There. Is. Ogre. Snot. On. My. Cap. Ewww, ewww, ewweewwww! This is worse than that joke Gil tells about the mushroom that couldn't get a drink at a bar and the punchline was 'why not? I'm a fungi!" that joke sickens me. And now it's raining. Great, just great. I'm gonna have to put up with all the little perky upshot new rain-mushrooms. Little brats. They always get the rest of us stepped on too! Us mushrooms, so looked down upon. I mean, kids step on us, their moms come shrieking over telling them not to touch because we 'might be poisonous' what a load. And just the other day someone picked Jeff and spent forever looking for something called a smurf before dropping him in the pond! I tell you, there is no respect for mushrooms. Stop this life, I wanna get off! Where can I sign up to be reincarnated as something animate? I don't feel so well… something funny's going on…. Ooooohhhhh…
On the other side of the field (A/N I think it was near a meadow…?) a yellow topped dandelion stood staring up at the clouds. Her name was Kaitlin. Kaitlin the Dandelion stood all alone, surrounded only by boring, weedy grass, and a couple of snobbish sproutlings, certain they were far superior to her because they were oaks. Oooh! Big important oaks… she thought contemptuously. Kaitlin sighed. She missed her siblings. She missed the forest where all their seeds had been germinated. Heck, she even missed the small girl with that weird red cape picking her aunties and uncles and blowing their seeds far, far away, and the tiny boy picking the yellow ones and running after his sister singing 'head pop off! Head pop off!' But even despite her loneliness, Kaitlin couldn't let herself sink into self pity. She knew one day her life would improve. Some other dandelion babies would be blown here, and she'd have a family again. As long as no little children noticed her she'd be just fine. And as long as it didn't rain for a good, long, time. Shiz. Not even half her hopes and dreams would come true. Her yellow petals drooped with rain drops, and she looked at the ground dejectedly. The ants marching past her stem waggled their antennae at her cheerily. She hardly noticed any change besides a tingling in her leaves, but she accredited that to this new depressed mood. It wasn't until she realized the ground was slowly getting farther and farther away that she thought something odd was going on.
The Mushroom, whose name was Cogmuelo (A/N Brownie or Spider points to whoever knows where that came from!) didn't know what was happening either. All he knew was that when he woke up the rain had stopped. The sun was rising, and the grass already getting quite dry. He was sure the rain must have stopped long ago and yet there were no baby mushroom sprouting up, asking questions in their squeaky voices. It was almost too bad; he thought to himself, I wouldn't have minded them for just a little while. I practically would have liked their company. Cogmuelo shook his cap immediately, no, he wouldn't, they would have been annoying little brats. This bad mood was a particularly nasty one, and he wasn't about to let something stupid get him out of it. He sighed loudly and melodramatically, and he looked down at the ground, where an anthill was rapidly growing. It was then that he noticed the thorns. What the…? He thought to himself, since when does a mushroom have thorns? He shook his cap violently, and tried to think of an excuse for this weird hallucination. It must have been that ogre snot. He was probably deathly allergic to it, and at this very moment his own mind was betraying him. He would probably be dead soon, he thought morosely. Leftover drops of rain were dripping off a nearby stalk of grass, into a small puddle. Wondering what was going on, Cogmuelo peered into the puddle, wondering what he would see. He would look like a stupid mushroom with thorns poking out of him, no doubt some kind of an allergic reaction to the monster's mucus, he insisted to himself. Oh, well. Did looks really matter anyway? There was nobody to see him anyway, just some stuffy old stick-up-the-bum blades of grass, anyway. What he did see was red. Lots of red. Silky red petals coming out of a sharp, lanky, green stem. This sight was enough to make him faint again.
When Kaitlin awoke the next morning, it was to the unpleasant murmured giggles of the oaklings. Gossipy twits, was her first thought. She shook her bud to rid herself of the faintness. "What happened…?" she mumbled, half to herself, half hoping for an answer.
"That's what we were going to ask you…" one of the blades of grass wheezed, "You look quite different." But the grass quickly went back to pondering, and was no longer interested in conversation.
One of the oaklings, Sandra, was getting extremely excited "a zinnia!" she squealed, "Maybe I'll become a weeping willow!"
To which another replied, "What could possibly be better than being an oak tree?"
Kaitlin's bud was spinning worse than before. Where was there a zinnia? Then she remembered how the ground had gotten farther and farther away. In the corners of her eyes she could just make out some yellowy-whitish petals. And the grass had said she looked quite different… was she the zinnia?
"Ants." She whispered at a nearby group of the insects. "Am I a zinnia?" the ants carefully put down the tear-drop shaped bottle they were carrying together.
"Looks that way 'ta me, mum." The leader said in a cockney accent. Kaitlin felt she was going to throw up.
The ants continued on, carrying the bottle. They brought it to their queen. She was a good queen, a kind ruler. Reading the bottle she smirked,
"and you said what exactly happened?" she asked, always the enthusiast of romance.
"wel', that grumpy O'd mushroom wuz suddenly some kinda flower. A pret'y one too, red pe'tals. And Kaitie, you know Kaitie, Yer majesty, rih'?" the queen shook her head. She never saw any reason to leave the anthill. "Oh, wel' she's a dandelion. But suddenly she's a—a zinnia! We dunno what's goin' on." The queen smiled
"I do." She said, "your orders are this. Dig up the Mushroom while he's asleep by the roots, and bring him here. Put him near the zinnia. If you see fit, remove those horrendous oaklings. Their roots are beginning to hurt the hill anyway." The inferior ant saluted and began to lead her troops away, through the corridors of the hill, to the other side of the meadow. The queen turned to her current favorite concubine, an ant named Anthony. "Anthony, read this bottle." Anthony did with much difficulty. "Did you understand all of that?" she asked, kindly. He shook his head, regretfully. The queen explained, "It says that it will turn a person and their True Love beautiful for twenty-four hours. If they kiss before the time is up, it becomes permanent."
"Oohhh…" Anthony gasped
"If anything can cheer Cogmuelo up, it's some company." The queen sighed contentedly, "I do so love to play the matchmaker."
When Cogmuelo came around again, everything looked different. The sky wasn't hidden by as many trees, the ground wasn't so devoid of life, and standing nearby was zinnia. She was humming to herself, happily, and staring at the sky.
"Um, hi." Cogmuelo said. "Where am I?"
"Who are you?" Kaitlin asked
"I'm Cogmuelo. Who are you and where am I?"
"I'm Kaitlin. You're… Umm…here. Didn't the ants tell you?"
"Tell me what?" Kaitlin shook her head and began to explain.
Cogmuelo cleared his throat uncomfortably, "so what are we supposed to do?"
"well, I don't know about true love exactly, but I think we should kiss. Roses and zinnias are both annuals." (a/n I think…) Cogmuelo smiled,
"I do like you a lot, so far, I mean!" he added, blushing. Kaitlin smiled,
"I hope this works--" she was cut off by Cogmuelo taking that moment to kiss her. Both flowers smiled and continued kissing,.
The Queen ant sat on the ground near the anthill watching. She sighed happily, it was so perfect. She dabbed at her eyes with a bit of cobweb, as she watched the blossoms talk, and kiss and enjoy each others' company. She could think of no other couple who were better suited. "And they all lived happily ever after." The queen whispered.
This is a Shrek 2 fic. I've branched out in my geekiness. Okay, yea, you know when he's got that potion and he sniffs it and sneezes on that random toadstool, which then turns into a rose? Well, I was wondering who the mushroom's true love was.
Not mine. (As if I had to tell you that) all I own are the characters, (I made up the True Love and aforementioned mushroom was really more like a prop in the movie) not the premises. That's all Dreamworks.