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“A little brighter, please.” A gentle voice spoke quietly amongst the leaves. The still shadows cast by a cerulean glow grew longer, sharper as the light intensified ever so slightly. “Thank you, sweet sprite. Here…”

A trilling chirp accompanied the excited bouncing of the lantern as its bearer danced over a treat.

“Growing just fine…” The satisfied voice continued as pink fingertips delicately lifted the edge of a mushroom cap. Something metallic glinted at the base of the mushroom.

“Oh! Would you look at that!”

With a definitive crunch, a golden tooth snapped loose from the substrate where the mushroom grew. The other sockets had been looted long before, by something else long gone home to its ossifer. Copper held the tooth towards the lantern-light, turning it back and forth, losing herself in memories of glinting gold…

Her attention snapped suddenly to her left in a swirl of orange filaments. Her hair remained raised as the rustling of leaves grew louder until several of the plump little sprites came tumbling through the underbrush. They leapt and rolled and danced over each other as their chittering voices overlapped in equal disarray.

“A man…”

“...mushroom tree.”

“...Under the…”

Copper chuckled at their adorably panicked antics. “Well, you certainly got all of the words out, though perhaps not in the right order…”

The sprites continued to fumble and stumble about in a restless heap.

“...Alive”

“..Still alive…”

“Still…”

Copper lifted one glinting brow at the sprites’ whispered proclamation. She glanced down at the crumbling skull near her booted feet, where her prized mushroom grew.

“I suppose we could always use some fresh substrate.” She sighed to her sprites.

The lantern-bearer bounced along behind her as she followed the somersaulting sprites through the damp leaves. Ahead of them, another light emerged through the moss-draped trees. Here and there amongst the ferns, a puffball cap of pink or purple could soon be seen glowing softly. The fungal orbs grew larger and more dense as the little procession approached a clearing in the trees, filled with fuschia light.

A massive mushroom brushed the mangrove canopy overhead, emanating the uncanny light through a fragile veil hanging from the edges of its cap. Little tendrils dangled down to the earth beneath. Barely within sight from where the mushroom cap curved, a long tear in the veil left the freshy tattered curtain trailing in the evening breeze.

The wind abruptly changed direction and the sprites seemed to blow along with it, rolling backwards over themselves, away from the Salamander Sorceress.

“Stupid, stupid humans… Terrible, awful, wicked humans… bumbling about, destroying my mushrooms…” Copper muttered as she passed beneath the veil. Her cloak settled in thick, purple folds around her feet as she crouched down to get a better look at the latest fodder, who was slumped against the mushroom’s massive stem.

“How are you still alive, so deep in my woods…” She whispered, leaning towards the unconscious man.

The shadow of her skull was briefly visible through her translucent flesh as the lantern-bearing sprite passed beside her, coming also to get a better look at the stranger. Its utterly hollow little mouth, just visible beneath its oak leaf mask, didn’t move at all as it pestered its maker with unheaded questions.

The hue of her massive eyes shifted slightly each time she blinked as she inspected the unmoving mortal. “Well, just barely alive, that is…”

Unsatisfied with whatever she saw, or couldn’t see, Copper flicked the strange man right between his lidded eyes.

“Tell me, Trespasser… Do you still wish to be alive?”