A Bad Idea

Ameldine reached out just a little bit further and snatched the snow white bit of fluff caught in-between rocks at the edge of the cliff. However, the Pegasus that left the tail hair behind had hollow bones and weighed nearly nothing. Ameldine weighed a little more than that. There was a grinding sound and the rocks tipped out from below her.

Ameldine shrieked out a spell as she fell. She finished just before she hit the bottom of the ravine. She opened her eyes and looked down. The ground was two feet below her dangling toes.   She sighed and cancelled the spell.

Opening her hand, she was delighted to see that the hairs were intact. It was the last ingredient she needed.   Ameldine whooped in delight and summoned her broom from the top of the cliff. It lazily floated down and landed at her feet. She tucked the hairs into a pouch and tied it to her belt.   Then, she picked up the broom and flew home.

It took thirteen days to brew the potion. Then she waited nine more days for it to cure. On the night of the new moon, she carefully painted every drop on the outside of her new umbrella. Now she just had to wait for it to rain.

Ameldine started to carry her umbrella around everywhere. It sparkled in the sunlight. People constantly asked her where to order an umbrella just like it. Ameldine told them that it was a custom order from a secret umbrella supplier. Surprisingly, people believed that. Ameldine began to wonder if there really were secret umbrella suppliers.

Finally, one morning, dark clouds blocked the sun. The world below was cast into shadow. It began to rain without any transition from a light sprinkle.   Instead, it poured water from the sky as though someone had left a thousand faucets running in the clouds.

Ameldine opened her new umbrella. Every raindrop that touched the potion-painted surface turned into a small diamond. Diamonds bounced and slid off the umbrella to land in the street around her.   However, there were too many raindrops.   The umbrella began to wear thin.

Finally, it tore in three small places. The tiny holes rapidly expanded as tiny sharp diamonds spilled through.   They hit her face and hair, leaving tiny scratches down her cheeks and on her scalp.

She tossed away the umbrella. It continued to pour. The diamonds pouring off the umbrella made a faint hissing sound that was almost drowned out by the drumming of the rain.

Ameldine pulled her long sleeves over her hands and reached in and closed the umbrella. She could feel the little diamonds poke through the thin material of her shirt.   Once the umbrella was closed, she slipped the loop at the bottom of the umbrella handle around her wrist. Then she knelt down and scooped up as many of the small diamonds as she could, and put them into a pouch.

Then she trudged home, completely soaked. On her way inside, she dropped the umbrella in the birdbath. Perhaps she could gather a few more diamonds from there when the rain stopped. She should have coated the inside of the birdbath to begin with instead of painting the potion onto the umbrella. Who know diamonds were so hard and sharp?

Ameldine unlocked her front door, but it wouldn’t open. For some reason, it was stuck closed. She tried a spell. Nothing happened. She kicked the door and shoved at it with her shoulder. With a crash, it opened and Ameldine fell inside, just catching herself from landing flat on her face.

There was no hot water when she took her bath. The cheese and bread were both moldy. All that she found in her mailbox was bills. When she turned on the television, the power went out.   Ameldine went to bed in the dark, her hair still wet. She woke up in the morning with a terrible cold.

She pulled out her potion book again. How hard would it be to collect the ingredients again and coat the birdbath?   Going down the list, Ameldine sighed.   It would be difficult to gather everything again.

Then she noticed a tiny sentence scrawled at the end of the recipe.   “Warning: Attempting this potion will cause the brewer to suffer from terrible luck.” Ameldine smelled something burning. She looked down to see that her hair had caught fire. She smothered the flame with her sleeves.

She looked at the charred fabric and inspected the burn on her arms. She decided to wait to see how long and terrible the run of bad luck was before she attempted the spell again. She certainly didn’t want to make the bad luck any worse. Diamonds or not, it might not be worth it.