Five Sentence Fiction - Potions

Here we are again and a great prompt word : Potion. It's Five Sentence Fiction.

As Ricken walked through the wood with shame on his shoulders and a curse in his heart, his mood worsened; thoughts of his earlier heated exchange of words with Emily's mother troubled his mind and a veritable smorgasbord of rotten fates befell the old harridan who thought little of him and his career choice as a minstrel (How can you support a family with a lute! Useless boy! Bah!).

Dappled sunlight fell in shafts through the trees and lit up the earth floor showing two chaffinch flitting from shrub to shrub, a squirrel leaping up the bark of a silver birch and a small cart with a brightly covered canopy. 

A little old man in a neat grey smock and sandals leapt out from the cart "Lotions for your tired knees, a potion for your athsma, linament for your thighs or perfume for your wife? Anything that comes in a vial, bottle, gourd or amphora I sell it!" he said with toothless smile.

"I don't think you'd have anything for getting rid of mean old mother's in law old man," Ricken replied with a sigh "good day and better profits next time eh?"

"Now, now Ricken the Minstrel," the old man rummaged around in his smock pockets with a wicked look in his eye and drew out a stoppered glass tube, the liquid inside black as death "I think I have just what you are looking for, odourless, tasteless and deadly as sin; question is, will you sing a song about her when she's dead?"

Lillie McFerrin's site is here. Make sure you have a read of the other submissions and make sure to comment too. It's always appreciated.

Cheers,

W.