#she's been fucked up and weird since she was very littletiny dont even worry abt it

[azvibes]

Friends

A small child who was not a gnome was sitting on the dirt.

She was three years old, or maybe four. The gnomes who had found her didn’t have any idea how the ages of other species worked. It would be a few more years before anyone would come along who recognized the child as an earth genasi, anyway. Her adoptive warren just knew that she was larger than them, and grew a bit quicker, and that her skin was green and tough–and they knew that they loved her and that she was very special. That was all that mattered.

There was a dandelion in the child’s mouth, and she was chewing on the yellow petals with a thoughtful expression on her round face. One of her caretakers, a warren elder named Begonia, was gathering mushrooms from the side of a nurse log and placing them in a basket.

“Auntie?” said the child through a mouthful of flower.

“Yes, precious?”

“Is a mushroom like a flower?”

Begonia glanced over at the child. “Not really. They grow out of the ground sometimes, and we can eat some of them, like plants. But a plant only eats sunlight.” She walked over and handed the child, who was nearly as tall as she was by now, one of the mushrooms from the basket. “Mushrooms eat dead and rotting things. When something in the forest dies, the mushrooms help return it to the earth.”

The child’s eyes went very wide, and the dandelion fell out of her agape mouth.

Begonia laughed. “Isn’t that wonderful, precious?”

“I want to be a mushroom,” the child said earnestly.

“Do you, now?” Begonia patted the child’s cheek. “That’s a very lofty goal, you know. Mushrooms are some of the most important citizens in the forest.”

“I can do it.” She hmphed determinedly and brought the mushroom she was holding up to her face to sniff it. “They smell like the dirt. So do I.”

“Do you want to learn more about mushrooms, precious? Uncle Morrie could teach you more than I could,” Begonia said when the child began nodding very enthusiastically. “I mostly just know which ones that grow in Embrook Woods are edible. Not all of them are–that’s very important to remember, alright? Don’t go looking for mushrooms to eat without a grown-up helping you.”

“Why not?”

“Because some can make you very, very sick.”

The child burst into giggles.

“What’s so funny?” asked Begonia, bemused.

“Well, they don’t want to be eaten!”

Begonia had to chuckle. “I guess they don’t! I wouldn’t, either.”

The child stopped laughing. Very seriously, she said, “But the mushrooms will eat us. When we die.”

A sudden shiver ran down Begonia’s spine, all the way to the tip of her tail. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s right. They help return us to the earth, like I said. But that won’t happen to any of our warren for a long time yet.”

“Unless we eat the wrong kind of mushroom. Then they’ll get us sooner,” said the child. She grinned. “I like that! They get hungry, and come find their food, just like we’re doing now.”

“That’s true,” said Begonia. She’d never thought about it quite like that before. She had a feeling most people would be off-put by the child’s reasoning and excitement about the topic, but Begonia wasn’t one to shy away from death. The only thing that she felt uneasy about was how natural the whole idea seemed to come to the child. It was like instinct more than curiosity. There was a kinship between the child and the mushroom she held. “Do you want to help me pick a few more for dinner? And then we can go back home, precious.”

The child nodded and shuffled over across the soil and moss. Her chubby, clumsy hands were careful and gentle as she plucked more of the small, light brown mushrooms from the nurse log. “You’re our dinner tonight,” she informed the mushrooms. “And then someday, we’ll be yours. That means we’re friends, I think. Yes, we’re friends.”