The Emerald Spark

[Mickey Mouse]

At last… home again.

Well, as much as Minnie Mouse could call the Tangled Green home. She’d begun to think that she and Mickey would never find their way back to the Disney Realms, and for a long portion of their hibernation in the Vasty Deep, had started to think maybe they’d never make their way back to the Clubhouse, either.

Thank goodness she did, though - because the place was a wreck. She supposed after being left empty for two years it was only natural for something to become derelict, but Minnie had hoped some of the residents of Ambrosia would do something to keep it up to snuff. As it turned out, even being a Lady of a place didn’t guarantee that people would look out for you at all, and when she arrived, finally, back to her home, she found herself with lots of work to do… and lots of time on her hands.

The people of Ambrosia, for their part, seemed to not have even noticed her disappearance. When she’d walked down the streets since returning back, they waved at her casually, some offering a “long time no see!” but - much to her surprise and displeasure - no one asking her to regale them with stories of her absent years. And she had so much to tell, too! About the mouse pair’s time in Nippur with the Gold Cross, about their subsequent retreat to the Vasty Deep, about their encounter with another settlement of misfit toys on Cinnabar Island…

Oh well. She supposed if they didn’t want to hear it, they didn’t deserve it.

Her house deserved a pick me up, though. She spent all her waking hours cleaning it, reorganizing it, trying to get the feng shui just right. Furniture shifted around the room for day to day as the house’s matriarch experimented with new arrangements. Eventually, she ran out of options to try, and seeing as it still didn’t feel like a proper place to live in yet, she decided to breathe some life into it.

All that to say, she needed a plant or two.

She knew that part of the problem could probably be chased back to Mickey’s absence. The lady mouse never truly felt complete while her rascal of a husband was away. She’d have to get used to it, though, because she knew now that he’d wriggled out of her embrace and gotten himself back into the world, she’d probably never get him to come back with any sense of permanence. He was an adventurous mouse, after all, and one with a steadfast conscience: helping people was all he knew, and admittedly, that’d been one of the main reasons she’d fell in love with him.

A shrub wouldn’t be able to replace him, but it would certainly have to suffice. She combed the outskirts of Ambrosia for pretty flowers, scanning the trees for blossoms that had popped up since she’d last been in the verse. The Tangled Green had a knack for sprouting new and interesting plants all the time, and in that way, it certainly earned its spot as the Omniverse’s definitive forest.

She’d stumbled upon the most precious batch of periwinkle lilies when she heard leaves crunching from behind her.

Minnie Mouse swept herself around, her scepter dropping out of a swirl of rainbow energy and into her hand. She aimed it at the young man standing across the clearing. From a tree nearby, a strange-looking woman peeked out. His companion, no doubt. A bit of a drastic ‘hello,’ perhaps, but she’d been on the run so long that she couldn’t be sure about anyone at first glance. No one could be trusted until they’d proven otherwise.

“Who are you?” she scowled. Minnie’s big eyes narrowed.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” she shrugged, still holding her weapon out, “Introduce yourself. Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?”

The lady mouse harrumphed and waited for a reply.