MultiColor Mashup | 2023 ✔️

Color #7 - Violet Shrooms

Round 3.2
Word Count: 483
Historical Fiction
Prompt:
Write a short only using dialogue that includes a mythical creature.

- - -

"A no-goodnik, is you?"

"A what?"

"You gnomes. No-goodniks, good-for-nothing slackers you be. Your kind be trotting about them fenced places full of bread. Father told me of you blokes. Them rich folk pay you for sitting out in their garden all dressed up like some nitwit. Such a boondoggle Father said. You be one of them boondogglers, ain't you?"

"You confuse me, lad. I ain't got no business with those jokers. Nor do I waste time. I do be a clay gnome, perhaps. I ask only about them violet mushrooms you have there."

"These spindly things? In bazillion, they been popping up around 'ere. Up in the windows, even. Father couldn't blink it when them got up around the parlor door and in the neighbor's gutter!"

"There's plenty, then? Say, I've been searching decades for them. Would you mind me snagging a few?"

"What for? They valuable? Father would boil me alive if they're worth a pretty penny."

"They have no worth to you, lad. Worry not. But they got magic. From where I come across the sea, the mushrooms got healing properties."

"They got 'ealing wounds? Too useful to—"

"No, no. Not healing wounds, lad. These mushrooms keep us gnomes' wind clean, you see. We had been catching coughs for ages, and I'd gotten quite bored of coughs. The tomes say them violet shrooms will make the coughs relax."

"You say you be clay? How would one breathe, then?"

"Breathe? Lad, we don't breathe."

"You don't need the mushrooms, then."

"No, no. The shrooms keep us gnomes' minds sharp. The coughs be a lack of mental clarity and powers. Lad! You can't eat them—"

"Who says?"

"—or sell them either way."

"With the right bargain!"

"The right bargain? Half you sticked-legged creatures can't see bits or bob of them!"

"See, you be a boondoggle."

"You, lad, are insufferable! But I tell you what. We have a bargain. You give me the shrooms and I leave, or I fight tooth and nail for them and then leave!"

"That ain't a bargain!"

"You see, lad. I've been at this game too long. I am in no mood to pick battles with you and would have likely been on my way with a sack of shrooms to boot if not for the likes of you. I would greatly appreciate it if you would set me down... Now, preferably."

"You'd be running away, then!"

"What is the matter in that? We clearly have nothing to deal or settle!"

"I—I would quite like it if you stayed. You are a queer fellow, and I haven't seen anything or anyone like you in the city. Blokes don't poke about here. No one wants to..."

"Lad, I bring good luck, not company."

"But... You are welcome company."

"And I am so elsewhere. I have gnomes to get these shrooms too. I've been gone quite long enough—long enough for them to believe I'm smashed. We live and forget lad, but I bet you won't particularly remember after smelling the violet shrooms..."

- - -

Did I skip a color? Yes.

Why? I wanted to make sure I "finished" the rainbow (Sorry, indigo) before I possibly get eliminated from the Smackdown. Once I get eliminated, I probably won't have enough time to finish out the rounds.

But that's up to the debate of my schedule.

Also, I hope this dialogue makes sense-