[Althy Day] Unwanted Pet

[KaliWenn]

“Why are you following me?” Kalista pondered, staring down at the tiny creature huddling along the leaf litter.

It was an odd creature. One might look at it and mistake it for a mushroom. Perhaps it was a mushroom of some sort. A fleshy white-blue cap stood atop a fuzzy white stalk, which seemed normal enough. But, if one stooped to peek underneath -- and Kalista had, several times -- there were stranger things afoot. There was a row of beady, blinking eyes right underneath its cap. And if one was quick enough to catch it moving out of the corner of their eyes, one could see it pull wormy mycelial threads out of the ground and slink around as if it were a harvestman arachnid. So, it couldn’t actually be a fungus. Could it?

The half-dead trees, orange with autumn had provided a good place for the creature to hide by as it trailed after him. Kalista had seen it duck behind roots, disguise itself in patch or ordinary mushrooms, and hide in swatches of bushy grey-green grass. The little guy had some spunk to him, that was for certain. He had ignored it for a while, pretending he hadn’t seen anything, but it just kept tottering after him!

He stared down the creature for another minute. It didn’t move. Perhaps, hoping he still somehow hadn’t seen it. Kalista took a few steps back and pointedly looked away for half a moment. When he glanced back, he found that the creature was a few feet closer to him as it had been last time he’d looked. Spooky.

“Hrmmm. Maybe you’re just a fan of my good looks and charming demeanor,” the teen concluded, fussing with a bit of flyaway hair that had come loose in a stray breeze. “You can follow along, you know, but I’m not taking care of you.”

Nearly imperceptibly, the creature twitched.

With that, the young necromancer shrugged and turned to continue along down the path.

His curious fungus followed.