From beneath the Undergrowth EP. 001
đżđŞ˛ GG⢠Story: When the Leaves Begin to Gossip.
âEvery droplet is an opinion. As recorded by the mulch. As mistranslated by a worm.â
Entry I â A Warning Before the Wet
(Recovered from a damp vellum leaf, handwriting cramped and irritable.)
The leaf swayed above a slick hollow of rot, the air warm and damp enough to cling to their shells.
They werenât born. They were whispered into the dirt by thirsty roots and a god with more voices than patience. In the place where the garden forgets your name, beneath leaves that dream in nervous circles, two small gods walk without reverence.
They do not bless. They bicker. Even the worms pretend not to hear them, busy threading gossip through the roots and sealing it in knots the surface canât untangle.
The moss shifts under their feet, and a vine nearby curls as if to eavesdrop â not in welcome, but in wariness, as if it remembers them from a future that ended badly. Far above, a petal closes over nothing, as though to hide a page from an unseen archivist.
Above, the air tenses. Below, a root twitches, then pretends it didnât.
Somewhere between, the garden adjusts its memory of their arrival, filing the moment under [Pending Outcome. Filed under: to be argued about later.]
This isnât the beginning. Itâs the moment before something wakes up wrong.
Entry II â The Obsidian One
(Extract from the Glossary of Surface Gods, compiled by an unnamed root-witch.)
Sir Glint the Withholder. No one knows if thatâs his name or just his job description. His shell is polished black and split like the spine of a cursed book. Blue veins gleam through its cracks, like lightning caught in tree sap.
He moves like a riddle rearranging itself, each leg tapping a different rhythm, none of them kind. Glint is always counting. Always remembering something wrong on purpose. Not to lie. To ferment.
âSecrets rot better than sunlight,â he once said.
âAnd they taste sweeter, too.â
He does not share. He hoards, curating decay like art. Some say he swallowed a god once. Some say heâs what that god became.
No one asks. No one wants to be archived.
Once, while crossing a patch of moss, he deliberately pressed one claw deep into the green until it bruised â and the moss recoiled, reshaping itself into letters that dissolved before they could be read.
Lately, his name lingers longer than it should. Sometimes it comes back altered in the moss. Sometimes it doesnât come back at all, just a laugh where it should have been. The filing layer takes note, but never corrects the entry.
Entry III â The Speckled One
(Spore-stained note pinned between two pressed petals.)
Poxie Vell, the giggling spoor, is wet with iridescence and spiked with glee. Her carapace gleams like oil spilled on prophecy. Her joints twitch like sheâs listening to music only mushrooms can hear. Her eyes blink sideways, then again, then once more to make sure you noticed.
She thinks Glint is her brother, or her son, or her echo. It depends on the light and how much dew sheâs licked that day.
âEverything is funnier when it screams,â she says, licking dew off a cursed dandelion.
She vanishes into droplets and returns dripping with glittering lies and rumours so old theyâve gone feral. The spores in her wake whisper names that donât exist yet. Sometimes they whisper yours. Sometimes they just laugh, wrongly. Not at something. At you.
Sheâd spotted the one Glint wanted. That made it hers.
Chaos adores her, and things too small to be seen court her, none of them quiet. Once, she pressed her face against a droplet until it warped, and inside, the reflection flinched, then rearranged itself into a strangerâs grin. â one that held on a heartbeat too long, as if waiting for him to notice.
The garden filed that grin away.
Entry IV â The Gossip Leaf
(Illustrated in margin: a leaf bent under two tiny silhouettes, one black, one speckled.)
It had rained. Not the skyâs apology kind â the other kind. The kind that leaves messages in beads, that settles like guilt, that reflects not you, but what the garden thinks of you. A wet memory masquerading as weather.
Glint and Poxie stood on a leaf thick enough to be a bridge. It bowed slightly under their weight, though neither noticed â or perhaps they disrespected gravity on principle.
Below: rot. Above: mischief. All around: breathless green.
âThis one is speaking,â Glint rasped, antennae twitching toward a trembling droplet.
It didnât shake from wind, but from attention. Inside: a child burying a silver hair clip beside a dandelion. The child crying. Not alone. The wind carried a scream no one heard, but the garden remembered.
The droplet whispered something as Glint approached, a name not his. Not quite. It landed wrong in the air â the sound of a record scratched before the song began. It wasnât just wrong. It was practising.
âDonât touch it,â Poxie said.
Which is why he did.
He slurped it into his shell. It hissed faintly, like a name being unspoken. Glintâs name blurred in the droplet, losing letters it had never needed.
Something in the moss seemed to try the new spelling under its breath, but the sound was gone before he could place it.
Glint wasnât even after this one. The droplet he wanted was two leaves over, fat with reflection and, unfortunately, under Poxieâs watch. Now heâd have to take that too.
âOld tears,â Glint said, glancing sideways at Poxie as if daring her to laugh. âSour now. Might ferment into prophecy.â
âSounds like your sense of humour,â Poxie muttered, already eyeing the next droplet.
Somewhere in the moss at their feet, a faint line of script began to form, then smeared itself back into green as if caught in the act.
Poxie cackled, then flung herself into another droplet and vanished, leaving a shimmer that didnât belong to this timeline. The droplet swallowed her with a high, shrill laugh. It knew too much. And it enjoyed itself.
Entry V â The New Garden
(Translated from a warped petal found in an unlabelled jar.)
She returned dripping, not just with water but with implications. With damp omens clinging to her like jealous confetti.
âFound a new garden,â she chirped, shaking herself like a heretic shedding a vision.
âFull of teeth. They sing there. You'd hate it â every petal interrupts itself just to scream louder. The daisies gnaw prayers into the mud.â
Glint didnât blink. His antennae stiffened.
âDid they know your name?â
She blinked out of sequence.
âNo. But they knew yours.â A pause. A grin.
âAnd they laughed.â
Glint pictured the sound with its wings pulled off.
The droplets began to tremble, in hushed anticipation, like worshippers awaiting blasphemy. The leaf beneath them held still. Not from calm. From decision. It was listening.
Somewhere in the roots, a thin pulse travelled outward, as though a clerk in the dark had stamped an unseen record.
And it didnât like what it heard.
Entry VI â The Listening Garden
(Sap-etched note found under a curled root.)
Beneath the roots, between twitching mycelium and the husks of worms long emptied of purpose, the garden drew breath.
Not air. Intention.
A name, almost-spoken, etched in sap on the underside of a dying leaf:
GLYNT.
A daisy petal, torn and wet, lay pinned to the name like a seal.
Not the one above. The next one.
Somewhere deeper, the filing layer stirred â cross-referencing, correcting, and leaving the altered entry in place.
The laughter in the soil grew louder. None of it was kind.
Entry VII â The Forbidden Drop
(Uncatalogued fragment â source uncertain.)
One droplet remained untouched. Too still. Too knowing.
Inside: a jar. A label. Tiny gods mirrored in glass.
GODS OF THE GARDEN â DO NOT FEED.
Poxie stared. âThat oneâs cheating,â she whispered.
âThis drop lies,â said Glint.
He didnât move closer.
He didnât need to.
The lie was loud enough to reach him.
âThey all do,â Poxie said with the sweetest breath and most devious grin.
âThatâs why theyâre useful.â
She licked it clean, not like someone taking in information, but like someone daring the world to notice. The droplet laughed. So did two others nearby. Another whispered her name.
A third tried to say Glint, but it came out broken. Bent.
GLYNT.
The leaves began to tremble, rhythmically, like something waking up angry. Roots uncoiled from the soil like pale worms; droplets slid together into shapes with too many eyes.
In the dark, the garden wrote something down, then underlined it.
And far below, where the forgotten things hum lullabies in reverse, something else began to remember. Not what was. Not what should be. But what comes after the laughing stops.
The garden noted it down. Somewhere damp.
