Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Garden
Weatherman Wally sat in Eerie's small civic gardens, eating an ice-cream and watching the waterspooks dancing in the fountain. It was April, and though the sun hung bright in a clear and cloudless blue sky, outside the gardens the air was raw with the threat of an impending ice storm. Inside, it was warm and still, and smelled like black earth and growing things. The garden was where Wally liked to eat lunch, and so moondaisies and kingcups bloomed there all year round, and the frost never touched them, except at Christmas.
Wally checked his watch. Twenty minutes before he needed to be back at his desk. A black labrador ran past, a large rock clutched in it's mouth. Wally wondered if this was part of another attempted uprising or just normal doggy shenanigans.
The ice-cream was corn-flavoured, part of a new "Tastes of Eerie" range that the World o' Stuff was aggressively marketing. Wally didn't think it would catch on. Town pride was no excuse for bland ice-cream. He wished he had stuck with his usual Cursed Strawberry Cornet. Mushroom Pixies, sick of being looked down on and sneered at by their neighbours, the Strawberry Sprites, had cursed Eerie's strawberry crops to an eternity of being irresistibly delicious and supernaturally fast to ripen. Eerie's human population had been delighted. The Strawberry Sprites were less so, since their homes were being picked and eaten faster than they could grow new ones.
Wally knocked his cornet against the side of a nearby trashcan, dislodging the offending ice-cream into it, then crumbled the cone into small pieces and scattered them at his feet. A couple of ravens hopped down from the rock garden and began to peck at the crumbs. A seagull, circling overhead, swooped to join them with a raucous cry, but found itself knocked off-course by a sudden gust of wind. Wally laughed, then immediately felt bad. The ravens had no such compunctions and cawed mockingly at their thwarted enemy.
The ornamental clock tower chimed the hour. Wally stood with a sigh. When the gardens kept time by a sundial, he'd been able to stretch his breaks out as long as he cared to, but the station had gotten complaints from people whose cows were confused by the time changes. Cows, he thought ruefully. They ruin it for everyone.