Henrie was a mushroom and in the hoomen world (those giants that come around from time to time that come and pick or gawk at other bodies like Henrie), they are eaten. I wonder if Henrie knows what they can create in a brain. Like its deep-rooted mycelium underground, the hoomen brain or even a squirrel’s brain has its connectors and purpose. An expansion of thought, a conscience choice to walk through forests.
Tonight, is a special night. Henrie is just beginning to umbulate. Their head is a little like a protruding belly button. In a few hours, the day will be cut short and the night will take over the stage for a longer time before curtain call. It is December 21st. The night Saturn and Jupiter can be seen by hoomen eyes getting the closest to each other in the past 800 years. To be born a day before all of this seems like a blessing for Henrie. They’ve got to tell the rest of them about these two stars in the sky. But they don’t know what they’re called in this life. “Stars” and “planets” are the hoomen translation. Divinity? Another connection? Something above us that is similar to what we consisted of before sprouting. Henrie thinks and thinks. It is just another becoming. The veil under his umbulate cap erupts right then and there. A loudspeaker of tiny dust-like particles that prance through the air like wind was gusted just for them. Henrie yells in the sweetest way, their voice carrying these dust-like particles through the air as far as they can. Some reach the roots of the old willow tree and others land on some lady bugs and grasshoppers. Some even stay close by. In a couple of days Henrie will have some friends join him on sharing soil and root on Erth. Plop! Henrie feels a vibration nearby. The vibration travels and it’s sensed by a shiny object glistening as the leaves sway above. A type of circular shiny leaf? It has no movement yet some elements that emulate a star. Is this becoming? Did this fall from some higher place than Henrie’s primary location? As limited as their place in the forest is, the mycelium works and works. Translating the density that the dent has created unlike an oak tree root, it is still. What is IT?
Intergenerational transmitters relay that it may be another object. New here. New to us, thinks the mycelium. Other worldly, not possible. What we are gifted with has beauty. In the midst of translation and patient time, larger thunks of transmitters are awoken along the forest floor. Big brown chunks shaped like a bent mushroom are getting closer and closer to the silvery circular object.
“Oh geeze, there it is,” says Goldy as she blows away the soil covering her silver snake ring. Her little brother’s first time in the forest and he’s throwing tantrums and rings. Goldy had handed him her snake ring to calm him. He liked to stare at the purple little gem in the middle of it, sometimes putting it in his mouth. Henrie feels a new heaviness nearby, similar to his tree neighbors. Goldy spots them as she turns to go back on the trail. “OMG! Look at this little cutie! Wow just wow, “she exclaims as she takes a kneel.” Henrie’s family below alerts him that his color may have attracted his first visit orb. They have a great mass and the chance of returning to the mycelium might be sooner than expected. It was moments after Henrie’s cap showed up in it’s tint of burgundy that this visitor picked him up from his now white stalk. “Wowowow I’ve gotta show mom!” shrieked Goldy. She arrives to the concrete trail. Her mom pushing her little brother back and forth in his stroller while Dobby, their dog sniffs around. Henrie has lost all connection to the mycelium and they are feeling a gust of wind causing their gills to flap. Normally, this would be normal on a windy day, but he doesn’t receive a transmitted message of warning that this could happen. The last translated message was “first visit orb.”
Goldy yells, “Mom! You won’t believe it! You won’t believe it,” as her shoes form a dust cloud before she arrives to the stroller. “Look it’s a Lacarius red-something, right? Is it mom?” Her baby brother’s hand’s start to cover his ears. She’s wakened him up from his nap and her mom shushes her, “Honey you just woke him up again. Erg he was just beginning to calm down.” Goldy raises her eyebrows in apology and starts to wave Henrie in the air trying to get her baby brothers’ attention. Ollie, look it’s a mushroom. Look it’s purple and what is this other color? Look, look Ollie! Ya wanna hold it?”
He shrieked and continues waving his hands until she starts to hum his favorite lullaby and he starts to hum along with her. Before the song ends, she takes hold of his hands to form a cup. “hold on, look at this mushroom. It’s a mushroom, Ollie. Purple and Burgundy.” Ollie is disgusted. His mouth curls into a wavy pipe cleaner. “Okay, okay, I’ll hold him but hey you want to go pick some flowers?” And Ollie nods up and down. Goldy places Henrie onto the plastic little square above the stroller’s canopy. Goldy takes the stroller from her mom and takes Ollie to a small patch of wildflowers, yellow, white and purple. Dobby follows them to the flower patch. The sun is reaching the horizon of the hill they are on so the flowers are doing their dance before they stop their reaching for the light. As they approach the flower patch, Goldy parks the stroller and while she unbuckles Ollie from his seat, Henrie tumbles down from the canopy. On the floor. Dobby notices and sniffs and sniffs before he decides to start chewing.
The return to the mycelium would come sooner than expected.