The Very First Spore

Deep within an ancient forest sat a large pond surrounded by life. The water was kept crystal clear by fizzing oxygen plants, that bubbled clarity through the water. Rounded stones sat at the bottom giving frogs a perfect hiding place to kick from and newts swished with the fish happily away from the passing webbed feet of the ducks coasting by.

Flies and pond skimmers hopped on the surface, delicately causing ripples akin to raindrops. Spiders chased after them, using their infinitesimal hairs to repel the water. They dared to step away from their webs of safety for such abundance.

Frequently dipping their lips into the surface were deer. They gracefully leaned down and took the gift of life into their mouths, gulping deeply. Flies, frogs, and ducks alike would scatter at their appearance, especially those with antlers. The deer's reflections rippled away into the pond as if they were giving something back as they were taking.

Under the mud around the pond tunneled moles. Small mice-like creatures with great shoveling hands as they were, they scooped the dirt away into perfectly formed underground networks together. The wetness of the pond provided an ideal squelchy hunting ground for them to suck down slippery worms, gulping them down in one.

Of course, the fairies lived there too. They took residence within an overgrown blackberry bush on the banks of the pond. During the Spring and Summer months, they would eat the berries from the bush, boiling them into jam which they kept in tiny clay pots. Then, during the Autumn and Winter months, they would nibble on the roots.

Fairies were born with the ability to conjure fire or ice using magic gifted to them by the gods. Those who were not gifted an element were gifted delicate wings on which to fly.

Fire fairies had orange skin, adorned with gentle white stripes. Long-limbed and fast, they flitted around the forest lighting up the air with a warm glow.

Ice fairies had pasty white skin mostly covered with splotches of blue freckles. With flat noses and small ears, they had pudgier bodies and were well-suited to frigid temperatures. They hopped around the forest slowly, emitting a cold fog.

Flying fairies had variable skin colors, depending on their place of birth. Where their real beauty showed was in their wings. Depending on their family line, the wings could mimic that of a butterfly, moth, or fly. Some unfolded lacy and waxy while others flapped in delicate softness.

The fairies by the pond had a problem. The bush in which they lived was causing the delicate moth-like wings damage. Thorns within the bush prevented many of the flyers from taking flight. The fire fairies attempted to help by burning the thorns away, but they were unable to. In likeness, the ice fairies tried to freeze the thorns off, to no avail.

Without flyers, the fairies within the blackberry bush had no air defense against large birds who liked to prey on them. A fairy could make a nice meal for a wood pigeon. The fire fairies tried their best to stop others from being picked off, but once a bird took off, there was no helping a poor caught fairy.

One particularly harsh winter saw the fairies struggle for food. Usually, the flyers would ascend to the treetops to fetch a nut or two. However, this winter saw every single flyer grounded by the thorns in the blackberry bush. Fairies shed their wings once a year, but they could not wait for help. They had no food, defense, or mobility, They had no choice but to ask the pond god for help.

The blue crane oversaw the large pond in the forest. All life within and around it was her responsibility. She maintained a balanced ecosystem and was careful to enforce her strict rules on every creature there. Any disturbance, no matter how little, was met with swift justice. She was protector, mother, and nurturer.

The fairies appealed to the blue crane that winter.

"Please, give us a material of our own. The spiders have their webs, the birds have the trees, the moles the dirt, and the frogs their water. Yet, we have a spiky bush that pierces our wings. We need a soft material for our home, something that feeds us too!"

The blue crane considered the fairies. They had marched on foot to the other side of the pond and appealed in great desperation.

"I empathize," she said, her voice ethereal, "but I cannot create something so convenient for any creature here."

The fairies cried. The living conditions had taken their toll on the group. They were starving, exhausted, and unstable.

The blue crane considered them again.

"I have been writing a recipe," she spoke with hesitation. "I think the material could help you."

The faires chattered in enthusiasm.

"It is not perfect, and I will need ingredients."

"Anything!" they shouted.

The crane felt herself smile. She had gifted the fairies with fire and ice magic for their devotion and determination. She had created them as innovators. Though, since their invention of 'shoes', little feet covers made of moss, they had invented very little.

'Perhaps that is due to their issues in the bush. Working to survive takes time and thought,' she thought to herself.

A perfectionist by nature, the blue crane wondered if her recipe was truly ready but decided to ask the fairies for the ingredients anyway. They would take time to gather.

"I will need; powdered spider web, stewed duckweed, lichen from a tall tree, and copper dust."

The fairies took notes on bark paper, listing the ingredients.

"I will need them by next winter."

Four fairies were tasked with retrieving the ingredients required by the blue crane. Some fairies angrily cursed the pond god for not helping them immediately while others were too busy maintaining the group to help.

Finn the fire fairy was tasked with retrieving the spider's web. He decided to waste no time and collect it in the winter. Spider webs were starkly visible with frost.

He used a long stick to gather the web from recently abandoned structures. He picked the old flies out of them before returning to the blackberry bush.

The issue was powdering the web. The stretchy, stringy substance refused to be crushed, burned, or frozen. It was simply too strong.

Finn was walking around the pond's edge when he saw a deer trying to take a drink from the pond, only it was frozen. Seizing his opportunity, Finn ran as fast as he could to the bush to collect the web and sprinted at the deer.

"Deer!"

The deer picked up its head and listened for the small sound.

"Down here, Deer!"

The deer looked down to see Finn, who was burning fire from his hair in an attempt to be seen.

"Oh, fairy, right?" the deer asked.

"Aye! I am a fairy!" he shouted back, excitedly. "I need your help!"

"What do you need?" the deer asked.

"I need you to use your flat teeth to grind this into a powder!" Finn held up his web-covered stick.

"I wish I could say this is the strangest thing a fairy has asked of me," the deer laughed. "Pass it here."

Finn held up the stick to the deer who skimmed the web from it. The deer began to grind the web.

"Tastes like moss..." the deer mused.

"Oh, here, while you're chewing I'll just..." Finn trailed off before using his fire to melt a small drinking hole into the pond ice.

"Thank you!"

"No problem!"

"You got a place I can put this?"

Finn ran to get a large leaf, placed it on the floor, and gestured to it. The deer spat a glob of granular goop onto it.

"Do you think we did it?" the deer asked.

"Not sure, it certainly looks different! I will put it in the sun to dry. Thank you, Deer!"

Spring came quickly. An ice fairy named Inis had been waiting for the pond to thaw and the duckweed to grow back to collect it.

Armed with a grass basket, she slowly made her way across the pond by freezing the water under her feet. When a frog came kicking towards her, she froze the water around her. When fishes opened their mouths to swallow her up, she hopped away gracefully. Inis was perfect for the task.

She met a duck along the way.

"Hello there, Fairy." Ducks are very civilized creatures.

"Hello, Duck!" Inis replied cheerily.

"What are you collecting in that basket?"

"Duckweed."

"Wonderful! That stuff is always getting stuck in my feathers! Just say the word and I will help you in any way I can!"

"Thank you, Duck!"

She returned home to the bush and hung up the duckweed to dry. She placed it next to a large leaf covered in white - the drying web.

A flying fairy called Freya was chosen to collect the lichen from a tall tree. She was the fairy with the most flight experience and one of the oldest in the group.

As with the rest of the flyers, her wings had been shredded by the thorns in the blackberry bush, so she could not simply fly up into a tree and collect the lichen. She had to climb.

It was long into the Summer when Freya had to admit defeat. She had tried to climb the tallest tree in the forest many times and was too exhausted to continue. She begged the group of fairies to take the burden of her task away, but none could accept. They were too busy trying to create a blackberry jam to last the winter.

Freya had failed.

An elderly fairy called Ide was chosen to collect the copper dust. In truth, the fairies had no idea where to start collecting something like copper dust.

In the winter, Ide tried to dig down into a root well. She found her old body unable to get very far.

In the Spring, Ide asked the moles where to get copper dust. They laughed at her, snorting at how deep copper is in the ground and how a dusty fairy like her had no chance of getting it.

In the Summer, Ide plotted a heist.

When winter returned again, Ide grabbed a tiny stone pickaxe and a beeswax candle before descending into the mole's tunnels and setting to work.

The four fairies gathered together the day before they were due to deliver their ingredients to the blue crane.

"How on earth did you manage to crush it?" Inis asked Finn while she stirred a clay pot full of duckweed and water over a fire.

"I asked a deer to chew it for me," Finn explained happily, further crushing the web powder in a stone pestle and mortar.

"Nice! I met a friend too!"

"Oh yes?"

"Yes, a very polite duck." Inis smiled.

"You young'uns had nicer encounters than me, by the sounds of it," Ide arrived with a sack over her shoulder.

"Ide!" they greeted happily, running over to take the sack from her. She stretched her shoulders gratefully.

"Those moles give you a hard time?" Finn asked angrily, his hair flaring in sparks.

"Oh, nothing I could not handle," Ide brushed it off quickly.

The three sat in companionable silence. Finn continued to crush the spider's web into a finer powder, Inis continued to stir her strange duckweed soup and Ide propped her feet up in well-earned rest.

The sun had begun to set when Ide asked, "Where has Freya gotten to?"

Finn and Inis shrugged.

"Is she not your cousin Inis?"

"She is, but she's always been so independent. The family never really knows where she is," Inis replied.

"Give me that spoon, girl. Go and find your cousin." Ide said with an elders authority.

Inis set off to find Freya.

It did not take Inis very long to find Freya. She had been watching the group of fairies from a short distance away. She was in great distress, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Freya, what is it?" Inis asked worriedly.

"I could not... I couldn't climb the trees. I tried... all year!" She was hyperventilating.

Inis was in shock. Freya was such a confident fairy, with a long history of flying well past the treetops.

"Why did you not say anything to me?"

"I could not bear the embarrassment! I had hoped I was not the only one to fail, but now I see that I am."

"Alright, alright, we have the rest of the night," Inis began.

"No! There is no way! I have tried everything!"

"Everything except asking for help, waddle-wings! Finn! Ide!"

The four fairies stood at the base of the tallest tree in the forest.

"Did you try using twigs as a walkway across the branches?"Finn asked.

"Of course I did!" Freya replied hotly.

"Maybe we could climb as far as we can with someone on our backs..." Ide mused.

"I think that would just exhaust us all. It takes energy to hold on to someone too," Freya replied.

The four heard a pap pap pap behind them.

"Excuse me, hello there, I was wondering if you would mind keeping the noise at an absolute minimum..."

"DUCK!" Inis shouted, making the aforementioned creature jump.

"Ah, hello again, little blue fairy who likes collecting duckweed," the duck smiled.

"Duck! I'm Inis! You offered to help me, right?"

"My name is Waddlesby."

"Your name is Wollumby?!" Finn launched into a laughing fit.

"Waddlesby - and yes, I offered to help you collect duckweed..."

"We need help collecting lichen now, can you help us, would you help us?" Freya began to hope for the first time in a full year.

"What does collecting lichen entail? I do not know what lichen looks like..." Waddlesby trailed off.

"Freya would climb on your back. You would fly up to the treetop and land on a high branch. Freya would collect the lichen and climb back onto your back and voila! You glide down together back to us!" Inis brainstormed.

"And in return?" Waddlesby asked

"I will clear the pond of duckweed every Spring," Inis promised.

"And...?"

"I could thaw some ice in the winter so you can drink from the pond?" Finn offered.

"And...?"

"...and we will not disturb your sleep ever again." Ade laughed, knowing what Waddlesby was really looking for.

"Hop on then, Freya"

The sun was rising.

Inis would never forget the sight of her cousin, grinning from ear to ear on the back of a gliding duck with arms full of lichen. Ide and Finn cheered as they descended.

Together, the four fairies gathered their ingredients together and ran to the blue crane. She had appeared for them.

"You have proven your ingenuity..." with this she looked at Finn.

"...your friendliness..." her eyes turned to Inis.

"...your cunning..." she turned to Ine.

"...and your persistence, even in failure." she looked at Freya, who had begun to cry again.

"Well done. You are truly worthy of my new creation."

The blue crane opened her wings wide, a spectacular sight of pure feathers bent around the fairies. The ingredients began to glow and float into the air. They swirled together, mixing and twirling.

Suddenly, a flash of light blinded the fairies. When they recovered, a tiny brown spec floated where the ingredients had been. It floated into Freyas trembling hands.

"That's it?" Finn blurted. Ide whacked him on the shoulder.

"Thank you, great pond guardian, for your gift," she corrected.

They bowed.

"It will grow into an edible sponge, with fruiting bodies large enough to live in. It will have no flowers or seeds but will produce great amounts of its own kind. With enough time, the growths will penetrate the roots of the tallest trees and the deepest tunnels. Everything in this forest will become connected. It will touch the whole of life. It will protect, nurture, and create..."

"You are leaving us, aren't you?" Ide asked sagely.

"Wait, what?!" Inis and Finn exclaimed.

"You are wise. Yes, this is my final creation. If I may brag, I think it shall be my best!"

Freya, who had been staring at the spore in wonder, looked back at the blue crane.

"It is," she said softly, "we will take care of it, I promise."

"Thank you, dear fairies, for asking me for help."

With that, the blue crane took flight. Her wide body glided gracefully over the pond for the final time until she disappeared into the clouds.

It is common knowledge that fairies live in mushroom houses. Though, many do not know the tale of the four great gatherers who made it possible, nor the acts of the pond god they revered. In the coming years, the flying fairies' wings grew back strongly and the fairies bred delicious mushrooms to eat. It was the perfect material for them.

Now, in every forest across the globe, mycelium winds around the ecosystems connecting every organism to one another. The spores spread far and wide providing food and powerful medicines to fairykind - proving that asking for help can enable the greatest of changes.

That is how the mushrooms came to be!

A/N: Phew! This was intended as a 1000-word piece, nearly 3000 words later, and here we are! I hope you enjoyed the tale of the four gatherers and how the mushrooms came to be!

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