Work Text:
Pairing: Kinoko/Mineta
Prompt: Supernatural, Redemption, Child
Request by: TocachiPlaytime
A small boy ran through the forest, hands out in front of him to push away branches and shrubs. He occasionally slipped and skidded, knees and shins scratched bloody by thorns that tore his hand sewn pants. His mother would surely be furious when he returned home, but for now he had nothing on his mind but escape.
He let out a giggle of unbridled joy as he launched himself over a rotting log, hearing the yelling behind him fade into the chatter of the forest.
He rarely ventured this far, sticking to the village and fields where he could be supervised by the adults. However, this was an adventure! It was also a tactical retreat from some very angry young women.
He was no older than six, armed with nothing but his satchel of cool rocks and the piece of clothing he’d stolen from an unwatched clothing line. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with it, probably bury it, but he liked it when they chased after him.
He was small for his age, wearing handmade clothes that hung off his skinny body. The kanji for his village was sewn into the collar of his shirt, something his mother had always done. His hair was purple as ripe plums and tied up in balls by his mother. He had always said his hair was untamable and best kept at bay with this method. He was barefoot, feet dirty and accustomed to the hard ground.
The boy became less careful as he darted around trees, laughing to himself.
It was because of this that he tripped, crashing into the soil with a yelp.
He laid in the dirt, trying to get the world to stop spinning when he heard a voice.
“Lentinula edodes, pleurotus ostreatus, pleurotus eryngii…” A soft high pitch voice floated by, coming from ahead. “Something is missing.”
The boy quietly picked himself up and creeped forward, not even daring to breathe as he peeked through the bushes.
There was a perfectly circular clearing, and in that clearing, there was a girl. She was young like him, with tiny hands and a round face.
The forest was dim around them, only a few streaks of light managing to get through the canopy. To her back was the largest tree the boy had ever seen, the entire forest in its shadow! The forest floor around the girl was covered in mushrooms of different shapes and sizes. She gently spoke to them, pointing at the different mushrooms as she talked.
“Grifola frondosa, flammulina velutipes… Ah! Cantharellus cibarius!” She sat before a cluster of bright yellow mushrooms and began to scoop away soil with care.
The boy watched the girl for a minute, most enraptured and unnerved by her.
She wore a red dress with white circles on it, and had on a funny hat that looked like a mushroom top. Maybe she lived out here?
He inched closer, trying to get a better look.
The girl stopped, abandoning her digging and standing up to face the woods.
“I know you’re out there.” Her voice was soft, but a shiver ran down the boy’s spine.
She was very pretty, hair cut short to her shoulders and one eye visible through a gap in her bangs. Her eyes were strange, warm brown with pupils like Xs, eyes staring right at him.
He nervously stepped forward, taking care not to step on any of the thousands of mushrooms surrounding them.
“Uh, hi.” The boy said nervously. “I’m Minoru. Do you live in the woods?”
The girl looked at Minoru for a long moment before she nodded.
“Hello, I am Komori. I’ve lived here all my life.” She smiled at him, looking a little scared, but beckoning him closer. Strangely, the mushrooms seemed less dense than before and he was able to pick his way through them.
They sat in the dirt together, looking at each other in mirrored curiosity.
“I’m from the Eastern village!” Minoru pointed to the kanji on his tunic. “I have a mom and five sisters. I’m six years old.” He held up six of his fingers proudly.
Komori nodded, taking a moment to think.
“I live here, in this forest. I have a father. I…don’t know how old I am.” She scrunched up her face.
Minoru didn’t know how someone couldn’t know their age, but maybe the woods people didn’t keep track of that stuff. “Well you don’t look much older than me, so we’re prolly the same age.”
Komori giggled, tracing the cap of a mushroom. “Maybe!”
The two children talked in the silence of the forest. One loud with too much energy in his tiny body, the other content and quiet.
“No one in the village ever goes in these woods, we only use the birchwood forest to hunt and stuff. I didn’t know people lived here.”
“Not many people do.” She said softly, tracing a kanji in the dirt with her finger. “It’s just me and my father.”
The boy gawked at her. “Aren’t you lonely?” Looking around at the woods looming over them, with shadows that stretched and branches that seemed to reach-
“Not at all!” Komori chirped, carefully digging out a cluster of tiny mushrooms that looked like a bundle of white straw. “How could I be lonely when I have all my mushrooms?”
“What’s so great about mushrooms?” Minoru asked, looking very confused. Komori started to carefully break stems from the cluster until she had a tiny bouquet of thin white mushrooms.
She separated them between her hands and held out one toward the boy. He took it hesitantly.
“Try it.” She urged, taking a bite from her bundle of mushrooms.
Minoru followed suit, making a happy noise of pleasant surprise! He didn’t know that plants could taste good.
“Mushrooms are my friends, but they also provide food. You can cook mushrooms or eat them raw, but be careful not to eat any poisonous ones!” She pointed at a red mushroom with white spots.
“Cool!” He looked around at all the mushrooms. “You know all their names?”
“Of course! I grew them after all.” She sounded very proud as she patted a mushroom like one might a child.
She began to point at each mushroom and explain its name and what it was like, and the boy listened obediently.
He only interrupted when he noticed that the few shafts of light peeking through the canopy hand disappeared. He could still see the girl and her mushrooms very clearly, but the forest around him was dark as pitch.
“Komori, I think I should go home now, my mother is gonna be worried.” He felt bad interrupting her impassioned speech on the wondrous cortinarius rubellus, especially when her face fell at his words.
“Oh.” She said softly, hair falling in front of her eyes. “Would you like to take some mushrooms with you?”
Minoru smiled at her. “Yeah!”
He opened his satchel, dumping its contents into the dirt.
“Here, I’ll make it even! These are the coolest rocks I’ve found while exploring!” Some were from rivers, some were from the lakebed, some were found and the fields and other ones he’d been given.
“Your mushrooms are important to you, so I’m gonna let you have something important to me, get it?” He neatly piled his rock collection, proud of how pretty it was. She was giving him some of her friends, and those rocks were his friends! Maybe they’d keep her company!
He paused when he saw the white fabric of the stolen clothing, feeling a stab of guilt.
Something dawned on the boy, something from a story told at his bedside long ago, an old story.
He looked at Komori, really looking at her.
Her dress didn’t have a speck of dirt on it, even as she kneeled on the ground. Her hands were also clean, and every time she reached out, she came away with a mushroom that he was sure hadn’t been there a second ago.
There wasn’t a single bird singing in the trees, and he came to realize that he hadn’t heard any creature since he’d entered the circle.
“Morchella esculenta…enokitake…porcini…ooh! Laetiporus!” She was happily placing mushrooms into his satchel.
“You’re a witch, aren’t you?” He asked softly.
She looked up at him, and when he looked into her eyes, he knew that she wasn’t his age. She was much, much older.
“Are you going to kill me?” His shoulders hunched, hands shaking as he clutched the dirtied fabric. “Because I stole from the line and ran into the woods?” He remembered the reason why he’d never ventured into the darkwood before that day. As a babe he was raised on stories of a great evil in the woods, of a witch who punished trespassers.
Komori sighed, her gaze soft.
“Oh Minoru, silly little thing. You are a good soul, and I trust that you will return what you’ve stolen?” The boy nodded furverently, making her laugh. “Then all is well. You treated my forest with respect, and you gave me company.”
She leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek, watching his face turn as red as an amanita phalloides.
“Can I come visit?” He asked, looking hopeful.
“No, Minoru, you cannot.” Her voice was very serious now, no longer the soft and bubbly speech of a child, but the tone of an adult who knew a great many things. “I am not the only thing in this forest, and if you ever return, I cannot promise your safety.”
The child looked crestfallen at the loss of his found friend, sniffling a bit. That just wouldn't do.
“Minoru, you will find mushrooms growing at the edge of this forest any time you look, and you will never find poison. Though, should any other try and pick my mushrooms, they will only find poison. You may share the mushrooms you pick with anyone, they just cannot pick any themselves.” She closed his satchel and handed it to him, placing her hands over his.
“That is your reward for being such a good friend. I will cherish your gifts for eternity.” She looked at the rocks he had given her, innocuous pieces of earth that held deep meaning.
Minoru watched as mushrooms that glowed green began to grow, forming a line.
“Those are panellus stipticus, they will lead you back to your village.” She let go of his hands, looking at the tiny child whose soul glowed so bright.
She jumped as he threw his arms around her in a tight hug.
“Thank you for being my friend.” He whispered.
Before she could respond he let go, giving a sad wave and following the mushrooms home.
She smiled, kneeling to sort through the rocks. Interestingly enough, one of them tingled with the magic of a river nymph. Perhaps she was not the first non human creature he had met.
A shadow darkened her clearing, making the ring of glowing mushrooms dim. Black tendrils wove across the ground, penetrating every crevice.
“My child, was there a human here?” The keeper of the forest hissed, the rotting wood of his body making the clearing smell of deadfall. The black sockets of his skull watched her carefully.
“No father, just a lost fawn I sent back to his mother.” Komori didn’t blink, and she felt it as Minoru left the forest, her path retreating back into the dirt.
“..very well.” He crawled back up the tree, antlers clattering against the branches.
“Goodnight father.”
“Goodnight Kinoko.”
She waited until he had returned to sleep before sighing in relief. She hoped Minoru heeded her warning and never returned. She didn’t want him to become another victim of the darkwood. She would forget his name out of respect, but she would never forget his face.
She smiled with sharp teeth, stroking the cap of a mushroom.
Kinoko sat in her circle, closing her eyes to listen to the mushrooms scream.