Murbellass

Nervously dipping my toes into creative writing.  Feel free to add constructive criticism as you see things.

CW: The whole series will mention the emotional fallout after the death of a parent due to cancer

September 4th 2032

Dear diary 

journal entry #

    Ugh why did I decide to do this in pen?!  Anyway I'm just going to write crap to get through this.  My name is Marin, and for some reason I decided to start a journal or diary or whatever today.  I just noticed mom's old fancy roll top desk that was put out to storage when the hospital bed and monitors moved in, and moved it into her room.  I just had to make use of it.  Her room has been closed off and empty for the past year and yesterday was the anniversary of her death and out of some need to force the tears loose I opened the door and it just looked so… empty and sad.  It worked, I sat in the corner and cried.  But then I cleaned.  I took out all the dry and decaying plants from the windows, beat all the dust laden rugs against the porch railing, and I swept.  I made it my goal to turn it back into a room she'd be proud of, clean, cozy, and cluttered.

    Setting the pen down and smiling to myself at my alliteration, I leaned back in her old chair and sighed.  My mother's former room looked a lot better now.  Though her drawn out death still felt like a raw wound, I'd been able to pull the figurative bandage off and let the sun and fresh air in.  I'd made it into an office and reading space for myself, which I knew she'd have wanted for me.  Filling it again with shelves of books, her desk, a very nice bean bag, and after a shopping spree at her favorite nursery, repopulated all the pots with new healthy ferns, succulents, and orchids.  

    I began pondering if I would be able to keep the new plants and my journaling goals alive, but my pondering was cut short by the grumbling whines of Badger, a confusingly named Malamute puppy.  I'd just gotten them to stop peeing inside the house and if I wanted the streak to continue, we'd better get going for a walk.  Getting up with a withering glance at my journal, I stuffed it into my bag, collected Badger's leash, donned some stompy boots, and we exited into the rapidly cooling evening air.

    Yes, I use neutral pronouns for my dog.  They aren't gonna tell me so it's not my place to go forcing human gender roles on them *snooty enby noises*.  For myself I've been trying out ey/eir/em for the past month or so with people I actually cared about being in relationship with, which at this point is just online friends and my library family.  Everyone else could do whatever.  I liked to try and gauge their perception of me, and just gender in general, by what they went with.  It was a fun game to play with the cis which had the added benefit of highlighting who might be cool if they asked or went neutral.  For a small town with myself and the triad who owned the library being the only out queer people over 18, it was actually a surprisingly large ratio of cool people.  I guess that's why my moms moved here 30 years ago.

    Down the front steps and through the mounded, terraced, and fairy themed permaculture art installation my mother had called a lawn, Badger and I went in search of a good place for them to relieve theirself.  Badger “murfled” and I waved at our neighbor Mrs. Rosewood, as we took a right turn off the street and began our trek up the hill and away from small town suburbia.  

    The town of Longsprings, Colorado was nestled in a Rocky Mountain valley, that despite proximity to several frosty mountain peaks, was thankfully still several thousand feet below treeline.  It had some very interesting hot springs but for some reason never really developed into a bustling tourist or ski town.  My canine companion and I ventured into the aspen grove just off our home street with Badger excitedly sniffing and depositing some of their own scents against the white bark of the trees.  Over the past 6 months since I had adopted them, Badger and I had worn something of a trail of trod undergrowth and marked trees through this grove, so they knew the way and pulled me along the path as my thoughts drifted.  

    I thought back to the last few years of my mother’s life as the cancer slowly took her.  How I dropped out of college to move here and help care for her.  She was too proud to reach out to Janice, my other mother.  They had a falling out over my coming out as trans 5 years ago.  Having radical lesbian feminists for mothers was something I knew would be a mixed bag on telling them the truth I discovered about myself while away at school.  I let them both know I was nonbinary and had started hormones while visiting at the end of spring break, letting them know I had neither the strength nor spoons to be there for them to go through the initial work of processing what I dropped on them.  I left them with a bunch of reading and resources while they were still in shock, and started the long drive back to school with my phone powered off.  Aria, my birth-mother, though they never really pushed the distinction, was able to move past her initial suspicion and biases towards the nefarious goals harbored by AMAB trans people in favor of her love for me.  Janice was not.  The next week Aria called me and let me know they were getting a divorce and that I shouldn’t plan on accepting calls from Janice anytime soon.  We cried together over the phone for what seemed like hours.  I had lost one mother, but the other became my strongest supporter, only to lose her as well several years later.

    Badger’s growls and a sudden yank pulled me away from my depressive spiral, and nearly off my feet.  I had to flail and scramble over roots and between trees after them, struggling in vain to regain enough balance and slow their pursuit of some unknown scent.  After bouncing hard off a tree shoulder first, we entered a small clearing in the middle of the grove where it butted up against a moss covered outcropping.  Badger stopped to sniff as I caught my breath and nursed my shoulder which would probably have a nice bruise in the morning.  

    I looked up and noticed that there was an unusual plethora of mushrooms along the ground and up the rocks in this clearing, and even more unusual, it looked like one collection of overlapping fungus on the outcropping was putting off faintly glowing spores.  More unusual still, the tiny motes of light seemed to be drifting along with some air currents that I was not privileged to sense.  The overall unusualness of this clearing now crossed over into being disconcerting as the motes seemed to notice Badger and I as a prong of the cloud pointed towards us.  Badger growled and I was downright panicking as those unfelt air currents suddenly shifted and sent the spores swirling around the two of us.  

    The air around us warmed and with a fearful gasp, I drew some glowing spores within me.  I could feel a tingling warmth sink down into my airways, warmth which was strangely relaxing amongst my growing panic and speeding heartbeat.  The ever valiant Badger let loose a mighty “bork” which seemed to cause the motes nearest us to disperse and give us some space.  I could still feel the tingling within me and forced myself to cough and attempt to expel anything I sucked in.  I was rewarded with a small puff of glowing spores coming out my mouth and nose.  My airways and sinuses felt electrified, my eyes were watering.  I sneezed, expelling a cloud of glittering light.  I would be staring in awe if it weren't for the strange sensations rippling within me.  

    I wasn't even left with time to appreciate them as I collapsed to the ground under a sudden wave of everything suddenly becoming overwhelming.  A kaleidoscope of colors washed over my brain, vision seemingly from all angles blossomed behind my eyes.  Scents I couldn’t ever begin to describe overlaid themselves deep within my sinuses.  Vibrations in the air hammered in the spaces behind my ears.  I’ve had sensory issues for as long as I can remember from fun with neurodivergencies, and this was the most overpowering and inescapable sensory experience I’ve ever had.  I had no other response than to curl up in a protective twitching ball against a root only to have my consciousness further blasted away from my grasp by the sudden awareness of the enormity and interdependent connectivity that is the root structure and soil ecology within a grove of aspen. Right before I blacked out, the last things I could sense were a grumble from Badger and the careful placating motions of a humanoid shaped glowing nexus of life approaching us.

* * *

    I awoke to a very wet tongue in my face.  Thankfully, the concerned whining Identified the tongue as belonging to Badger and not something else.  Fending off the canine’s concerns, I groaned and attempted to prop myself more upright, but my hand sank slightly into whatever surface I found myself upon.  My head hurt like I was hungover, but I risked opening my eyes.  It was moss… and something that looked like clover but with fuzz on the leaves.  There was a warmth radiating up through the greens and it was so very soft and comforting.  I sat upright and found I was in the center of a large oblong bed composed entirely of disconcertingly comfortable plant matter.  This discovery was almost distracting enough to keep me from noticing the rest of wherever I'd found myself.  Ugh, I thought I was done with waking up hungover in strange places.  

    The room... well cave?... was dimly lit from the ceiling by luminescent threads that were gently wafting along, causing everything in the room to slowly shimmer.  To my left was an illuminated alcove, eroded into the rock containing a smaller pad of moss set in front of a flat of polished stone, a desk or work surface it seemed.  To my right was an expanse of intertwining roots emerging and delving back into a wall of soil.  From its center was a small trickling stream that fed into a basin that was surrounded by yet more moss and many different varieties of fungi.

    My attention was stolen away from the room when a gentle voice startled me from behind.  “Oh good, you’re finally conscious.” 

    “Aaaaaa…”  Fear and confusion closed off my vocal chords.  On the other side of the mossy bed was the most inconceivably amazing being I’ve ever seen.  They were like some artistic rendition of a fantastical fey dryad creature - humanoid, two arms, two legs, a head, antlers,  greenish wood textured skin that covered a frame that was curvy in many feminine ways - but they dressed with such impossibly bad fashion sense it somehow circled back to good… in a queer sorta way.  They wore a pair of blue floral print yoga pants and a yellow long sleeve crop top with the word “HUMAN” stretched across their inhuman chest.  They must’ve had to open the neck to get over the horns so it turned into an off the shoulder ordeal.  Upon their head perched a red, velvet textured cowboy hat, folded and wedged between antlers.  Under the hat flowed feathery iridescent blue-green hair that ran down the being’s head and behind their shoulders.  There was a set of very expressive black bushy eyebrows that were flaring with concern at me over huge eyes that glistened with a golden light which danced in time with the gently shifting illumination in the cave.  Their wide nose, with two too many sets of nostrils, sat above a mouth of full purple lips that were moving as if trying to express language… oh, they were speaking to me again and my brain was processing none of it.

    “...must have colonized you then.  They aren’t supposed to be compatible with your phys…”

    Wait, what?!  “Colonized me, what colonized me?!” I let out, my voice taking on a frantic edge.

    “Oh, these…”  They gestured to their right with an open palm and a puff of the luminescent motes that I had seen in the clearing came into being. “...are engineered uh… spores"

    A startled Badger borked at the appearance of the lights which had harmed me before.  My oncoming panic was broken by the need to calm the four legged friend.  "It's okay buddy" I said, scratching them gently behind their ears.  Badger lowered their head onto my lap, still glaring.  Looking back to the queerly dressed dryad, "Please, continue.  Spores?"

    "Well uh… the spores, what humans would classify as a zooballistoconidia, are an asexually produced, willfully dispersed, motile form of an extrasensory engineered lifeform."  All I could do was gape at them as they babbled on like someone who finally had another show interest in a topic they were heavily invested in.  "They have formed a symbiotic colony within your body.  They produced a mycosynaspal mesh within and around the sensory centers of your brain, and the beginnings of fruiting bodies along the mucosal tissue of your sinuses.”

    "Fruiting body…  my brain?"

    "Yes, yes!"  Becoming even more excited, they launched further into the dumping of information.  "They were developed as a sensorial augmentation to our consciousness.  The overall cloud is produced within the fruiting body as a highly diverse collective of airborne flagellated spores, all equipped with different sets of receptors.  As an ensemble they can detect a wide spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, chemical composition, temperature, and vibrational waves.  Whenever cell division happens, they generate a supply of entangled pairs of particles to be divided along with the chromosomes.  Through spin state manipulation of these particles, the spores make up a distributed communications network that can relay all that information back to the main mycelial mesh that has formed in your brain."  They stopped, the excitement on their face broke.

    Their gaze dropped as they sat down on the other side of the mossy bed.  They removed their hat, and with words careful and tentative they began.  "When I found you I was still... connected to your network."  They let out a long sigh before continuing.  "I could feel your emotions… the stress and pain this was putting on you.”  They let out a long sigh before continuing.  “The connection never should have happened without your consent, but I had to use it to put the colony that had taken root in your body into hibernation.  To free you from that pain."  They seemed unable to look at me and… ashamed.  "I've broken the entanglement between us.  It is ethically wrong on so many levels to force a connection to a being who hasn't or can't give consent!"  They twisted their body and face towards me. The plaintive wide eyed look they gave me with their antlered nonhuman face put new meaning to doe eyed.  "I am sorry."

    I was hit by a wave of needing to make this intriguing creature in front of me no longer be pained by the shame of... whatever this situation was.  I reached across the bed and placed my hand upon theirs.  "No, it's okay.  I'm okay.  I mean I feel a bit hungover currently, but this is all actually amazingly interesting to me.  This room, these spores, this bed… you…"  Wait, did I just call them amazing?!  I found myself blushing a bit as I looked down at where our hands met.  Their skin was wrinkled and textured in swirling patterns of blues, purples and greens, but it was still very soft and warmth.  I noticed my fingers had begun tracing the patterns on the back of the dryad's hand.  Blushing further, I quickly pulled my hand back to brush some stray hair behind my ear.   "Um, what… who are you?"

    Their golden glowing eyes intently followed my hand from where we had rested upon theirs, to my ear, for their gaze to settle back on my face after I had finished speaking.  "I guess I'm what you'd refer to as an extraterrestrial."  They said followed by a guilty laugh.

    My mouth dropped at their unexpected reveal.  My exasperated attention was redirected to my lap, as I apparently had stopped tending to Badger long enough that they pulled the entire front half of their body into it and were grumbling at me.  I placatingly resumed scritching to bring an end to the grumbles.

    The alien giggled at the dog, but continued, “My… I guess... people?  Yes, as good a word as any.  We don't exactly have names, nouns, or spoken language even, more a conveyed sense of person.  After all my studies of earth, I’ve chosen the name Sylph, a species of South American hummingbird that in turn was named after a mythological spirit of air"  This dryad, Sylph, gathered their hair over in front of their shoulder, but it wasn't hair.  It was a collection of long flexible feathers that shifted through green, blue, and purple as it moved in different orientations to the light.  As Sylph preened, I could see that along each shaft the iridescent barbs were actively flexing in and out.  “The males have long beautiful tail feathers that I modeled my hair after.  I'm not though… male that is.  My people don't really have reproductive sexes, or a classifiable species really.  The idea of gender or reproductive sex has no meaning to us in more than a scientific sense, but with how gendered your cultures and languages are, I've currently chosen to be a woman while I'm here"  Sylph's large eyes looked into mine.  "You are actually the first I’ve told any of this to.”  

    There was a familiar vulnerability in their… no, her gaze.  It reflected the way I felt every time I tentatively opened up about my identity to someone who I cared about getting to know.  The way trans friends I’ve collected through my life have looked as they extended a sacred trust of some deep inner truth to me about themselves.  I could feel my heart ache with the desire to fill her with validation.  The word “beautiful” escaped my lips before my brain caught up with what my heart had done.  My face furiously flushing when it did.  Recovering with a clearing of my throat, “uh, your name… it's beautiful."  very smooth Marin, good job.  "Oh, and my name is Marin.  It’s a pleasure to meet you Sylph.”  I said, extending my hand.

    “Oh Marin, the pleasure is all mine.”  Sylph’s lips parted in a beaming smile as she gently took my hand in her own.  “This is both worse, and far far better than so many of the scenarios I planed for first contact.”

    Oh crap, this was first contact!  But beyond that… the feel of her hand holding mine, the way she said my name, how she looked at me with that smile and those shimmering eyes.  Feelings rushed through me as goosebumps pricked down my neck and arm to where we touched.  Oh heck, I'm totally crushing on this alien!  "Well uh, I'm truly honored Sylph."  As if on queue to recognizing my own interest in her, feelings of inadequacy clamped down.  "Why me though?  No 'take me to your leader'?" I said in a comically nasal alien voice to try and mask my insecurity.

    Sylph responded with mock indignation, "Ugh Marin, why do you come at me with such an offensive stereotype?!”  Our shared laughter filled the room.  “But seriously though, my people don't really care about humanity, least of all it's leadership.  Intelligence plus hierarchy never makes for anything worth really talking to.  Our ecologists have seen so many worlds in ruins and various stages of recovery after "civilizations" like yours have had their way with things," she added finger quotes around the word ‘civilizations’.  "but I'm what you'd call, morbidly curious."  She said with her purple lips pulled up in a smirk.

    Ooof that smirk, bestill my big queer heart!

    "For my people," she looked to her wall of roots, soil, and growing things with adoration as she continued, "supporting biodiversity and complexity of life is our most deeply held value.  Diversity just isn't allowed to truly coexist within a hierarchical civilization, and once they reach a threshold of control over their environment, they start whittling away at the diversity of all life on the planet.  We've mostly written off Earth as another world on track for an ecological collapse due to the folly of the 'intelligent' creatures it birthed."  

    The sadness that played across her face was heartbreaking.  I looked away in vicarious shame for my species.  It didn't seem at all like Sylph was looking down on me for this, but I was definitely feeling some fragility over how much humanity had fucked over itself and all other life.  

    Sylph reached out and gently guided my face back towards hers.  When did she get so close?  "As for why you?… Honestly, I wasn't even ready to talk with anyone.  The two of you..." she nodded towards Badger.  Her hand unfortunately left my chin to pat them on the head, "...were in the right, or maybe wrong, place, at the right time, and something about you was compatible with my spores."  She sighed and leaned back slightly.  "I don't know what is about you that made that violation possible, and I wish I could take what happened back… but, having met you… us talking, here, now… this feels right."

    The look of happiness on Sylph’s face as she looked at me, heated my entire body.  My heart was racing.  Feelings swelled within me.  Feelings that had sat dormant for the past several years since my mom became sick.  

    But also, I was suddenly struck by how Sylph, an otherworldly intelligence from somewhere beyond our solar system, was so very culturally and linguistically fluent that she was drawing these feelings out in me.  Or maybe I was just so touch starved and thirsty for intimacy that it didn't even have to be human connection.  Did feelings even work for her the same way?  Could anything I'm feeling ever be reciprocated?  Doubts swirled around, dividing and multiplying, in my brain.  My brain, that had some alien fungus dividing and multiplying inside it.  Would I have to be quarantined?  Studied?  Dissected?  Would Sylph wind up splayed out on a table beside me?

    My heart rate kept climbing.  I couldn't slow my breathing.  My anxiety, my insecurities, my fears all spiraled down the drain of an oncoming panic attack.  Curling down, I wrapped myself around Badger.  They whined and pulled the rest of their large body into my lap.  Sylph was speaking, but I couldn't process it.  I felt a hand on my back which I swatted away with far more vehemence than I could have ever brought myself to use in any other situation.  I felt guilt and shame for lashing out and those just spiraled into all the other emotions I was currently overwhelmed with as I began sobbing into Badger's back.  

* * *

    I don't know how long it was, but eventually the gentle breathing and steady heartbeat of the canine cuddled against me guided me back.  I was able to ground myself in them.  Moving back towards reality, I felt into the warmth and texture of the moss beneath me, supporting me.  I listened to the gentle trickling of water into the basin I'd seen before.  I became aware of the very soft humming of some tune I've never heard before.  I hadn't scared her away?  With my breathing steady, I was able to open my eyes.  

    Sylph sat cross legged to the side of the water filled basin, engrossed in activity.  She had her hands up, manipulating her glowing spores as they drifted to the rhythm of her melodic murmurations.  They danced from her hands to the roots, shrooms, and moss surrounding the small pool.  I was fully struck again by just how beautiful she was.  The way the feathers that made up her hair flexed in the light of the cave.  The way a roll of tummy hung over the waistband of her pants.  The way she bit her lip as she was concentrating.  I'm in way too deep with this crush…  I felt at the overwhelming emotions from earlier.  The fear, the anxiety, the attraction...  They were all still there, stable for now, but very real, and raw.  

    "I…" trying to speak but only managing a croak, my voice still rough from crying.  Sylph stopped humming and lowered her hands, the glowing spores dispersing.  She turned to face me, doe eyes full of caring and concern.  I sat upright, cleared my throat, and started again.  "I'm sorry about before.  I'm tired and hungry, Badger probably is too."  I paused to take in a deep breath,  "I think I need to go…  Today has been... a lot, and I need some time to process."  Sylph's frown of disappointment hurt to see, but I knew I needed time.  "But I'd like to come back… if you'll have me?"  I added hopefully.

    A smile returned to her intriguing face, and I didn't feel at all comfortable with how much I had longed to see it again.  "I'd like that too."  She said softly.  "The two of you are welcome back anytime.  I'll know if you enter the clearing and come out to get you"

    "I'm sorry again.  Did I hurt you when I…"  My voice trailing off as I thought back to forcing her away.

    She stood and approached, hand outstretched to comfort, but seemed to second guess the instinct and instead clasped her hands in front of her.  "No, not at all.  I've become familiar with the symptoms of a panic attack.  Honestly, that was one of several, uh, adverse reactions to first contact I prepared for.  I checked, and you had no symptoms beyond the emotional, so I just stayed nearby in case that changed."

   "Oh, umm… thank you for staying.  It helps if someone is nearby, even if I'm not fully aware of it"  I looked around the bed and found my bag.  Collecting it, Badger knew it was the signal we were moving and they gracelessly flopped off the bed into a stretch and a yawn.  "Uhhh, this way to get out?"  I pointed towards the opening Sylph had come through probably many hours ago, I had no clue what time it was.

    "Yes, I'll walk you out."  Hands still clasped in front of her, Sylph rounded the bed and headed out the opening.  Picking up Badger's leash, I followed behind.