Chapter 1
In a green-lit forest that’s buzzing with all kinds of life, under a strangely shaped birch tree that’s 125 years old, on a forest floor that no human has ever set foot before, grew an Amanita Muscaria mushroom with red skin and white warts distributed more or less evenly across its surface. 🍄
This was no ordinary mushroom. It was sentient, and it went by the name Anita. She was different from all other mushrooms in her community as she was the only one who was aware. All other fellow mushrooms had no idea of what world existed outside of their little stems.
She would give living things around her a name to make them more sentient, even though she couldn’t communicate with anyone. Mimmy and Emmy were the mushrooms closest to her. They were mushrooms of a different kind, a special kind considered to be one of the most beautiful: Laccaria Amethystina or The Amethyst Deceiver.
When young, these mushrooms would have a distinctive deep purple color, a color so vibrant and alluring that Anita would often wonder if they were really a Terran species or something brought to Earth by aliens. 👽
Anita liked to imagine how her life would have been like if she was a mushroom of a different kind, a more unique kind like Mimmy and Emmy, or even like Dea and Lea, who grew two trees down and were of a dazzling kind called Phallus Indusiatus or also known as The Veiled Lady.
Dea and Lea rose from the ground a few weeks ago as the most ordinary mushrooms. Very unassuming at first, they soon grew a net-like skirt that made them look very gracious and elaborate. “Why is everyone more impressive than I?” Anita would often wonder. 😔
Days in the forest went by very monotonously. Everything was happening as it was supposed to, each thing casually interacting with other things in its surrounding as if they had been programmed in advance to live in perfect balance with each other.
The tree that was giving her shade from the sun was thin but with a rich crown, its slender branches swaying on a windy day, and delicate leaves changing colors with the passing of the seasons. The tree was host to many insects Anita wasn’t fond of; there were ants, spiders, wasps, and even moth and butterfly caterpillars. The abundance of insects also meant the tree was often visited by insect-eating birds like woodpeckers. 🌲
“What if the woodpecker gets tired of eating moths and develops an appetite for some mushrooms? What would I do if he decides to expand his menu? And how come he doesn’t get a concussion from so much pecking?” Anita would wonder.
Not to mention how terribly annoying these woodpeckers were. Anita was a night owl, and she would often get lost in thought while gazing at the stars above her, contemplating the meaning of life and her place in the vastness of the Universe, only to get awoken by the maddening pecking of the irritating bird. This bird seemed to peck for all kinds of reasons — to establish territory, excavate a nesting hole, and find insects. Anita would often worry, “What if this pecking fool eats his tasty meal and then poops on top of me?” 💩
Anxious, Anita would look up at every pecking sound coming from the old birch tree.
When she wasn’t annoyed by the woodpecker, she would be overwhelmed with melancholic thoughts. “I’m just a FUNGUS, and there’s nothing FUN about it. You’re doomed to remain grounded in one place, your destiny depending on the mercy of woodpeckers, insects, birch trees, rain, the wind, and other things the Universe seems to like more than mushrooms.”
She believed someone was playing a weird joke on her, making her sentient but unmovable. She was becoming increasingly anxious about the future, knowing that if danger ever came, she would have no choice but to fade into non-existence without having accomplished anything meaningful.
Time flew by as she jumped from one thought to another, blaming the Universe for her uneventful existence. It hadn’t rained for three weeks, but one summer night, on July 17, the rain finally came, and it came in abundance. It would rain uninterruptedly for seven whole days. 🌧️
There were times when only a few drops would fall on her cap and nights when she would be completely immersed underwater. On one occasion, a slimy snail climbed on her cap, trying to avoid the incoming water. Anita didn’t worry she would drown; she could actually hold her breath for several hours. What she worried about was rotting away.
“Finally, my greatest fear will come to be: dying slowly in solitude by rotting.”
She tried to deal with her overwhelming anxiety by shifting her thoughts to some other things. She started thinking about rain and how all the hydrogen and oxygen atoms bound in each water molecule have been here for eons. “It’s the same water molecules changing from water to vapor to water again. The only way we can get new hydrogen or oxygen atoms is if a meteor containing water crashes on Earth.” 💧
“Does that mean that some of this water passed through the kidneys of humans? Was this water once part of the Aegean sea? Have some of these drops fallen on a mushroom that’s as sad as me?”
Wondering about random things tired her. She rarely slept, but that night, she drifted slowly to sleep. When she woke up, she was 2 cm taller and had a friend: a new mushroom rose from the ground right next to her.
