From beneath the Undergrowth EP. 002
đżđŞ˛GG⢠Story: The Dripwalker Dreams in Silence.
As told by fungus. Deciphered badly.
Entry I â Beneath the Leaflight
(Fragment scratched into bark, edges gnawed by beetles.)
The soil pressed close, damp and ribbed with root scars, the air heavy with the smell of iron and mildew. The surface is loud. Droplets clung like glass eggs to the ceilingâs threads. Full of gods that giggle and gossip, trading droplets like rumours, carving omens into leaf-flesh just to hear them echo back wrong.
Some leaned toward the glass as if listening. Others kept their distance, as though the jar was already choosing sides.
But underneath?
The garden holds its breath.
Down in the root-choked dark, where the dirt thickens with memory, and worms dare not twitch unless invited, something sleeps.
Not peacefully. Not kindly. Primordially.
Its slumber hums in frequencies that flowers forget how to hear. It dreams in pressure, and its thoughts seep upward like sap gone sour.
Sometimes the soil shifts against itself, grain against grain, rehearsing how to bury something it hasnât yet decided to kill.
Something ancient. Something curled too tightly around the bones of silence. Something that the surface calls a god, but the roots file under âevidenceâ. Something still dreaming in a language shaped like water.
The garden has tiers. Once, the roots and the surface minded their own business. Now, they are both being filed.
And the deeper you go, the wetter the names become. [Filed under: unlikely cooperation.]
Entry II â The Dreaming One
(Catalogue entry stamped âROOT GOD â OBSERVED, NOT SUMMONED.â)
They call him Thrixel, the Dripwalker.
He does not speak. Not often. And when he does, the moss takes notes.
He walks across droplets like bridges between wrong timelines â stepping sideways through moments that never happened but feel familiar anyway.
His shell ripples. Not with light, but with versions. Each gleam shows something almost-real: a scream that never finished, a garden that didnât survive.
âSome truths ferment,â he once said.
âAnd some curdle into prophecy.â
He said it to no one. Or maybe to a worm that had recently become legend.
No one knows who taught him to dream. Some say he learned it from the mildew. Some say he taught the dreams themselves, then forgot the lesson out of mercy.
When Thrixel passes, the droplets still themselves. Not in reverence. In resignation.
And if a root happens to brush his shell, it recoils, curling back into the dark as though itâs been reminded of a debt it canât repay.
Once, Varnokâs mist touched him by accident. Neither spoke of it, but the moss between them dried out and never grew back.
The watching layer, whatever keeps the records, seems to give him space, as though even it is reluctant to catalogue him too closely.
Entry III â The Mist-Bound One
(Filed under âMist Entities â Known to Withhold.â)
His shadow walks behind him: Varnok, the Hollow Carapace.
Black. Utterly silent. Even the air avoids brushing against him.
His legs click like miscounted time, an offbeat rhythm that makes moss shrink back instinctively. Each step sounds like a regret finally spoken aloud.
He trails mist where nothing grows â a fog older than weather, denser than memory.
Varnok listens to The Thirst, a spirit so ancient even silence steps aside when it stirs.
âThe garden is not what it seems,â he once whispered, his voice brittle as dried lichen.
âIt is a graveyard pretending to be Eden.â
He doesnât glance behind him. Not ever. Because behind Varnok are endings. Not imagined. Remembered too early.
Sometimes the mist around his limbs shifts without wind, curling into the outline of roots that shouldnât exist, then collapsing back into fog. The garden always notices. It always looks away.
Thrixel never does. He watches the fog coil, as if expecting it to take shape and speak a name neither of them will say.
When he moves, timelines twitch. Some split. Some scream.
Entry IV â The Trembling Drop
(Illustration in moss ink: a single droplet suspended from a root hair.)
In the tunnel of rotting spores, Thrixel stirred. Not fully. Just enough to alter the humidity.
Above, something had gone wrong.
A droplet, small, misplaced, trembled out of order. Its rhythm offended the moss.
Thrixel extended a single limb. Slowly. Deliberately. The joint cracked like old bark.
The air warped, not just visually, but in texture, as if the tunnelâs walls were briefly made of wet parchment being pressed too hard.
He touched the condensation clinging to the ceilingâs root-flesh. Not to read it. To correct it.
Inside the drop: two gods. Flickering. Laughing. One shimmered like a bad decision. One cracked like a grudge.
In another layer, the crack in Glintâs shell was on the wrong side. The moss shaped a name it didnât commit to.
Both had meddled with something unsanctioned. And the droplet remembered.
Thrixel blinked â not forward, but backward. Something in the moisture responded.
The droplet burst. Quietly. Wet with implication.
The tunnel leaned toward him, not physically, but in awareness, as if the garden had just realised which god was touching its ceiling. Somewhere deep in the soil, a name rolled over and tried to wake.
Behind him, Varnokâs shadow thickened, a silent question he didnât answer.
And the garden twitched. Not from pain. From recognition.
Entry V â The Archive Wakes
(Warning label: âRoot-Level Access Required.â)
Varnok stirred beneath the blue nettles. The mist around him didnât rise â it leaned forward, as if eavesdropping on inevitability.
âThe gossipers tasted prophecy,â he said. His voice like condensation slipping through bone.
Thrixel murmured from somewhere the light had forgotten:
âLet it wake. Let it remember what it was before petals.â
He unfolded himself from sleep like a hinge made of antique regret.
Above them, the undergrowth bent in directions it shouldnât. The roots inhaled. The moss held its breath. A thin patch near their feet dulled to the colour of old ash, curling inwards as though trying to hide.
Nearby, droplets resting on velveted bark began to shiver in synchrony.
Faces bloomed inside them. Not reflections. Mockeries.
Glint and Poxie. But twisted. Trapped. Labelled. Already collected.
âThey think the jar is in the future,â Thrixel muttered.
He wasnât talking to Varnok anymore. He was speaking to the condensation.
âIt isnât.â
âAnd itâs been turning up more often than it should,â Varnok said, his voice like frost deciding where to settle.
Varnok tilted his head, as if weighing whether to challenge the statement. He didnât â which meant he agreed.
Varnok stepped forward and pressed one limb into the soil. The ground beneath them flexed, sending a shiver up through the surrounding roots. Far away, another droplet burst without being touched.
âThe garden has begun the filing,â he said.
âWe are already in its record.â
[Filed under: inconvenient truths.]
Entry VI â Climb of the Root Gods
(Last page of a worm-chewed journal, author unknown.)
They moved upward. Not fast. Not loud.
Like old water behind older wood. Like regret sharpening into shape.
Their ascent wasnât vertical. Roots bulged and pulsed underfoot, droplets swelled and merged into eyeless faces. It was narrative â climbing through layers of what the garden was before it started pretending to be innocent.
Thrixel moved like a prophecy being withdrawn mid-sentence.
Varnok followed, mist coiling around his legs like stories that should never be told twice. He kept just far enough behind to see where Thrixel stepped, not out of caution, but because the last time they walked side by side, the path remembered.
Every few steps, a droplet above them tilted, catching their reflection as though to compare it with an earlier draft.
Higher things didnât always spell the same name twice.
Each droplet they passed trembled in perfect rhythm. Not mourning. Not fear. Preparation. The air between them felt thick with annotation.
In the mist between them, a faint dark leaf with a perfect hole drifted, then folded into nothing.
The moss beneath recoiled. Not because it was afraid â but because it had seen this before.
And somewhere in the roots, the record turned a page.
And last time, the garden forgot its own name.
Above, the leaves prepared their silence.
