#eclipse may have found some way to preserve his species

[eclipsethedarklingiscanon]

Time for a revelation ladies, gentlemen, others who do not identify themselves like this,

In short, Shadow stole something of his again XD

[cooperterwin-blog]

Natural and Artificial Mitigation

You and your family finally move to the beautiful Gulf Coast. A remote, but developed, landscape surrounds your town, making for the perfect ocean-front experience. However, the overdevelopment of the coast leaves this entire life at risk of destruction and irreversible damage, as there is nothing between your family and the onslaught of hurricane season.

Is there an answer to the constantly evolving threat of natural disasters?

This question seems to be front-of-mind to policymakers and those on the front line of such hazards and dangers. The answer, simply, is “no, but there are things we can do to help.” Natural disasters are increasing in intensity and randomness due to climate change and anthropogenic activity, and all we can do is mitigate and protect our communities to the best of our ability. One of these mitigation efforts is quite counterintuitive to the thought process behind sea-walls and flood-levees, and it involves leaving coastline vegetation as it is and actually preventing the development of coastal areas. The thought process behind it is simple, more vegetation between society and a hurricane, for example, equates to more protection and buffering of a storm before it reaches inland areas. 

Is coastal vegetation a better solution for mitigating hydrological disasters than man-made protection?

In this blog, I’ll be exploring the differences between anti-storm development and anti-storm vegetation use.

Vegetation Use

First, we will explore how vegetation has been used in the past and present. Rusty Feagin and his colleagues define the idea of natural “bioshields,” or the use of vegetation and coastal ecosystems as a mitigative barrier to tsunami and hurricane activity (2). The call for the use of bioshields arose out of disaster events presumably being exacerbated by the removal of mangrove forests, such as Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Cyclone Nargis (2008). In Myanmar, Cyclone Nargis’ fatality count eclipsed 100,000, and the 4-meter storm surge engulfed much of the low-lying country. Researchers suggest that this effect would have been severely dampened if the mangrove forests were preserved rather than removed. There is already a great body of evidence supporting that vegetation lowers the intensity of small wave-events, but storm surge behaves in a more dangerous way, maintaining a high sea level with long, powerful tides (1). Feagin found, by investigating a case of mangrove use in India, that these forests were able to dampen the force of storm surges, protecting the land behind it from dangerous volumes of moving water. He did, however, note that the forests did not completely prevent flooding, as they still allow water and surge to pass through them, as the bioshields are not a complete barrier. Tanaka discusses this in more detail and recognizes that although bioshield methods are effective, they can be completely pointless if not properly planned or maintained. Tanaka’s research finds that an ideal forest density is difficult to maintain because large trees that are perceived as more effective due to their trunk size actually require more open space between them in order to grow. For this reason, a “perfect” barrier forest would involve trees of every possible size, so that branches and crowns of smaller plants are filling the empty space between the wide-trunked trees and maximizing density (6). 

Controversies There are a few controversies surrounding bioshield plantation use. As they may be effective at dampening storm effects, they often are not native species to the regions they are planted in, putting the local vegetation at risk. Along with this, the method may not have a net-positive effect on the economies of the region. In the eastern states of India, mangrove plantations have replaced the presence of many fuels and lumber trees that were originally relied on by the communities (2). Because of these issues, communities need to go through a web of decisions to make sure bioshields are truly the most appropriate mitigation method for them. The idea that bioshields must be near-perfect to be effective enough to justify their maintenance leads to the question of whether a full-density sea wall would be a better option for some communities.

Sea Walls

Japan has been utilizing sea walls for a long time, however, the cost of building and maintaining an artificial barrier that is damaged and eroded constantly is astronomically high (6). The cost may be justified by the economic damage a physical barrier can prevent during disasters, but all barriers are not a surefire fix for hazards, and incurring the high initial investment is a risky dice roll when natural barriers are cheaper and generally more durable. Other artificial mitigation methods, such as conveyance lines, are proven to be helpful in the aftermath of disasters, but are costly and fail to dampen the effects on the front-line of a disaster (4).

The Better Option Natural mitigation techniques seem to be the more beneficial and less risky option. Bioshield forests have tangible positive effects, and the hidden benefits of vegetation make natural options even more appealing. One of these indirect benefits of constructed natural barriers is the cleaning of water pollution post-disaster. Microbial organisms in wetland ecosystems, along with the high volume of water-demanding plants, allows for efficient cleansing of stormwater and wastewater (5). The pre and post-disaster benefits show a dynamic mitigation system at a much lower investment than artificial mitigation and adaptation methods. Islands tend to be the best example of using wetland and forestry for mitigation, Vanuatu utilizes mainly forest management to counteract rising sea-levels and flood risks (3). Another great example of vegetation interaction on islands can be seen below (Figure 1), as Sri Lanka sees much more success in keeping coastal areas dry by utilizing buffer-zones.

Figure 1: Sri Lanka use of mangrove vegetation

The evidence that natural barriers create a dampening effect at such a low cost of maintenance clearly outweighs the risk of possibly faulty and extremely expensive artificial barrier construction. Along with this, the accessibility that natural methods provide to less developed countries over artificial methods concretes them as a better option to promote on a global basis. Forestry and coastal vegetation management can create a sense of security and well-being that not only supports local communities but also creates ecosystems, rather than destroying them for artificial development. It’s clear to me that these benefits are well communicated, but more developed countries may feel that they have a better practice of “outbuilding” nature. I have learned that this is a naive stance to take, as sometimes, especially in the case of disaster dampening, the cheaper option can be far more beneficial.

Endnotes

Barbier, E. (2006). Natural Barriers to Natural Disasters: Replanting Mangroves after the Tsunami. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 4(3), 124-131. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3868682

Feagin, R. A., et. al. (2010), Shelter from the storm? Use and misuse of coastal vegetation bioshields for managing natural disasters. Conservation Letters, 3: 1-11.

Filho, W L. (2013). Climate change and disaster risk management. [electronic resource]. Springer. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid&db=cat00344a&AN=mucat.b4307865&site=eds-live&scope=site

Fox, K. (2019). FEMA Ready Report: Invest in Mitigation to Protect Infrastructure Before Disasters Strike. Retrieved from https://www.hstoday.us/federal-pages/dhs/fema-dhs-federal-pages/fema-ready-report-invest-in-mitigation-to-protect-infrastructure-before-disasters-strike/

Nagabhatla, N., & Metcalfe, C. D. (2018). Multifunctional wetlands. [electronic resource] : pollution abatement and other ecological services from natural and constructed wetlands. Springer. Retrieved from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx? direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,uid&db=cat00344a&AN=mucat.b4611482&site=eds-live&scope=site

Tanaka, N. (2009). Vegetation bioshields for tsunami mitigation: review of effectiveness, limitations, construction, and sustainable management. Landscape and Ecological Engineering, 5(1), 71-79.

[oneinuniverse]

Civilizations Out of Nowhere

Graham Hancock, in his famous work “The Fingerprints of The Gods” argues that certain civilizations around the globe showed these signs of unusual intelligence in their architecture, science and writing systems. Intelligent human civilization extends much farther than we originally believed. The following is a presentation of some of the strange aspects of humanity that have been long forgotten, while remembering that our ancestors left us artifacts in the form of incredible structures and monuments that we are meant to decode and decipher. If the human story is a work in progress, let these monuments serve as important points to consider in the revision of this story. The monuments left behind by our ancestors would have had to coincide with their level of development given the time period; which calls for a revision of the human timeline. These historical anomalies raise questions about our collective history, and indicate how much remains to be discovered.

Human prehistory marks a time before records were kept, a time when, for several thousands of years, Cro-Magnons roamed across the planet, possibly forming small groups and living in primitive societies. The context of this strange condition changed again, approximately 15,000 years ago. When we compare the crudeness and primitive nature of Cro-Magnon side by side with the achievement of humans in the last 15,000 years, the gulf between the two widens considerably. We maintain the belief that human advancement and achievement follows a linear path upwards; each new civilization being more advanced and intelligent than the last. Just as we see jumps in advancement from one species to another.

From Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon, we see entire civilizations emerge out of nowhere with advancements in the sciences that have only recently been discovered. Several ancient civilizations across the world show an advanced level of astronomy and mathematics. As the Babylonian empire began to emerge 2500 years ago, one of their chief astronomers, Kidinnu, was able to map the annual movement of the sun and the moon that remained unchallenged until 1857, when astronomer Peter Andreas Hansen charted the arc of these celestial bodies to an error margin of only nine seconds.

A Babylonian almanac, mentioning future positions of the planets (British Museum)

During the Shang Dynasty of China, spanning between 1700-1100 B.C, a solar calendar known as the Ssu-Ten contained months that carried a precise length of 29.53055106 days, meaning leap years were taken into consideration and accounted for. An even earlier Chinese text, known as the Huang Ti-Ping King Su documented the Earth as a body which floated in space. Similarly, Greek scholars Permenides and Empedocles were quoted separately, stating “the moon illuminates the nights with borrowed light”. Over the last 10,000 years or so, modern humans were in possession of knowledge that suggests extraordinary intelligence [i]. What pushed early human societies over the edge, leading them to acquire such incredible knowledge at such an early stage? From the examples noted above, this was not an isolated incident, causing only one part of the globe to develop these skills. This level of “pre-advancement” was widespread, slowly changing the context of human history.

Two oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty in China (c. 1800 - 1200 BCE). Evidence from the Shang oracle bone inscriptions shows that at least by the 14th century BC the Shang Chinese had established the solar year at 365¼ days and lunation at 29½ days. ( CalendarsThroughTheAges)

Sumer is recognized as the cradle of man’s modern origins; the world’s first advanced civilization. Out of this region sprung an incredibly advanced high culture at approximately 3800 B.C. Located in the southern region of what is present day Iraq, the Sumerian civilization literally “exploded” with cultural firsts and incredible human achievements. Sumer was also known as Shinar, and was situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This region came to be called Mesopotamia, from the Greek word meso meaning ‘middle’, and potamia meaning ‘rivers’. The two rivers would be instrumental in allowing this early civilization to flourish, making commerce and trade possible.

A great city of Sumer ( thecultureconcept.com)

Mesopotamia was situated within the Fertile Crescent, where the geography, climate and presence of water encouraged the growth of agriculture. The Sumerian civilization was preceded by an earlier culture known as the Ubaid. The Ubaid were of an unknown origin, most likely comprised of the scattered tribes surrounding the two great rivers. Culture branched out into several disciplines with surprising levels of advancement. Astrology, botany, zoology, mathematics, and law would make up some of Sumer’s greatest achievements. Medicine and pharmacology were widely practiced. The first houses made out of bricks were found in this region. Sumer even had a working system of mythology, and a fully developed history of its own culture [ii]. At a time when hunter-gatherer societies were prevalent across the globe, the Sumerians were developing advanced legal codes and calculating astronomy at an intermediate level. One of the world’s first written forms sprung out of this region.

Sumerian civilization recorded their knowledge in a language known as cuneiform, consisting of narrow triangular shaped lines arranged in various patterns. The Sumerian alphabet contained pictograms – symbols that conveyed ideas and concepts in a way similar to oriental languages. This differed from phonetic values that are strung together to form words, like English. Writings were engraved on wet clay tablets which were baked and preserved. Over 500,000 of these clay tablets have been discovered, highlighting the breadth of knowledge this civilization possessed and the lengths to which they attempted to preserve it.

One of thousands of cuneiform tablets found in Iraq ( Wikipedia)

Sumerian civilization also developed unique landmark structures called ziggurats. These were pyramid shaped structures, hundreds of feet high; this method would predate the Gutenberg printing press by 2500 years. This high culture spanned a total of three separate dynasties, with the last one beginning at approximately 2100 B.C. This civilization brought forth two of the world’s first cities; Uruk, followed by Eridu. Both cities would act as blueprints for the new concept of the city, which would act as concentrations of skilled trades and arts. In these cities, craftsmen, writers, doctors, mathematicians and lawyers would for the first time in history, be able to exchange their services. The smaller city states of Sumer eventually underwent unification, becoming part of the Babylonian civilization that would span across the entire Mesopotamian region.

3D reconstruction of the Ziggarut of Ur ( Wikipedia)

Aside from agriculture, medicine and commerce, the Babylonians had an impressive understanding of astronomy. Their knowledge of the stars and celestial bodies were compiled into clay tablets, which would indicate the movement of constellations and the behavior of the sun in relation to the moon. Important events such as equinoxes and eclipses were also accounted for. A collection of Babylonian scientists compiled their knowledge of the movement of the stars, their movements and constellations into a work known as the MUL.APIN, meaning “the plough”, which was the name given to the document’s first constellation. The origin of the document dates back to 1370 B.C.

An equally impressive document named the Enuma Anu Enlil is a number of astrological tables that not only accounted for eclipses and celestial events, but was also used as a system of prophecy. Though their methods may have involved some elements of superstition, their methods of calculation were far from primitive. Babylonian astronomy and mathematics utilized a unique system of calculation based on multiples of the number 60 known as the sexagesimal system. Babylonian scientists were able to calculate measurements as precise as one sixtieth of one degree, otherwise known as one arc minute [iii].

The Babylonian civilization is distinct in that it set two very distinct precedents in our collective human history. Firstly, it set the standard for what constitutes a modern civilization, and its pursuit of astronomy would mark the first known instance that humans would actively observe and collect data on phenomena outside of their immediate physical surroundings. In essence, this was a coming of age for our species. But there is a broader question at hand. What are the prerequisites for civilization? Do they simply appear out of nowhere, the way that the Cambrian Explosion produced new lifeforms? Also, what does early civilization tell us about our relationship to other humans and our relationship to ourselves?

The above article is an extract from “ The Human Anomaly ”, and has been republished with permission. For more information, click here.

RBP

Featured image: Artist’s reconstruction of the Sumerian city of Ur. ( Kings Academy )

By Tashi Javed

References:

[i] Steiger, Brad. Worlds Before Our Own.pg,134. London: W.H. Allen, 1980. Print.

[ii] Sitchin, Zecharia, Divine Encounters, 7

Source: https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-opinion/civilizations-out-nowhere-002248

[bigarbitertimemachine-blog]

MedicineNews

The Medical Sciences Program in Bloomington is exclusive among the IU College of Medication campuses in that it educates medical college students seeking an MD in addition to graduate and undergraduate students. MedlinePlus is the National Institutes of Health's web site for the layman, offering free and authoritative current well being and medical info. Produced by the National Library of Medicine, it offers details about ailments, circumstances and wellness issues in on a regular basis language. After giving your baby a dose of drugs, be on the lookout for side effects or allergic reactions. The pharmacist or product packaging might warn you about particular unwanted side effects, corresponding to drowsiness or hyperactivity. 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In the 12th century, universities were founded in Italy, France, and England, which quickly developed schools of drugs. The College of Montpellier in France and Italy's University of Padua and College of Bologna were leading colleges. Almost all the educational was from lectures and readings in Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Aristotle. There was little medical work or dissection. MedlinePlus is the Nationwide Institutes of Well being's Site for patients and their households and pals. Produced by the Nationwide Library of Medicine, the world's largest medical library, it brings you information about diseases, circumstances, and wellness points in language you can perceive. MedlinePlus provides reliable, up-to-date well being data, anytime, wherever, without cost. Melanie's constructive test results for the BRCA gene mutations instantly involved her medical workforce. BRCA gene mutations are linked to breast and ovarian cancers. 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Teaching medical students is a significant focus for Department of Medicine college and house workers. Throughout the 18th century drugs made slow progress. Medical doctors still did not know what triggered illness. Some continued to believe in the 4 humors (although this theory declined in the course of the 18th century). Other docs thought illness was caused by 'miasmas' (odorless gases within the air). The Department of Drugs is supported by a gifted administrative, medical and research employees that's dedicated to excellence. 2. See the essays collected in Charles E. Rosenberg, Explaining Epidemics and Different Studies in the Historical past of Drugs (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge College Press, 1992). Mau is professor and founding chair of the Department of Native Hawaiian Well being on the John A. Burns Faculty of Drugs, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Expertise in medical historical past covers an exceptionally big selection, from antiquity to the present day. We are especially concerned about encouraging work on Generation to Copy This is the theme of a Wellcome Trust strategic award held for eight years from 1 October 2009 by a cross-disciplinary group of Cambridge historians of medicine. The analysis will present recent views on points starting from historic fertility rites to IVF. A strongly grounded account, building on a vigorous discipline of historical investigation, will offer a contemporary foundation for coverage and public debate.

[thenamelesskitty-blog]

My Starplace

I have strange dreams. I mean, that’s probably true of most people, considering what our minds try to reconcile for the sake of sanity, but I dream of a strange place. It’s always the same place. It’s become familiar. Now that I consider it, I think the unplanned, undesired move to the UK would have been even harder had I not had I not been able to visit my Starplace at night.

My first memory in that place is of the sky. I don’t know how I came to be there and, with a dreamer’s unaccountable apathy, it didn’t feel like it mattered. Only the stars were important. There were so many! More than I’d seen in any fantastical painting. More than I could imagine. There was no visible sun, but the sky was so bright as to bathe the world in twilight. The Milky Way is too brilliant to examine long.

It was twilight when I first arrived, which wouldn’t change for a great many visits. I remember being shocked, fascinated, and a viscerally unsettled the first time night fell. Night—or something like it—occurs when almost all the stars fade away. In my early days, the phenomenon was strange and terrifying. I knew how the ancients must feel in the face of a solar eclipse. I would learn much later that the master of this place could shift the sky as though conducting the Harmony of the Spheres. Usually, he included all the stars that had ever been and would ever be visible from this point in space, timeless here despite their finite lives.

Other times, the master wished to observe a certain point in astronomical history, or several moments intersecting one another. It was stunning how many stars there weren’t when he did this. So many have died, or will die, our will be born and then die

Despite my unusual comfort with death, the brevity of stars was difficult to reconcile.

It took quite a few visits before I thought to do anything other than sit on my clifftop and watch the sky. It was more like a spire then a cliff, I suppose: most of the great formations in my Starplace are sheer and isolated, like narrower versions of certain Chinese mountains. The place I always appeared was comfortable and sandy. There were no plants, but I far from alone.

I couldn’t possibly fail to notice, when my eyes lowered from the strange heavens to give world-watching a try, that my rocky spire—and all those like it; they stood like fire-stripped trees above the landscape—was inhabited by hundreds of birds. I had yet to see birds rest in the trees far below. They only settled down on stone. (Their feet were shaped differently than those of Earth-birds to accommodate, and, and were very powerful.)

They were mostly similar to earthly species, with some variation. Many had sharp ridges on their legs,  wings, or both. Others had thickly armored backs dressed in something akin to scales. Some had prominent teeth in their beaks. Others had only a few strategic flight feathers, relying on tremendous flaps of skin to do the heavy lifting. The creatures ranged from agile raptors to barely-airworthy hulks.

All in all, it felt like a showcase of dinosaurs that didn’t make the cut.

And then, there was Speedy.

He didn’t have that name yet and wouldn’t for awhile, but a certain little owl—some of the birds were similar to earthly species, enough for me to call them by name—seemed particularly curious about me.

I took to killing little lizards for him. He started bringing me flowers. We were friends. I wasn’t under the impression that this was normal, but, again, the complacent acceptance of a dreamer made it innocently wonderful to have a bird-friend. Especially when my friend was the king bird.

The birds on my spire—and around the other I could see, as well as those daring to coast above the treetops far below—fell into two basic categories: they were either highly aggressive hunters, or small and traveling in tight flocks, which utilized aggressive tactics like swarms of bees.

There was a significant amount of predation amongst them. Even the flocks looked to me to be hunting, though I couldn’t pinpoint their quarry. Larger creatures went for mouthfuls of flock birds, or swooped upon unwary raptors. None of them bothered my petite companion.

Despite his size–not much larger than my palm–my horned owl companion never had to watch his back.

He did, anyway…I don’t think anything escaped his notice. But, in all the time I spent with him, not one of the large and vaguely pterodactyl-looking predators tried its luck.

It certainly wasn’t ME staving them off. More than once, I found myself taking cover from a an avian hunter…else vapidly unaware, staring at the sky only to be startled back to unreality by the screeching of a furious Speedy driving off my would-be killer. I still dream of Speedy. He’s my little owl friend, and he acted as my guide and guardian when I finally decided to descend to the alien valley below.

I didn’t begin my descent down the stone spire at Speedy’s behest. I was, as ever, driven by own curiosity. I live for woodlands and forestry and the natural world, and there was some whole new version far below. How could I not explore it? How could I not experience it?

I called it a valley, before. That’s true, but the word conjures up an image that does an utter disservice to the place’s sheer scale. The spires dotting the landscape were petite compared to the sharp peaks forming a steep wall to my arbitrary “west.”

Cliché as the simile may be, the mountains looked like teeth. At least, they would have, had there been any breaks between them. I only ever spotted one pass. (Something in my DNA rebelled, shrieking, at the thought of approaching that shadowed place.) The mountain range curved into the distance until it was swallowed up by distance and haze. On very clear visits and at my starting elevation, I could see the distant silhouettes of the tremendous mountains on either side beginning to curve inward like a bowl.

I always lost sight of them, at a point. The other side was just too far away, and I no visual confirmation that it was as solid a wall as the rest. Understanding this place to be a fully enclosed valley—protected, self-contained, and self supporting: a preserve of sorts—was an insight offered freely to my dreaming mind.

Anyway, there came a point when I wanted to see more. In a way, I needed to. My Starplace had become an unreal part of my reality, and I needed to learn all about it. So, I dangled myself off the edge and then, one careful handhold and foothold at a time, I began to climb.

It was a long way down. 150, 160, 180 meters, maybe? It was a staggering height I would have lacked the muscular endurance to scale in the waking world. There, however, the rules were different.

The wind was variably hot and cold, depending on whether it spun clockwise or otherwise through the valley. The temperature was sometimes intense. Either extreme should have burned me. I found it invigorating. I felt invincible.

Some thirty meters along, I heard myself scream. Something like molten wires drizzled all around my wrist. I almost fell, losing my footing and hanging on by the other hand alone. The burning hand was trapped. After freezing or scalding in so many dreams, and narrowly avoiding the beaks of predators, this first shot of genuine pain hit with a jarring shock.

Can you feel pain, in a dream?

I looked down to the canopy of an alien forest. It was so far away. It looked like a pillow that could catch me. It wouldn’t of course. I could hear my flesh sizzling. I could almost smell it cooking, but something was off. I finally forced violently-wincing eyes from the fall back up. Dozens of long, unbelievably narrow white worms had wrapped around my hand and wrist after pouncing from the stone behind them. And they were still twisting.

Others were crawling up my forearm. Flesh discolored around each strand, radiating a changing spectrum of horrible hues that end in charred green-black.

I jerked against them once more even as my feet scraped and scrambled into new footholds. They were ungodly strong, and the pain was crippling. Some animalistic pain-sound leaked constantly from my throat.

I could picture how this would end. They’d draw me closer, revealing more and more of themselves as they cocooned me in their own burning bodies. I would be dissolved alive. This kind of thing happened to bugs. I didn’t want this end!

I dropped back hard to dangle over a drop a parachute could appreciate, buffeted by the wind and supported only by the acid-spewing ambushers boring through my wrist and burrowing into my skin. It hurt so badly. They burned. Truly, genuinely BURNED. My head swam. I couldn’t imagine why I wasn’t waking up. My free hand asked no such questions. It drew my hunting knife.

It took all of my self-control to grab the ledge spewing weird acidic death-worms. Nonetheless, I did. Something of my upper body needed to be holding on. I wasn’t a good enough rock climber to do otherwise. Not without falling to my death, anyway.

I went to work slashing and cutting. The worms were startlingly tough and sinuous. Their blood was milky white, swelling conservatively out of sliced ends without spurting or drama. Some of them retracted. Some of them held fast. I cut them, too.

I was free, but could see reinforcements slithering through the shadowed crevasse. I took the knife between my teeth and hurriedly resumed my downward climb. The muscles of my forearm bunched and straightened, grinding against the worms under my skin.

Even severed from their core, the burrowers were delving deeper and making their way upward, crawling steadily towards my elbow and interminably closer to my torso. That was concerning, not to mention the feeling of razor wire being dragged the long way through my muscles. I gasped and sputtered, blinking often to keep my eyes clear despite tears, snot, and intermittent cries accompanied my descent.

I couldn’t stop to deal with the thing inside me. The worms had given chase, belching out of their hole in the stone spire and stretching out for half a meter, then a meter, and they kept coming.

For just a moment, I paused, squinting up at them to understand.

The creatures branched off of one another. They moved strangely, pushing against solid surfaces and, in other places, twisted freely with no apparent means of locomotion. I caught my breath when I finally understood.

They weren’t worms. They were ROOTS.

Roots of what?

I have some idea now, but I wasn’t sufficiently interested in learning the answer then.

I climbed faster than ever. A plant wanted to grow through my tissues and eat me, and was already doing a fair job on my arm. I screeched with pain and fear when it approached my delicate elbow, burning ligaments and tendons. That arm started spasming uncontrollably.

That’s when Speedy came to the rescue.

The little owl swooped in, surveyed the situation, and then perched firmly on my besieged arm. His grip was too tight, almost bone-breaking, and his talons drew blood. I didn’t care.

My little friend grabbed at one of the protruding worms—roots—with his beak and began pulling. I yelped or screamed when he began pulling the white thing out by its base. I stopped and clung to the wall, still and trembling. This didn’t allow the network of little white roots to catch me. At about two meters long, they had begun retracting.

The little owl finally dragged one bloodstained root free. I gasped with relief to see he’d retrieved it all the way to the tip, then squeezed my eyes shut when he got to work on the second and third burrowers.

He got them all. About five meters down, I found a ledge big enough to sit on…after carefully scrutinizing every crevasse for danger. I scratched Speedy’s head and preened his feathers like I’d never preened them before. He seemed content at the exchange.

I woke up there, still petting speedy. The next time I fell asleep, I returned to same ledge when I began to dream. That was the first time I’d ever entered my Starplace anywhere but on the sandy top of this spire. (My owl friend, of course, was gone.) It wouldn’t always work that way, I’d learn: returning to wherever I’d left off. It usually did, though. I’ve developed some instinct for which will be the case, but have yet to discern the precise logic.

Anyway, there wasn’t much to do but admire the treetops from my new and closer vantage or resume my downward climb. This time, I did so with greater regard for my surroundings and my knife clenched in my teeth, (which is physically irritating after awhile.)

I passed some hand-sized lumps hanging from the rock face covered in the white roots that had attacked me, wound up as though by a gargantuan spider. They were flock birds, dead and digesting.

Then, one of them twitched a bit before tipping its head gradually aside and finally lying still again. I couldn’t stop staring at it, teeth bare and slack. It was alive. Holy shit, I could literally see roots weaving in and out of its flesh, and it was ALIVE.

One thin white line twisted around the top of its head, branching just above its eye socket. One curled around towards the inside. The other, I could see on the interior of its eye. It didn’t react to me in any way. Its breaths were fast and twitchy.

I took my knife in hand and glanced beneath me, mapping my route. Then, I took a breath, looking back at the tormented bird. One hard stab later, I must have severed half its internal organs…not to mention a whole lot of roots.

More roots came splaying blindly out of the hole from which this plant originated. Smaller streams leaked from nearby crevasses as well. Plants never seem angry, by our standards. This was pretty close, though.

I was already climbing. Fast. Really fast. The knife was clenched between my teeth again, though my lips instantly started to tingle against the bird’s strange-tasting blood. No time for that, now. Hand-over-hand, drop by drop, I fled.

Eventually, the roots reached their maximum length of about two and a half meters, where they splayed in every direction like a huge fan in search of their lost aggressor. I breathed a sigh of relief, kept climbing a bit longer for safety…

And then tore the knife from between my lips, cursing and spitting and trying to wipe them clean. They were burned. They felt BURNED. Gods, I hoped their blood wasn’t poison. That possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.

My lips were the worst, but my tongue and cheeks and the roof of my mouth burned as though I’d eaten something too hot, while my teen had that coarse, high-friction feeling of eating pineapple or a similarly acidic fruit.

So, yeah. Acid. Its blood was obviously acid.

Or basic.

Whatever. The pH wasn’t my friend, let’s leave it at that.

I wiped my knife clean on my jeans—I was a tanner, so let’s face it: acidic bird blood is definitely not the worst thing I’ve wiped on myself—sheathed it, and continued on my way.

All the while, I worked on shifting my mouth around awkwardly in the dry air, generally making an idiot of myself in an effort to produce extra spit to swish around in my mouth. Between that and analyzing each threatening crack I approached, I didn’t notice at first.

I took a step back.

Not down. BACK. Blinking at that strange phenomenon, I turned around slowly, only to find myself peering through the uppermost canopy of an amazing, not-quite-terrestrial, not-quite-alien forest.

Flocks of birds darted through, staging hit-and-run attacks on fruit-bearing trees that tried to grab them back. Vase-like flowers were everywhere—I suspected they functioned like carnivorous pitcher plants, though I wouldn’t’ confirm this until later—some bigger than me.

And then, there were animals. Animals that were something between horses and deer, which had a shearing, claw-like growth on all ankles and restrained, half-circular horns like saw blades. They were herbivores. That meant something different, here.

It was all so…wild. So unadulterated in its aggression, predator and prey and predator rolling through an eternal cycle more viciously pronounced than it was in earth’s more specialized creatures. It was brutal and I didn’t know how to feel.

But my eyes were wide, and I was smiling.

Speedy swooped down, then, to alight on my shoulder. I looked at him, grinning, and then couldn’t keep my eyes from turning back to the most savage forest I could imagine.

“It’s beautiful," I told him.

He cuddled against my neck.

I have lots of little stories from there. Something almost caught me. I almost caught something else. Speedy savef my butt again. The resonant crystals in the half-frozen, half-boiling lake sing notes of passivity or frenzy throughout the valley…

There are stories. But, this is a good introduction. This is the place I go when I dream, pretty often. My Starplace, and my Speedy. I wouldn’t fear it at all if I didn’t sometimes wake up with acid-burns crawling across my skin.