Strawberry Shroomy's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

At dawn Shroomy stepped into the glass shed and found her ripening berries soft and weeping on the vines. She moved fast, picked the best, and laid them inside her enchanted ice chest where the cold held them firm. Wheels creaked on the road. A traveling merchant pulled up beside her fence, his wagon piled high with bright fruit from a dozen places she had never been. He tipped his straw hat. "Smelled your berries a mile back," Mika Sunharvest said. "Show me." She brought him a basket from the chest. He tasted one, nodded once, and counted silver into her palm. He left her a crate of empty glass bottles in trade. "For the rest," he said. "You'll want them by night." He drove on before she could ask what he meant. She took his hint. The bruised leftovers she crushed and strained, pouring the red juice into the bottles and sealing each with cork. She lined them along the shed wall, where they began to settle and breathe into something stronger than juice. At dusk she walked the burnt rows one last time and stopped cold. Deep wagon ruts cut through the soil where no wagon had passed. At their center sat a wide scorched ring, the dirt baked in dark circles, leaves curled black at its edge. She knelt and touched the ash. It was still warm.