Words for Wednesday ~ April 8

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over as a moveable feast with many participants supplying the Words.
    When Delores closed her blog forever due to other problems, Elephant's Child (Sue) took over the role of coordinator.
    Now, after Sue's demise, River has taken the mantle of coordinator upon her shoulders.

No matter what, how, where or who the aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to our mind.

This month the words are to be found at Mimi's blog: Messymimi's Meanderings.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please leave a comment on Mimi's or River's blog, then we can come along and read it and add a few encouraging words.

It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

So Please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement.

And for today we were given
Elegant
Limited
Spontaneous
Bother
List
Pin
    and/or the following phrases:
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch (meaning do not rely on something you are not sure of)
Par for the course (meaning what you would expect to happen)
A piece of cake (meaning a task which is easy to accomplish)

After digging up Susan's trip to Sweden, I felt like returning to Unicorn Farm. I also took up my old challenge, to use the words in the order they were given. The story ran away with me, and ended up quite somewhere else than I imagined. I hope you enjoy it anyway. I did not use the phrases, this might or might not happen later on.

Thora entered the classroom, elegant as ever, Susan envied her, she always felt clumsy, not dressed for the occasion or somehow sticking out. On the other hand Susan did not care enough, she could easily find more interesting use for her limited free time than ironing shirts or skirts or doing her hair. Also she had a propensity for spontaneous trips to the woods, the beach or to a farm, and she did not like her clothes to hamper or bother her in these endeavours. She ended her line of thoughts with more points to her own casual style as Thora swished her wand, and a long list of strange ingredients appeared on the blackboard in Thora's usual flourishing golden letters.

Susan read along, as did many of the others, Kalle and Anna were in the middle of one of their sibling rivalries and sat quietly pinching one another, while Marja and Paula, the Birch sisters were demonstratively inattentive.

Thora did not acknowledge the disturbances with as much as a raised eyebrow.

When the stylus stopped writing, Thora asked the apprentices on the green team to pinpoint the odd man out on the list.
Small papers flew through the air, and Susan looked at hers. It read:
- Which ingredient:
- Why:
- Bonus. What should it have been:

Susan read through the list once more and decided that stinkbug wings did not belong. Now she had to find out why. Very soon it came to her. All the other ingredients were inanimate or plant matters, this was the only animal part. She wrote this down too. And what should Thora have listed? Hmm, the stink-part seemed correct, but she did not know any stink plant. She looked through the window, thinking. She did not hear Anna and Kalle moaning when pinched by animated lobster claws, of course conjured by Thora, neither did she notice the creeper vines that not so slowly wound around the birch sisters, tying them to their chairs.
Of course! A stinkhorn! that was what was missing, Now it was clear to her, this was the ingredient list for the stinking cloud-potion. She wrote this and the stinkhorn on her paper and looked up.

Then the began having second thoughts. It had been too easy. Where was the trap? She started re-reading the ingredients list on the blackboard, but then she noticed the tied up sisters and the claws snipping at Anna and Kalle. She knew the possible cause for their being punished -- their eternal sibling bickering - but what had the Birch sisters been up to? Anna was beginning to tire, and the big claw came nearer and nearer to getting a good grip on her thigh. Before Susan could get to her wand, Kalle noticed his sister's plight, and turned his wand and his warding spells at Anna's claw, which promptly disappeared in thin air. Anna was a fast learner, so when Kalle's claw dived in for a nip at his nose, Anna gathered the last of her powers and made it go away.

"And now," Thora said to the Swedish siblings, "now I'd like you to use your brains on today's problem instead."
Red-faced and shameful they both began reading the list. Susan also returned her attention to her paper, only to realize that it had been  magically prepared to return to Thora when filled out. Now she could do nothing more than hope that her first intuition had been right.