The Trouble With Mushrooms

Pandora was a wanderer, she always had been. She followed where the wind called her, dancing along life without a care.

But this was enough to make her question those decisions. The Windy Region, which she had not visited for many a moon, was looking a bit worse for wear. Mushrooms seemed to have sprouted up all over the place, growing from the ground, trees, and even a few somehow managing to grow on the leaves of bushes! Pan really didn’t know what to make of it. Neither did her familiar, Poe, who perched on her shoulder.

Her attention on the mushrooms, Pandora nearly ran face first into the hind end of another horse. With a startled snort, she pranced back, long tail swishing and tangling in the briars of a bush. Poe’s wings flapped and he croaked in alarm, taking off and flying to roost in a higher branch.

“Dangit,” Pan muttered, the other forgotten as she turned and began to pick her hair from the bush with her teeth.

“Oh, my apologies!” a sing-song voice said from behind her. It was a pretty voice, very musical and cheerful but distinctly masculine.

“Doesn’t matter, didn’t see you there with all these damn shrooms,” Pan muttered through a mouthful of hair. With a swift tug she untangled her tail, and turned back, only to find herself face-to-face with the Wind Deity, Frysil.  

Pandora blinked in surprise a few times, before lowering her head slightly in respect. “My apologies instead, I did not immediately recognize who I ran into,” she said. Pan wasn’t particularly reverent of any deity, but she at least held respect for them and what they did.

“Oh there are plenty of newcomers around here,” Frysil assured with a smile. He folded his beautiful butterfly wings along his back, and ducked under a particularly broad mushroom growing from a tree, gesturing for Pandora to follow.

Following the stallion, Pan found herself in an open space, free of brambles and bushes for her hair to snag on. That was the thing Pan hated most about forests and brush- the amount of times she got twigs and brambles in her hair. Grooming them all out too way too long.

“As you could probably see, the Windy Region is having a bit of…. Difficulty,” Frysil said, turning to her again. Pan quirked her head to the side slightly. This stallion was tough to read; his jovial attitude seemed a bit blase for the situation.

“I’d say,” Pan said, gesturing with her right forehoof toward all the mushrooms. “What happened?”

Frysil laughed, his tone bright and joyful like a bell, or perhaps singing springtime birds. There was a feeling of warm breezes and kind winds in his tone, and for someone who had recently learned to fly, Pan felt a sense of home around him.

It was a great comfort.

“Well something got out of control here, we are working on figuring it out,” Frysil said with a smile. “That’s why there are so many newcomers visiting. I put out a call for assistance getting rid of all these mushrooms.”

Pandora gave a snort of a laugh. “Guess I walked into that one,” she said with a slight smile. “Almost literally. Well, while I’m here anything I can do to help?”

Frysil’s eyes brightened and he nodded. “Follow me!”

Pandora followed Frysil deeper through the maze of mushrooms. As they walked, Frysil chatted about different features of his home, and Pandora felt a sense of peace and home in the area, despite the mushrooms everywhere. The fungi in question seemed to be getting larger as they went along. It became so crowded that Poe, who had been flying above, glided down and landed on Pan’s back again. The raven croaked again, and preened his feathers as he rode along, seemingly unconcerned about the large fungi.

“And this is where some of the biggest are!” Frysil said, coming to a halt. The mushrooms were indeed huge, bigger than a horse. Pan looked up at them with surprise.

“So you want me…. To get rid of these?” She asked. Frysil nodded with a smile.

“It would be much appreciated, any help you can give!”

His ears twitched as he heard something on the wind that was inaudible to Pan.

“Looks like I have someone else to greet, you should be good here though! Thanks for your help!” Frysil said cheerfully, spread his wings, and took off.

Pan stood for a moment, staring at his retreating form.

“Well that's…. Not helpful. How on earth am I supposed to deal with this?”

An hour later, Pandora was feeling a bit woozy. She had tried hitting them, tried kicking them, even stabbing them with her horn. She tried eating them, but they didn’t taste quite right. Even her full force pushing them left her at a loss.

Poe clicked his beak, watching her from where he perched on top of the largest of the mushrooms. He seemed to be laughing at her, and Pan took a moment to glare at her familiar.

“Well if it's so easy to get rid of these why don’t you just do it?” Pan grumbled as she took a step back.

She considered her options. Her magic was that of flight, and strengthened by the equinox she could fly around them, but she doubted if her strength would be enough if she tied something around these behemoth fungi and pulled on it while flying. Pan wasn’t going to risk another disaster if she tried to use magic she didn’t understand. She could feel the edges of it there, but caution warred with chaos within her. The caution eventually won out. Pandora wasn’t quite certain if it was rogue equinox magic that had caused this situation in the first place, and it wasn’t something she wanted to dabble with. But she could be resourceful. ‘What do I have at my disposal already?’ she thought.

“What if….” Pan murmured, studying the mushrooms. A small patch of snow had gathered around her hooves, falling from her coat. Normally it melted quickly, but she had been standing and contemplating long enough there was a buildup.

Two quick bounds had Pan leaping into the sky. Startled by the sudden movement Poe croaked, flapping up into the sky as Pan flew around the mushrooms, coming to hover near the base of the biggest. Moonlight swirled around her, and she watched as the snow began to fall around the base of the mushroom.

Perhaps if tugging them wouldn’t work, she would freeze them out!

The night continued to pass quickly, and as it got colder in the night her snow fell heavier on the ground. It was working! The mushrooms were freezing, slowly, but they were freezing. It was better than nothing, she supposed. There was probably a faster way to do this, but she figured if she could fell a few she would be good to go, and wouldn’t feel bad for not helping.

A few swift kicks had the largest of the mushrooms breaking, then falling to the ground.  It hit with a crash and shattered into pieces. Poe croaked his annoyance, wings flapping as he quickly dove away and roosted on a branch.

Pan sighed softly, her magic still flowing through her strongly from the grace of the equinox as she looked at the one felled gigantic mushroom. It had already been a long night but….

“One down…… thousands to go,” Pan sighed to herself, and moved on to the next.