A walk in the woods

Fiction inspired by a phrase (and notable as my first complete piece of fiction in perhaps a year)....


I turned a gold nugget into dust.

I didn't mean to, and I wish I had been able to predict the inconceivable outcome. I came by the nugget innocently enough one day while walking through a winding and damp forest. I had inexplicably chosen a decrepit pair of tattered boat shoes over my gum-boots that morning, I think because I did not expect to be wandering through the forest. I probably thought - no, I definitely thought - that I was just going to pop into the back yard for a bit of weeding. Regardless, I somehow ended up wandering and because the weather had recently turned from damp and cold, to the light and clean brightness of spring, I just kept walking. Had I reflected on the recent weather change it may have struck me that the forest, which being slightly enchanted is lush in a way that one might expect to see in an animated fairy tale, would still be damp due a dearth of sunlight penetrating its sparkling canopy.

Sure enough, after enjoying 56 kilometers of winding trail, I found myself waist deep in a peanut buttery stew of molten silver. On any other day I may have chosen to collect some of the molten silver in my satchel so that I could fashion some toothbrushes upon my return home, but today was Thursday, and Thursday is no day for silver collection. Lest anyone be concerned for my safety - what with wading through the molten silver -let me assure you that the silver allergy I suffered as a child, has almost completely cleared. Interestingly however, had it not been for the sniffles I was suffering as a result of the vestiges of this once traumatic allergy, I never would have reached high above my head to retrieve the leaf I had intended to use as a handkerchief. It was only in looking up to do so that I locked eyes with the leprechaun sitting on a branch well above my head. Naturally the shock he felt at being discovered perturbed him deeply. After all, it would not be every day that a mildly silver allergic, flightless dragon wading knee deep in molten silver would be making his way through a slightly enchanted forest on a whim. The shock seemed to trigger a some visceral response in his loins because, in his startled state, he jumped a little bit. Now, had he not been inspecting the nugget of gold in his hand with a jewelers monocle I doubt that anything dramatic would have happened. I likely would have carried on wading in mild delight at having seen a leprechaun, while he would have likely counted himself lucky that I was flightless, mildly silver allergic and simply out for a stroll. But as it was, because he was precariously balanced on such a small branch, so high in the tree, the start caused him to dislodge his tiny rump and to start to roll forward. Naturally, seeing his inevitable trajectory leading directly to my position I fully intended to capitalize on the situation, and thus opened my mouth wide in anticipation of a small but very delicious snack. Seeing this, he was clearly now desperately out of sorts, and already starting his tumble he released the nugget from his hands in order to free them and allow him to grip the branch on which he had been perched.

I suppose in my old age I simply was no longer prepared to deal with the excitement of those sorts of situations, or perhaps it was a strange and unexpected manifestation of my mild silver allergy, because it was right at this moment that I experienced a fiery flare of heartburn. Needless to say, I belched a geyser of fire high into the air which immediately incinerated both the falling gold, and the leprechaun, not to mention a good portion of quite a beautiful tree.

I suppose it would have been more accurate to start this tale by saying that I turned a gold nugget and a leprechaun into dust.