Words for Wednesday - August 18

  Yes I know that I published a story of Susan and the adventures yesterday. But that was as a part of the Write - Edit - Publish Challenge. Today is Wednesday, and this means that David M Gascoigne has thought out some new, challenging words for us to use, or not. And as always they are published at  Elephant's Child's blog.
  This is a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true, therefore: Please, remember to go back, read other peoples' stories there or follow their links back. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction.

This week's prompts are:
Blurry
Fig
Leading
Oversexed
Intolerable
Glacial
     And/or
Romantic
Dogmatic
Nebulous
Gum
Fodder
Deprecate

     I dropped oversexed as a word I did not want to use, Call me prudish if you like, but it does not belong at Unicorn Farm in my opinion.
  As is my wont, I took up the additional challenge of using them in the order they were given. 

Just before the bell tolled Gilvi came into the room. "Susan," he said, tuning to her. "You know how to get into the greenhouse, and you know how to talk to Tom. Would you mind running an errand for me?"
"I'll be pleased to," Susan said, remembering her former adventures with the taciturn Tom in the wondrous greenhouse.

The windows of the greenhouse were moist with water, and Susan could se blurry figures moving inside. She went to the door and knocked. She waited. Finally Tom opened the door.
"Yes?" he said.
And Susan stated her errand. "Gilvi sent me here. He needs a fig."
"A fig?" Tom said in an enquiring tone.
"Yes," Susan said. "Gilvi told me that you had told him that the figs were ripe, and he has need of one."
"Ahh!" Tom said. "Follow me!" and with Tom leading the way, they entered the greenhouse.
The heat hit Susan like a wave, rolling over her, and making sweat instantly spring from her skin. It was almost intolerable. "Why is it so hot in here?" Susan asked.
""It's not." Tom said, then he looked at the big thermometers on the wall showing the temperature in Celsius, Fahrenheit and Kelvin. "It is!" he said, looking worried. "The glacial blooms ..." he began to move quickly between the beds. "Come help me!"
Susan followed him. They stopped at the tiny cubicle where Tom slept, ate and lived, Behind the cubicle was a hatch in the floor, Tom opened it and climbed down the steaming, black hole Susan felt the heat rising from the open hatch and was afraid she was going to melt like a snowman if she got any hotter. Tom looked at her. "Use the spell, Susan!" he said.
'The spell' Susan thought to herself. She knew many spells. Ah of course, the fire-protecting one from the Easter fire. It would protect her from the heat of the furnace here as well. Quickly she drew her wand and cast the spell. In a second she felt wonderfully cool, comfortable even. She heard Tom's urgent voice raising in an inarticulate yell from the black maw and ran. She climbed down the steep ladder, thankful that the bottom was hidden in the mists below. When she reached the bottom, she ducked through a small arch and stopped.

There Tom stood, and in front of him was a nest full of creatures. Susan saw tails, claws, tiny and not so tiny maws spewing forth flames, golden bellies with orange and red splotches. Then it all fell into place. Fire-salamanders! Tom had been using fire-salamanders to heat the greenhouse, and had left them alone for too long. Given their romantic tendencies they had of course multiplied. And Tom, under the fire-proofing spell had not discovered until now.
He must be one mighty wizard, Susan realized. she could now, after long practise, barely keep up that spell for half an hour. Weeks, if not months must have passed for the salamanders to become that many. Tom grasped a bunch of the smaller salamanders and Susan did the same. They clawed and snapped after her fingers, but as their true defence was their fiery breath, they were quite harmless.
"Where do we put them?" Susan asked.
"Tom grasped a sack from a nearby peg. "Fill up this one. It's fireproofed. But as I'm not dogmatic in my readings, I'm rather nebulous as to the wherewithal of salamanders." Tom spoke.
Susan knew that when he spoke like this, in long sentences with fancy words, he felt at his depth. Susan felt the same. "What do they eat?" she asked, a ghost of a plan forming in her brain.
"They eat fire, and grow. If you feed them gum from the gum trees they shrink .. YES! That's it! That was the question to pose! Let's cut the problem down to size."
Susan and Tom hurriedly filled the sac with the smaller salamanders, leaving only the original two in the furnace.
"I'll bring your kids somewhere safe!" Tom said to the large Salamanders.  And with Susan trailing after him, he climbed the steep ladder with the squirming, smoking bag on his back. Susan hurried to the gum tree as soon as she was up again, and picked the oozing gum from the stem.
Tom sat on a boulder and using the gum blobs as fodder, he shrank all the salamanders down to normal lizard size.
"Normally I deplore harming these wondrous creatures," he said. "But the welfare of my plants must take priority." He had totally forgotten his normally taciturn behaviour. Tom tied the sac and proceeded to open the windows near a bed of greenish plants. Susan offered her help, but Tom waved her off. "Now you go and pick that fig, the tree is in the Southwest corner of the greenhouse. I'll go for a little trip to Vesuvius with those small ones now that they are shrunk to a more manageable size."
Susan saw all the thermometers sinking to normal temperature, and as her spell dropped, she wondered how Tom could have stood that heat for so long.