The sun-dappled marketplace buzzed with life—merchants shouting prices, children running under stalls, the smell of spices and something suspiciously smoky wafting from a food cart nearby.
Mother Goose, in her human form, clicked her tongue in disapproval as she held up a particularly aggressive-looking carrot. It had fangs. Tiny ones. But still.
Father Hearth, ever the picture of calm, stood beside her like an ancient mountain dressed in simple earthen robes, holding a cabbage that was breathing. Slowly.
"This one exhaled on me," he said in his rumbling, neutral tone. "Twice."
Mother Goose narrowed her eyes at the carrot as it wiggled. "This one tried to bite me. That's the third time today. Why is everything biting me lately?"
"Perhaps you are edible," he said simply, returning the cabbage to the stall with gentle finality. "Or cursed."
"I am not cursed," she huffed. "I cleansed myself thrice this week. It's probably just this ridiculous season. Everything's waking up."
A vendor nearby, a weasel-faced gnome in a lemon-yellow apron, leaned over and grinned. "Special harvest today! Grown under a blood moon, whispered to by root spirits. Very lively!"
Mother Goose blinked. "Lively?! This radish just insulted my posture!"
"You do hunch when you're angry," Father Hearth noted without inflection.
"I do not—!" she stopped, caught her own reflection in a polished beet, and straightened with a grumble.
They continued their stroll, basket in hand, dodging tomatoes that sang softly and a bundle of onions that kept trying to slither away. The further they walked, the stranger the produce became. A melon with a single eye. A bundle of asparagus practicing synchronized dance. A loaf of bread that was weeping.
Father Hearth examined a pear that shivered in his palm. "This one knows fear."
"I knew we shouldn't have come to the Fey District." Mother Goose gave a soft screech of frustration and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I should've let Gunther do the shopping. He's still part goose. They fear him."
"I fear him," Father Hearth said. Not as a complaint. Merely a fact.
After a long moment of silence between them, filled only with the distant sound of yams arguing in a crate, Mother Goose exhaled and turned toward her companion.
"…You still want stew tonight?"
He nodded solemnly. "I shall hunt for ingredients that do not speak."
"Good. And I'll find spices that don't flirt."
And together, the stoic flame and the expressive feather strode further into the maddening market, navigating curses, carnivorous corn, and one potato that whispered secrets best left unknown.