Thirty Two

Fyndraxis didn’t have to kill all that much time until dawn began to break and Bird began to stir. She yawned and gave a great stretch to greet the day. She continued to do more stretches in some sort of routine that was a lot more Yogic than it had any business being. Either Yoga had survived the apocalypse, or it was a series of stretches that humans eventually settled on in some sort of calisthenic singularity.
During something that was very close to downward dog, Bird’s brow furrowed and then a single eyebrow raised in a manner that telegraphed the gears turning inside her head.
“What’n the fuck happened here?” She had noticed the roughly sixty foot circle of death that surrounded their campfire. Mycellus had sucked the life force from everything and left nothing but dirt. Around its circumference, this circle was picketed by the fruiting bodies of mushrooms of various types. It seemed Mycellus was already patching up holes in their global network.
“Well,” Fyndraxis let this word slip out in the form of a question. He didn’t really know where to begin, so perhaps it was a question to himself, “we had a visitor last night while you were asleep.”
“What kinda visitor does this?” She gestured around the circle of mushrooms. She had planted herself on her butt cross legged. Yoga seemed to have been canceled for the moment.
“Um, a mushroom person I guess?” Fyndraxis yet again let this statement slip out as a question.
“A mushroom person?” She parroted.
“Yeah, a person made of mushrooms. They came out of the ground,” this was as simple of an explanation that Fyndraxis could come up with.
“Right on, what’d he have to say?” Bird seemed surprisingly cool with this turn of events. So cool in fact that she had resumed her stretching routine.
“They want my help defeating the Wendigo. Wait, doesn’t this freak you out? It freaks me out for sure,” Fyndraxis asked, baffled.
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty weird,” she said this from underneath her armpit. She was in child’s pose and really feeling the stretch.
When she finally came out of child’s pose Fyndraxis made a point of looking into her eyes. Her normally light green irises were almost completely black. They were dilated like she was adjusted to complete darkness. It seemed Mycellus, along with the sleeping cocktail, had slipped in a little something extra and Bird was now tripping her face off.
“Man, I slept great,” she said as she went into a sun salutation, “normally, when I’m on the move I sleep like total shit. But I feel great, man,” she then noticed the little pill that Mycellus had left for her.
“What’s this little guy?” She asked as she lifted the pill close to her eye.
“I wouldn’t eat that,” Fyndraxis warned, “the mushroom person left it.”
“Yeah, but it’s in my bowl,” she placed the pill back in the bowl and kneeled down to regard it, face almost in the dirt, “I eat stuff in my bowl. My bowllioliolio,” she laughed at that for a while.
“You’re right Fyn, I don’t think I should eat this,” she decided, after she had recovered from her chuckling fit, “I don’t even know that mushroom dude. Let’s go pick flowers for a while, I love them. You can tell me all about Mr. Mushroom while we do it.”
She gathered up the sword giggling and set out in search of flowers. The flowers that they found were mostly trillium.
“Oh! Trillium,” She said as she spied the flowers in the distance, “they are my favorite. They stink like pond water, but they’re so beautiful. I like the purple’n white ones the most, but the red ones are pretty great too. What’s up with this mushroom guy?”
As she puttered about gathering trillium Fyndraxis recounted the strange interaction that he had had with Mycellus. She asked coherent and relevant questions for somebody under the influence of psilocybin toxin. To keep her hands busy during the recounting she wove the trillium that she had gathered into a crown and wore it on her head like a goddess of the spring.
“So, he wants to meet me then?” She asked, staring off into the forest, half distracted.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t trust them,” he did his best to relay his suspicions, “I don’t know if you have noticed, but they drugged you.”
“Yeah, I’ve spent enough time with the boys up north to know when somebody’s slipped me some mushrooms,” she observed, wryly, “you just kinda have to roll with it. Why do you keep saying them and they and stuff? Are there a bunch of him?”
“Well, kind of,” Fyndraxis waffled. He had been using they/them pronouns for a couple of reasons, “I think referring to Mycellus as a he or a she wouldn’t be quite right. I don’t think mushrooms have that distinction.”
“Most mushrooms I see look a lot like boy mushrooms,” Bird said matter of factly.
“Yeah, that’s certainly accurate from a human standpoint, but I don’t think that’s what we are dealing with here,” Fyndraxis went on, “because of Mycellus’ nature, they are a plurality, and because I have absolutely no idea whether an individual mushroom is a boy or a girl or both, I think it’s easier to use a neutral pronoun.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to get the words right,” Bird mused.
“Language is all I have really. I’m a sword that talks,” Fyndraxis pointed out.
“Fair point,” she looked off to the north, “I guess It’s really never come up for me. It’s usually pretty clear if something is a boy or a girl.”
“Mycellus didn’t have those distinguishing features, and what came to visit was more of an avatar I think.”
“What’s an avatar?” Bird asked, this wasn’t a word that was thrown about willy-nilly in this world.
“A physical thing that represents an idea,” Fyndraxis tried, “Take me for instance, I appear in your world as a sword.”
“Is the sword your avatar?”
“Kind of, but not quite, I have no control over how I appear in this world. Inside the sword, it is a different story. I can appear however I choose. When I take a physical form, I tend to take the form of a man, because that’s how I feel the most comfortable. That is more along the lines of an avatar. When Mycellus chooses to take a human-like appearance, I think that is closer to the traditional vedic meaning of the term. It’s a form chosen by a deity. Mycellus doesn’t feel like a boy or a girl, so they don’t bother with those parts. This is all speculation by the way, I really have absolutely no idea, so I am going to stick with they and them to play it safe.”
“You’re using a lot of words that I don’t really understand,” she admitted, “but it sounds like you have thought this out. I’m not sure I really understand, but I am also pretty high, so maybe I’ll understand it later.”
“Yeah, sorry, this is kind of heady stuff,” Fyndraxis shot out a half hearted apology for nothing.
“This Mycellus thing is kinda mind blowing,” she said while she was putting the finishing touches on her crown, “it makes a lotta sense though. Mushrooms are fuckin’ everywhere, and they always seem to be up to something that I don’t quite understand. Do you think you can pull it off?”
“Pull what off?” Fyndraxis was having a little bit of trouble following her, had he been on mushrooms as well it might have been a different story.
“The Wendigo thing. Do you think you can beat them?” She answered, playing with her flower crown.
“I’m not sure, Bird,” resignation tinged his voice.
“Well, a lotta weird shit seems to be happenin’ man,” she seemed to sober up a little bit, “so far we got a talking sword, a sky lady, and a mushroom god. I wanna show you somethin’, let’s go for a walk. We should probably get movin’ anyway.”
They headed back to the circle of mushrooms that surrounded their camp and Bird gathered her things. She pocketed the mushroom pill, and slung her pack over her back before heading out.
Bird was right about the north end of the gulf not being as bad. While it wasn’t easy going by any means, the terrain seemed a lot less vindictive per meter gained than the south was.
“We’re gonna do some climbing now,” she warned him, “I wanna show you somethin’ in the eastern hills. It’s not that far, but it’s a little bit out of the way. Don’t worry, it’ll be worth it.”
Fyndraxis didn’t really have any choice in the matter because he was just along for the ride, but he appreciated the heads up.