From beneath the Undergrowth EP. 003

🌿🪲GG™ Story: The Root Remembers.

“Smuggled from a whisper. Smells of moss and burnt feathers.”

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Entry I — The Leaf That Waited

(Pressed between two petals; edges lacquered with old sap.)

The leaf waited. Not lazily, like those that sway for sunlight, but taut, holding itself in the air as if bracing for an impact only it could sense.

Below, roots shifted faintly — not in growth, but in the small, administrative way of something updating a file. Above, the sky kept glancing down between cloud-cover gaps, reluctant to watch yet unable to look away.

Droplets along the midrib clung like glass eggs, each holding reflections of the garden that looked a fraction too still — as if posed for a record rather than lived.

One leaned a little closer, listening for the name to change.

From somewhere beneath, the faint murmur of the root gods carried up through the stem. The surface layer listened but did not move.

It wasn’t waiting for rain. It was waiting for her.

Entry II — Lady Gutterglam Arrives

(Filed under “Sky Entities — Uninvited, Unapologetic.”)

Lady Gutterglam did not descend so much as drop into the scene like an edit no one approved.

Her wings broke the air in smug, deliberate beats, scattering pollen in patterns that made the moss below twitch. She landed on the waiting leaf without so much as a nod, and it dipped under her weight, not from strain, but from deciding whether to throw her off.

She was sleek in the way only something that’s always right can be. Eyes sharp, beak curved just enough to look like punctuation that could end your sentence.

Beneath her, a droplet rolled away from the impact point and stopped at the edge, shivering with the effort of holding its contents steady. The reflection inside blurred, then reformed into something the garden clearly didn’t want her to see.

Glint’s antennae curled back. Poxie tilted her head, already calculating how hard she could annoy the newcomer before it became a problem.

Somewhere in the roots, a short pulse travelled outward, the kind that marks a new entry in the ledger, and then fell still.

Entry III — Banter Under Watch

(Margin note beside a pressed feather — tip stained with unknown ink.)

Glint was the first to speak, though he made it sound like a verdict.

“You’re blocking the light.”

“That’s not light,” Gutterglam replied without looking at him.

“That’s an unfinished thought. I’m helping you, ya know.”

Poxie giggled, iridescence trembling along her shell.

“You’re going to get archived in the wrong section if you keep that up.”

“I can’t be archived,” Gutterglam said, ruffling her feathers in a slow, deliberate roll that made the leaf’s edge groan.

“I write the margins.”

The moss under Glint’s feet tensed, a thin root tip curling up to touch his shell before retreating. It left a faint smear of green across him, as if underlining a note.

Glint’s antennae twitched.

“You think the garden doesn’t keep drafts?”

A nearby droplet swelled as if to answer, but instead shrank, swallowing its own reflection.

The sound it made was not quite laughter — not quite a warning.

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Entry IV — The Interrupted Arc

(Illustration in moss ink: a feather poised above an unfinished name.)

The droplet at Gutterglam’s feet began to shiver. Not from her weight, not from wind — from the attention.

Inside: a fragment. A child’s hand, damp with soil, closing over a daisy chain. The moment hovered, unblinking.

Roots nearby loosened as if making room for something that wasn’t there yet. A second droplet slid down the stalk and stopped dead just behind Gutterglam’s head like a punctuation mark. Inside it, the Child’s image repeated — this time looking directly out, eyes bright with the kind of awareness the garden rarely tolerated.

The air thinned the way it does before rain, though no cloud moved above. Even the moss seemed to crouch, as if bracing for her to speak.

Gutterglam tilted her head. “Someone’s editing early.”

Glint frowned, the lines on his shell tightening. “That’s not editing. That’s misfiling.”

Poxie leaned closer, her laugh small and sharp. “The garden hates a misfile.”

The leaf beneath them flexed once. Not a sway — a decision.

Entry V — When the Garden Corrects

(Filed under: “Amendments — Origin Disputed.”)

The droplets began to tremble in synchrony, as if someone had given a silent cue.

In each, the Child appeared, never the same angle twice, never the same expression. The air felt thinner, like before rain. Sometimes planting, sometimes unearthing. Once, holding the jar.

It had been showing up more often lately, even where it didn’t belong.

Gutterglam’s eyes narrowed. “There it is.”

Glint stepped forward, though the moss flattened under him as if trying to hold him in place. “We’re not ready for that.”

“You’re never ready for that,” Gutterglam said. Her tail flicked, scattering two droplets that hit the moss and bled into symbols too quick to read.

Poxie licked at the air like she could taste the change. “Feels like the garden’s rewriting the child’s minutes.”

From somewhere deep, a pulse travelled through the roots. Each leaf on the stalk twitched once, as if marking the motion in a ledger. A moment later, one of the droplets at the edge of the leaf popped soundlessly, erasing whatever it had been keeping.

Another nearby droplet shuddered, then redrew itself — the same scene, but Poxie was gone from it. A faint ripple passed through the moss, as if initialling the change. Her absence looked practiced, like the garden had removed her a hundred times before.

Gutterglam smiled without warmth. “Then let’s give them something worth writing down.”

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Entry VI — Convergence

(Last page of a feather-pulp ledger; edges singed.)

The leaf dipped lower, though nothing weighed it down. Somewhere in the dark, roots bulged upward, their tips slick with new memory.

From beneath, Thrixel emerged first, water sliding off his shell in slow, deliberate rivulets. Varnok followed, mist curling around his legs like the breath of something that had been waiting too long.

The curl of mist faltered when it reached her feathers, drawing back as though contact might stain it. Thrixel glanced once at the interruption, then lowered his gaze to the droplets, filing her presence somewhere he didn’t intend to visit again.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The garden had already told them.

Gutterglam looked down at them, one wing lifted just enough to block part of the sky.

“Finally.” she said.

Glint and Poxie stepped aside to avoid being mistaken for allies.

Droplets along the leaf’s edge swelled, each one holding a different version of the same moment: the five of them together. Some images blurred, others cracked. One was already crossed out in thin green lines.

The moss at their feet stiffened, then flattened, as if signing off on a dangerous entry.

Far above, the light dimmed. No clouds rolled in. But decision. And somewhere beneath the soil, a ledger page turned without hands.

Somewhere, glass made room.