Cosette had noticed the changes in the lands around her, but for a long time she had been convinced that it was all just some strange fever dream. The wounds she had sustained from her sister had been cleaned as best as she could, but they refused to heal without treatment, and Cosette was still alone. Her body ached and hunger gnawed at her, but she remained tucked away in the shadow, her natural instinct to survive overriding the part of her that begged for relief from the bleak life she now lived. She wasn’t sure what happened to Indigo or the rest of the band, she hadn’t been able to get back to camp in her injured state and by the time she was able to investigate they seemed to have left the place she last saw them. Or maybe she had just gone to the wrong spot in her delirium.
There was no denying the length of the nights anymore though. Even during the brief daylight hours, the moon was present, looming over her like a bad omen. Being on her own again, she was always uneasy, but as the nights grew longer and the strange glowing she had noticed earlier seemed to spread, her anxiety only heightened. First the long winter, and now this. Things in this land were strange, and she didn’t like any of it, but it felt more and more like something bad was coming.
Her scattered mind struggled to keep up with everything, memories seemed more and more difficult for her to grasp. She couldn’t remember where the bands’ old camp was anymore, but she knew that she hadn’t traveled far from it. Even before things started getting strange, she had little energy and couldn’t bring herself to travel very far. In addition to the injuries that still littered her body, she was weak and lethargic, her already small frame having shrunk significantly during her time alone. She was little more than flesh and bones, almost appearing as some sort of phantom that fit well in this seemingly alternate reality.
The air in the swamp was thick, and the ground difficult to navigate. Luckily, the brightness of the moon provided just enough light to illuminate the foggy landscape so that she was able to mostly avoid the especially muddy spots and the tangled weeds that threatened to trip her up. But it wasn’t just the moon that provided light for her. There were mushrooms sprouting in the damp land that glowed unnaturally. The sight of it made her uneasy, she knew this was not normal, but something about it was so tantalizing.
She approached a patch and slowly laid on the ground, too weary to remain upright anymore. She watched the fungi closely, noticing for the first time that the glow wasn’t a constant light. It seemed to pulsate rhythmically, captivating her further. She watched as if in a trance, the beating of her own heart seeming to sync with the thrum of the glowing mushroom. Or was it the other way around? She couldn’t tell, but either way, she was certain that the pattern matched. Which one copied the other seemed less important to her than the knowledge that they matched in the first place. It felt magical in a way she had only ever dreamt of as a pup, before the world showed her its teeth. Before everything had been tainted and tarnished by loss and devastation.
The fear of the unknown was still there, ever present. It was as constant a companion as the moon, but as she lost herself in the study of the mushrooms, she could pretend that she was one with this land. In the months she had spent alone, she had once found comfort in the moon, talking to it aloud at night as though it were her closest friend and confidant. She had no one else to turn to, no one else as consistent. And now the moon never left her. Despite the growing uneasiness linked to the moons abnormal cycle, she could not bring herself to link the two. She feared at times that she was losing her grip on her sanity, but then again, what did it matter if she was sane, anyways?
As her heart beat in time with the pulsating glow of the fungi, she could imagine that she was being summoned home, called to return to the dirt where she belonged, where she should have been a long time ago. And she was so hungry… She knew enough to know she wasn’t supposed to eat strange plants whose uses were a mystery, but gods, she wanted to take a taste of one of these.
Slowly, tentatively, she reached out with a paw, gently brushing the tips of her toes over the top of a particularly large mushroom cap, letting out a quiet sigh of wonder. The desire to eat one grew with each passing moment, a crazed, delusional idea that if she did so, something incredible would happen. There was nothing about the scene before her to indicate that these mushrooms were good, but there was nothing explicitly saying they were bad. If it killed her, what did it really matter? There was no one left to miss her, not really. And if they didn’t kill her, maybe something good would happen. Maybe her misfortune would turn around. Maybe she would finally be on the receiving end of some good luck for once.
Slowly, she reached out and plucked the biggest, juiciest one she saw. Snapping it from the ground at the base of the stem, she was able to get the whole thing in her mouth with some difficulty, chewing slowly. If she lived, she could say she did it for science. Her discovery would benefit no one, she was sure, but that didn’t matter so much to her. She wished someone else was there with her, to tell her if the mushroom still glowed inside of her mouth, if it left her tongue glowing once she finally swallowed the last bits. She’d never had any kind of mushroom before, let alone a glowing one, so she couldn’t say if it was any different from the more natural kinds she had seen before, but the taste and texture had been odd to her. Now all there was to do was wait and see what happened, and enjoy the pulsating light that surrounded her.
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