(October 10, 2024)

Paint. The whole world was paint. Everywhere DisgruntledOrc looked, everything was covered in splashes of colour that might come off after decades of scrubbing. Which he wouldn’t do, because why bother? There would only be more paint tomorrow.

“What the hell…”

He turned around and spotted the brownie standing in the doorway, hands on his hips, his eyes wide and mouth agape.

“Oh.” DisgruntledOrc scuffed his toe. “Sorry about that, Loomie. There was an… incident. Spell went wrong.”

“Wrong is not the word I’d use for it, young master. Catastrophic might perhaps be more accurate.”

DisgruntledOrc could not argue. Next time. He’d figure it out next time. For sure.

(November 13, 2024)

Loomie shook his head and stomped further into the room, broom and dustpan already in his wrinkled hands, although he didn’t appear to know where to start.

“Paint magic,” he grumbled, sweeping up empty vials and smearing more colour across the floor. “Never heard of such a thing. I’ll tell you, young master, if I’d known this is what you dabbled in when you put the call out for a house brownie, I would have ignored the advertisement. I would have warned all my relatives away from this place.”

DisgruntledOrc hunched over his table and grabbed another series of colours. “No one ever got very far in life by playing it safe. You’ll see. Once I figure this out, it’ll be the greatest magic society has ever seen.”

(December 13, 2024)

Loomie rolled his eyes skyward with a martyred sigh and shuffled out of the room. As soon as the door closed behind him, Orc turned back to his desk and grabbed another vial of paint. This one: Deadly Nightshade. He pulled out the cork and tipped three drops of blue-purple paint onto the canvas in front of him. The paint settled. Nothing exploded.

Orc released a breath and grabbed another vial, this one a shimmering, oozy green. It was the first time he’d paired these two, but he was working on a theory. To be safe, he pulled down his goggles and averted his face as he added two drops to the purple.

A blast of bright light filled the room, and when Orc looked up, he found the start of a beanstalk covered in purple-blue flowers growing out of the canvas.

(January 17, 2025)

"Now this is what I'm talking about," he said, leaning closer to the beanstalk. When he got too close, one of the leaves from the plant slapped him across the face, and he staggered backwards, toppling over his chair and landing on the floor. He gawked at the plant. "Excuse me. That was rude."

Shaking his head, he hauled himself to his feet and stared at the beanstalk from a safer distance. It stood two feet tall, and a few inches thick, but as he watched, he swore it was growing. And not by a small amount. Within a few seconds, it stood three and a half feet tall, and the leaves widened it to stretch almost the width of his desk.

"Uh oh."

He thought of Loomie's reaction if this thing took over the room. Risking another slap, Orc grabbed the entire canvas and darted out the door towards the garden.

(February 20, 2025)

By the time Orc reached the courtyard, the stalk had widened almost to the edges of the frame and the canvas was too heavy to carry. He dropped it with a thud on the gravel and stepped back as the plant shot higher and higher, the thick leaves waving in a breeze that didn’t seem to affect anything else in the garden.

Before long, the tip of the beanstalk was out of sight and the shuddering through the plan had stopped.

Orc tipped his head back to look as far as he could before his neck complained. “Huh.”

He reached for a leaf, curious to see if it would slap him again, but it remained still.

“I think I’ve read this story. I wonder if I could…”

He set one foot on the thick leaf, but before he could even think about climbing it, voices reached up from up above.

(March 20, 2025)

 Orc barely had time to move before three figures scurried down from above. They hit the ground, and he had his paints at the ready, not sure what they would do if he threw them, but ready to defend himself with whatever he hand on hand.

“I told you it would work.”

“Work? What do you mean work? You didn’t do anything. You threw some beans into the dirt, and now we’re—we’re—” The speaker looked around, and Orc got his first look at a bright pink face half-hidden under some bright pink hair. “Where the chicken are we?”

(April 25, 2025)

Orc blinked at them. “Um?”

“Um?” the pink figure asked, their brow furrowed into a deep crease. “Who names their village ‘Um’? Doesn’t that get confusing when you talk to someone? How do you know if they’re talking about where they are or don’t know what to say? And who are you? ‘Who’? Somehow that wouldn’t surprise me. Hi, Who, I’m Dorka. This is Feeble, and this is Max.”

They pointed to the blue and green figures respectively, and Orc nodded in greeting, not sure what to say to these strange, suddenly-in-his-life people.

“Oh, by the way,” Dorka said, “you might want to cut down this beanstalk. Believe me, you do not want the guys chasing us to follow us down.”