Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 20

The annoying girl in the purple dress was back again.

Cloverana knew just about everything there was to know about tending magical garden plots. Hard lessons that mother had beaten into her about which soil types could handle mana and how closely to space fertilizer crystals. There are obscure rules governing which phases of the moon are best for planting and harvesting. Re-animated mushrooms and other fungi were safe and profitable, whereas opportunistic slimes could be risky and dangerous to work with.

"Violet" didn't appear to know the rules of green thumb, or seem to care about any other coven's guidelines. This was a moniker she'd invented for the girl based on her usual attire; the thought of asking what her name actually was to her face made Cloverana angry. Every interaction with Violet had been humiliating, and asking such a basic question at this point felt like an admission of defeat.

Like the time she'd tried to warn Violet about the dangers of farming that particular breed of monster; little miss purple had feigned confusion at first, and then lit the entire grove up with that obnoxious million watt smile before asking,
"Oh- you mean oppies! Aren't they adorable?"

She called opportunistic slimes "oppies?!"

Cloverana wound up forgetting to disenchant the trowels that day; Violet's whole "oppie" wrangling routine wound up being so completely distracting. The rogue tools wound up making fine spades once she'd managed to subdue them the next morning, but now even thinking about digging was uncomfortable. The memory of Violet gracefully skipping in tight, inter-braided loops, leading almost a dozen slimes across shifting sigil patterns and ley lines came unbidden. The opportunists were liable to turn hostile in droves, no matter how many potions that feline familiar of hers helped brew. Enough was enough! 

If the foolish girl wouldn't listen; if she kept politely shrugging off Cloverana's warnings and wisdom, then she'd need to be taught a lesson. There had to be some way to prove to her that fungaloids were the superior crop; to beat some common sense into that chipper, carefree attitude.
The end of Cloverana's staff made violent contact with the cap of a nearby mushroom and it duplicated in a puff of glittering spores. A plan was forming. She crammed her hat down tighter over her wild bush of hair and grinned mischeviously.

She pictured Violet stumbling over her precious "oppies" and tumbling head over heels. An imagined rogue mushroom's sudden appearance forcing Violet to leap high into the air, pleated skirts flying, and Cloverana's heart skipped a beat.

She was going to need a lot more arcane spores...

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