Abel - Doc Prompt

Abel glanced down at the Help-wanted poster he had pulled from a nearby tree.

HELP WANTED

TEMPORARY ASSISTANT NEEDED

YOU MAY KEEP WHATEVER

WE MAKE TODAY

-  D O C

Abel squinted down at the paper. The last time he went to the lab, he got chewed on by Doc’s little caterpillar. A tiny growl could be heard before he decided. No matter what insect bites him, Abel was going to help out the spooky sprite. He began his jog over to the laboratory, his dark blue hair fluttered in the breeze. His tail and fins bounced from the quick movement, flowing behind him.

Knocking could be heard from inside the laboratory, alerting the doctor to whomever wanted to help him with the task today. As the spooky sprite opened the door, he had to look up to see the face of the sprite helping today.

“Ah, Abel my boy! Come come!!” Doc hummed, waving his dark little hands, beckoning the large blue sprite in. As Abel stepped into the laboratory, he could see a couple of sprites dinking around, making little potions of yellow and red. “Mister Abel, we have much to do! With your strength perhaps time will go by a little faster!”

Abel looked down on the Doc, nodding. “What would you like me to do first?” 

“I’ll have you take this mortar and pestle,” Doc hanged Abel the items, “and I’ll have you grind down these candy snail shells. We suspect these have properties of magic when grinded to a paste.” The sprite continued to babble away, Abel eventually tuned him out for a moment to start grinding the shells, doing one or two at a time before adding more.

As he grinded down the shells, he took a closer look around him, Abel hadn’t been here in a while, not since the insect biting him. There were flasks and empty bottles everywhere, a lot of sprites have been interested in potions that change them physically. Generally, when making potions, the Doc would require them to bring in their own ingredients, but sometimes he’d let sprites get away with taking a few here and there in exchange for some coins. 

He watched a fellow water sprite make a little potion themself, bumbling along learning as they go. He’s pretty sure their name was,,,, Seafoam? Their fluffy little head tilting in confusion at whatever they were doing, tongue sticking out. They dropped a couple sunflower petals into a flask over a fire, watching them bubble away in the water. He could tell the flask was too far from the fire, not letting the petals and water boil long enough to actually create the potion they were trying to go for. 

Setting the mortar and pestle down for a moment, he moved over to Seafoam’s station.

“Your fire is too far from the flask, bring the flask down closer and you’ll make a higher quality potion that way.” He mumbled, crouching down to point to what he was talking about. He allowed Seafoam to adjust their flask down, allowing it to heat more accurately. They looked up to the dark sprite.

“Hey thank you, that means a lot to me!”

“Of course.” Abel nodded, going back to his original task. He brought the mortar and pestle to his chest, grinding down on the shells to help the doc get through this as fast as possible. Eventually, the purple shells looked similar to butter from the main city of Aelia. 

“Sir, is this what you needed?” He asked, showing the buttery substance to the doctor, who was writing down his next wacky concoction. 

“By Aelia yes! This is beyond perfect, not a weird chunk in sight.” The Doc exclaimed, taking the tools away from Abel and bringing them to a nearby potion station, scraping the shell butter, in the flask. Soon after, he poured a little river water into the quickly warming bottle. Boiling it down to a thick sauce-like consistency, the doc took it off the heat, setting it in a cup of cold water to allow it to cool. 

“As this cools, I’ll have you pick a little bottle for it. I believe I’ll call this a mutation potion! It’ll change your appearance permanently, mutating a part of you to have extremely rare traits. Tread carefully with this potion, you may not always like the effects of it.” The Doctor warned, explaining what the potion will do in the meanwhile.

Abel grabbed a pointy looking bottle and offered it towards Doc, who was diluting the potion down to let the user take it without issue.

“As my sign said, you may keep this potion. I cannot wait to see what it will do to you, my good man.” Doc smiled, clapping his hands together. Abel gave a small, closed mouth smile, though it was a little difficult given his large fangs. 

“Thank you sir. I will keep you updated.” He agreed, taking his leave and carefully leaving the laboratory, slowly walking back to his pod. Who knows what this potion will do to him, a mutation? Maybe it’ll make him grow tentacles of all this. How odd would that be?