and flasks brimming with cyans, magentas, yellows, its play things ranging from cloves of garlic to catfish guts, the dwarf could not shake the connection to pulp fiction thumbed by the dozens in both barn and bedroom. The funguay who had ensured the dwarf reach his destination gestured for the guest to observe its mushrooms potted along brown rows of rock. They appeared a sad sight.

“What we have before us now, so coincidentally lowered to your leisure, are what will turn failures.”

The cottage’s master mustered over to a vial and delivered its contents to just one mycelia. The dwarf watched with hesitation as seemingly nothing transpired--then, it was as if the mushroom were made by Mary, it rising to life with a gaunt expression. Both watched the fungus begin writhing, babbling, sputtering. The funguay took it into its many hands and bored a hole within the wretched thing rendering it dead. It turned to the dwarf.

“They make wonderful loaves. Be assured, what grows atop your shining real estate will not meet this same fate--that is precisely why I seized the opportunity that so stoutly made use of my... hospitality. This should be fair, of course.”

Unable to articulate the violation he felt, the dwarf opted to turn and attempt a rapid exit of the laboratory. The funguay remained still until meeting his guest again.

“It will be some time until yours... hatches, if you’re familiar.”

The dwarf was and he vocalized it, once more repeating his human origins, elaborating on his farm, his father, the animals left behind. This time the scientist seemed to listen, the dwarf detailing his dark descent and rise out from the hole he only barely mustered, the meeting of Waspig and their escape from the church, the breaking and entering through fire and flame that culminated in the red dotted parasite now erect above a frustrated brow. Two hands meanwhile reached out to thoughtfully stroke the funguay’s chin throughout the retelling of the dwarf’s hardships-- then three, four, more until he concluded.

“Dear dwarf, I did not realize what it took to bring you here before me. Perhaps it was God. And if it is ordained, I feel all the more morally fortified. All this to say: shall I have a look at you, dwarf? Really, a good one?”

He didn’t wear the air of acceptance--fear and confusion more apt, but the funguay continued forward.

“Your biology must be fascinating. I should record it all for His people. After perhaps another dozen spawn. Recoil not, I couldn’t allow for any harm to come to you during our... studies--we’d compromise the baby--and many more.”

The dwarf turned and crashed into an array of flasks that shattered by means of he and floor. A thundering vibration rang throughout the bowels of the cottage, and the funguay lunged forward with a weaving of arms all snaking towards the dwarf, who in turn ducked and crawled across the lab and under another desk of equipment. The hostile homeowner shoved a cart of tools aside rolling its contents out among tile. As the dwarf’s predator drew close, Waspig burst through the entrance and sent its stabber directly towards the path of the advancing mycelium. The funguay stepped several feet back, turning then to the wall to retrieve its hung hatchet. The dwarf, meanwhile, hoisted himself atop his pet and swooped over to the opposite end. His experimenter continued its campaign at the top of its lungs:

“IT WAS A MISTAKE TO SPARE THE HOG... BUT JUST WAIT FOR ITS BIRTH!”

Screeches suddenly emitted from the advancing fungus, horrible tones born from terrible pain as its feet tread the barbed and sharp tools that decorated the lab floor. The dwarf and his pigbug escaped from where he foresaw his own guts exposed to the series of countless doors and stairs, all sped through as fast as his two shortened legs could manage, though he continued to fall victim to the tangle of endless halls. The dwarf’s beard blew behind him in two waves, fear fast on his feet as he felt kicks and slams denoting the funguay’s advances. Scent led the dwarf’s pet in a sudden sharp turn, and he could do little else than trust in its hooves. Muffled, their pursuer wailed:

“I AM A SHROOM OF GOD... IT WAS NOT I WHO TORCHED HIS DOORS...”

A final climb revealed he stood back in the parlor with the sun nearly finishing its set. Before the dwarf would exit, he grabbed at the iron poker mounted next to the fireplace, accidentally stumbling into the ornate framed portraits sent plummeting to the floorboards, the poker clumsily slipping as well. He did not hesitate for the funguay’s reaction, tucking Waspig under his arm--it fluttering for slack--the two burst out from the clouds of loaves’ scent and back within crisp air. He inhaled and, renewed, the toadstool atop him bobbing with breezes, the dwarf dashed from the moss topped cottage and into the forest before the cliffs before the plains before the shining city on the shoreline.