The Importance of Being Right

38.

"I couldn't tell you what was in it, tasted all right going down, burned like a fire coming out, but oddly enough it worked. When I came out of the bathroom I was a changed man." Gilbert and Clarissa were walking through the remains of a burnt forest. They were wearing respirators because the wild fire was close enough a bad change of the winds would potentially be dangerous with the smoke, but Gilbert had been assured by the fireman that was a rare possibility.

"So did you thank the good reverend for curing you?"

"Oh god no I threatened to kill him the next time he showed up at home."

"That's not very nice."

"Trust me after what he put me threw, killing him would have been a mercy, how did your time with Sylvia play out?"

"It was fineish, we killed some werechickens and then a gargoyle." They were picking through the embers looking for fire sprites, when Gilbert had told Clarissa about the job she kept laughing at the idea of fire sprites despite him telling her they weren't a laughing matter.

"Gargoyle? So did you use stone poison."

"Nope."

"Heart of a harpy?"

"No."

"Crush it in a car crusher? Did that once it was horrific and yet oddly satisfying." Clarissa sighed.

"No, I shot it through the eyes and then the mouth, Sylvia had basically left me to die beforehand."

"Ahh so that's why you were so quiet about it, see you assumed my dislike of Sylvia was related to her reminding me of my wife or just general orneriness and you wouldn't be wrong to an extent, but its also that woman only look out for herself, always has, always will."

"So you told me so."

"If you want to hear it that way, yes I told you so." Clarissa stomped off and Gilbert didn't follow, he knew she couldn't get into too much trouble against fire sprites, and she eventually would calm down. Gilbert started to wonder if the fire jumpers who had reported the sprites were merely suffering from smoke induced hallucinations. He hadn't seen any of the normal indicators of the little buggers, and the longer he stayed in the charred forest he worried about what he was breathing in even with the mask.

"GILBERT!"

"Yeah?"

"What do Fire Sprites look like?"

"Small like a keebler elf."

"So not the size of a tree and bathed in flame?" Gilbert felt the hairs stand up the back of his neck.

"No that's not a fire sprite."

"Then I think we should run Gilbert."

"I like that plan, I like that plan a lot." And so the exterminators fled in the charred forest, and the Gravoboom followed shortly thereafter.