[Well, more specifically, this is what happens when I'm not entirely awake and there are too many people coming through the store for me to pay attention to proofread or do other productive things. Um, speaking of which: Tessa and Lat, Mangetsu chapter is done except checking a couple of sfx and such. Annnnywayyyy...]
One day, I was sweeping leaves out of my store (well, I was trying to anyway...I did a pretty horrible job...), and then, as I was standing in the doorway, I saw an odd thing.
What I saw was a man pushing a baby stroller...except instead of a baby it was carrying 2 pumpkins.
I was like "oh, guy with stroller" then "wait, that's...pumpkins? ......... so...where's the baby?"
I told someone of this occurrence immediately after it happened, and this was his response: “He was probably wondering where the baby was too…"Ah shit, it's in the pumpkin field".â€
…………
…And thus was born the legend of The Pumpkin Child, a human boy raised by pumpkins.
Having been trained by the pumpkins to communicate with all fruits and vegetables, one day (as he was nearing puberty and was thus in his rebellious stage), he decided to embark on a great journey. Along the way, he met a monkey, a ferret, and a prairie dog, whom he befriended by giving them pumpkins. They didn't eat the pumpkins; they were just so confused and amazed and amused by the fact that some kid was carrying around a giant sack of pumpkins and offering them to the creatures he encountered that they thought they just couldn't leave the kid alone, lest he accidentally squish a grasshopper or something by trying to give it a pumpkin.
After hearing his story, his new companions were all even more confused about why this child was travelling around giving his family away to assorted creatures as food.
Eventually, the strange group made its way to a small kingdom. This kingdom had once belonged to the royal family of gourds, but alas, it had been overrun with strawberry ogres. (The existence of strawberry ogres was to forever remain a mystery...not to mention by what methodology strawberries managed to overpower gourds, what with the vast differences in size and squishiness and all.)
Sensing his brethren in peril(actually the entire gourd royal family had already been carved up into old-style jack-o-lanterns…terrible tragedy…but the child had heard tales that there may have been a survivor, the youngest of the gourd family, the lovely Anagorsia), the pumpkin child decided that he must act against this travesty immediately. His companions were sure that he would fail miserably without having at least a few animate creatures on his side, and, aside from that, they rather pitied the child and his apparent insanity, so they decided to accompany him into battle.
After a terrible struggle, the pumpkin child and his oddly assembled party were finally victorious (although their victory was at the expense of losing the ferret, who was unaware that he was allergic to strawberries; poor ferret exploded after 5 minutes of battle...ferret parts everywhere...it was horrible...but their victory distracted them from the loss, especially since the ferret was kind of a jerk in the first place).
The kingdom was engulfed in red juices and seeds, as far as the eye could see. However, because of this, the inhabitants of the gourd territory would never go hungry or thirsty again (how or why fruits and vegetables were feeding upon the remains of other fruits and vegetables was also to remain a mystery, but considering the absurdity of everything else that had happened, everyone just accepted this little detail), so it worked out well.
In the end, the pumpkin child found Anagorsia hiding in the castle's wine cellar (why gourds had a wine cellar was another curious thing, but again, after all the other strange happenings, no one really cared about explanations at that point). The two were married by the monkey (who,conveniently, had taken an online certification program to become a member of the clergy not long before joining in this adventure), and they proceeded to revive the gourd kingdom to its former glory, perhaps even greater than it had been before.
King Pumpkin Child (he was an adult by then, but "Pumpkin Child" was the name given to by his pumpkin family) and Queen Anagorsia had many gorpumman children (who were all just very perplexing existences in general, especially when one begins to consider how a human and gourd would mate, and, beyond that, why there would be pumpkin genes in there,since the pumpkin child was merely a human who'd been adopted by pumpkins; there was speculation that the pumpkins had actually performed horrible gene-splicing experiments on the child when he'd first appeared in their patch).
The wedding feast was wondrous,and all the guests engorged themselves with ferret soup and strawberry wine(they finally figured out what to do with the wine cellar) and were merry.
The Pumpkin Child returned to his home pumpkin patch every now and then to gloat about his newly acquired royal status and to introduce the gorpumman children to their many, many grandparents (you know, the grandparents who hadn't met their demise at the leaves of the strawberries), but he was always surprised when none of them knew who he was until their roots told them; he just assumed they were so jealous of his success that they'd pushed him out of their immediate memory so as to not live a life of constant shame and envy.
…
…And then some other stuff happened, and one or two of the gorpumman children had their own epic journeys and things, but no one was really interested in those, since none of them involved an exploding ferret.
...
And they all lived happily ever after.
The End.