”It’s a mushroom with green glowing spots you fool. You can’t possibly miss it at night!”

Those words kept ringing back through his mind as he wandered through the woods at night. They had been spoken to him by a very smug and condescending doctor whom he currently had the displeasure to call his client. The fool had apparently taken offence that Ambrose had the audacity to ask for a more specific description of the mushroom.

”Like I’m actually going to spend my free time researching fungus.” He said to himself with a scoff and roll of his eyes as he tread deeper into the forest. He had been attempting to get the doctor to narrow down the location in the woods that he would need to search for the mushroom. Seeing as this particular type of fungus was highly illegal to have in possession, he didn’t much fancy the idea of getting caught looking for it.

However, he supposed mushrooms with glowing green spots should be able to be easily identified, especially at night, regardless of knowing where they grew heaviest. Then again, the forest was rather large, he could potentially spend hours in this god-forsaken place and come out empty handed, especially if the sun started coming up, or worse, he got caught.

Stop worrying. He told himself, You know for sure that they grow in these woods, so it’s not like you’re going on a wild goose chase. Just focus. Taking a deep breath, he renewed his focus, making sure to take in every detail that he could, so as not to miss anything.

It was dull and tedious work, and again, he wondered why he was putting himself through such, Oh who are you kidding. It’s 25,000 jewels to find some damn shrooms that’s why. You’d be a fool not to take up such an easy offer. Then again, the bastard did conveniently leave out the bit about the things being highly illegal, AND toxic. That would have been nice to know ahead of time, but since when did mad scientists ever make things easy.

It was about two hours into his search when he thought he had finally stumbled upon the mushrooms the doctor had described. He sighed with relief, ready to gather the amount requested, get the hell out of the woods, and drop off the illicit substances, but just as he crouched down and reached out to grab one of them he stopped. Leaning in closer, he noticed that these mushrooms were far too pale, almost white in color, and he specifically remembered the doctor saying the ones he wanted were grey.

He continued to stare at the fungus, debating whether to go ahead and just grab these ones, thinking that they might actually be the right ones, or that maybe they would dupe the fool. But somehow, he doubted the man was actually that foolish. He groaned a bit as he stood back up to continue his search.

There they are. He thought a few minutes later when he came upon yet another small gathering of luminescent mushrooms, but yet again, upon closer inspection he noticed these ones weren’t quite right either, they were far too fat. And he definitely remembered the doctor saying they should be skinny. ”What the hell.” He said with a bit of a growl, eyes scanning the woods once more.

It would be roughly another two hours, and several swearing storms later before he would finally find the correct mushrooms the doctor had requested. Each time he would arrive at another small gathering of luminescent shrooms, he would find that there would be at least one minor detail that didn’t match the doctors description of tall, skinny, and completely grey with luminescent green dots. Some were too short, others too fat, some were white, or some were green, some had glowing blue dots, while others had glowing white dots, the combinations were dizzying, and undeniably frustrating.

It was only when he was about to finally say screw it, he can keep his damn jewels, when he happened to stumble across the right ones by complete accident. He’d gotten a bit turned around in his agitation, torn between giving up, or trying one last time, when he’d accidentally stepped on one. He looked down at his shoe to see exactly what it was that was causing his shoe to glow, and that’s when he saw them.

At first he was skeptical, something to be expected after being duped repeatedly by the damn things. But after several checks, and re-checks, he was happily ripping out the fungus as fast as he could, eager to be done with this request, and out of the woods.

With the bag given to him by the doctor filled to the brim with the illegal shrooms, he began the trek back out of the woods. But unfortunately, it wasn’t as fast as he was hoping. Apparently he had made it much deeper into the woods than he had thought. The plus side, he wasn’t slowed down by the need to scan every inch of ground. That being said, it still took him the better part of three hours to make his way back out of the forest and into town.

He knew the doctor had told him to make his way back to him immediately after finding the mushrooms, but seeing as the prick had in fact sent him on a wild goose chase with his lack of details, he figured he could make the man wait a bit longer. So in the meantime Ambrose whiled away another couple hours dawdling through a couple of the stands that opened earlier than the others, and even buying himself a new jacket.
When he figured he’d waited long enough, and that the doctor should be good and agitated now, he finally arrived back at the man’s shop. He was right, and was internally beaming at the barely concealed anger on the doctor’s face, ”What in the blue blazes took so damn long?!”

”Oh you know, you should always take the time to stop and smell the roses now and then.” He said with an innocent smile, then swung the bag over his shoulder and tossed it to the doctor.

”Yeah, whatever. Here.” The doctor responded irritably as he tossed the bag of jewels to Ambrose and promptly slammed the door in his face.

”Pleasure doing business with ya.” He said, knowing he would be heard, and gave a mock salute, then turned and left.

[EXIT]

Word Count: 1,088/1,000