From beneath the Undergrowth EP. 004

🌿🪲GG™ Story: We Feed What Watches.

“Transcribed in damp ink. Pages blink when left alone.”

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Entry I — The Jar Breathes

(Filed under: “Specimens — Inadmissible for Release.”)

The jar wasn’t empty. It never had been.

It pressed against them like warm glass, the inside slick with condensation that smelled faintly of mildew and ink. Each breath fogged the surface, and the fog did not fade — it was written over, annotated by the garden itself.

Droplets hung on the inner curve, magnifying fragments of their own bodies, Poxie’s jointed legs bent at impossible angles, Glint’s shell cracked in the wrong places, Gutterglam’s feathers wet and heavy like footnotes dragged through the margin.

From somewhere beyond the glass, the garden’s soundscape was muffled — not silent, but filtered, like paper pressed over a mouth. A slow, patient scrape ran along the outside, as if something was filing their presence down to a simpler shape.

Varnok’s mist clung low, tracing the curvature of the jar until it met a seam that wasn’t there before.

“They’re not keeping us,” he said.

“They’re drafting us.”

Thrixel moved closer to the glass, his shell refracting in overlapping versions. In one, the jar was empty. In another, it was already labelled. In the third, something inside had been crossed out. The fourth, too black to tell.

Somewhere in the filing, a record slipped. Roots shifted beneath leaves. For the first time, a droplet disagreed with the garden.

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Entry II — Outside the Glass

(Margin note in moss ink: “Containment confirmed. Observation commenced.”)

Outside, the garden did not blink. It turned its attention inward, toward the jar, the way a sentence curls back to read itself.

Roots uncoiled from the soil and looped over the glass, not to restrain it, but to map its seams. The mapping was slow, deliberate, like someone tracing a name they weren’t sure they wanted to remember.

A chorus of droplets ringed the jar’s base, each one reflecting a slightly different version of the gods inside. Some were clearer, some distorted, one already cracked along the Child’s outline.

Lady Gutterglam tilted her head from inside, catching sight of that fracture.

“That’s not observation,” she said.

“That’s pre-editing.”

Poxie pressed her face to the glass and fogged it with a laugh.

“Smile for the archive.”

The moss beneath the jar flattened in ripples, each wave carrying a faint green shimmer like wet ink drying. Above, the leaves leaned in, crowding the light until the jar was lit only by its own condensation.

Entry III — Interference

(Stamped across a torn leaf: “UNAUTHORISED AMENDMENT.”)

The first impact came from above. Not heavy, not violent, a single drop, falling with the intent of a branding iron.

It struck the jar’s curve and didn’t slide off. It spread, thin and iridescent, like a correction fluid that refused to dry.

Inside it, a name flickered, Glint’s, almost, then it warped, bending into Glynt before smearing out of legibility.

Glint hissed. “They’re not recording us. They’re rehearsing us.”

Another drop hit, this one riding the shimmer of a feather. It burst into symbols too fast to follow, their edges fraying even as they formed.

The root lattice around the jar shifted, tightening in one place, loosening in another. It wasn’t containment anymore. It was typesetting.

Thrixel tapped the glass. The sound didn’t echo. Instead, a ripple passed through the condensation, distorting everyone’s reflections in sequence. Poxie became Gutterglam, Gutterglam became Varnok, Varnok became the Child. The Child looked directly out.

And smiled.

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Entry IV — Pushback

(Filed under: “Reciprocal Alterations — Pending Outcome.”)

Poxie licked a line through the condensation. It didn’t clear, the gap filled instantly with a new image: her, but already archived, already labelled.

She spat at it. The spit spread into a stain that the jar tried to erase, but the colour lingered like bruising.

Gutterglam raked one claw down the inner curve. The sound wasn’t loud, but outside, a whole swathe of moss recoiled, leaving a bare patch of root exposed. The exposed root pulsed once, and a droplet formed on its tip. Inside that droplet was the jar, viewed from somewhere much higher.

Varnok’s mist began to rise, seeping into the glass as if looking for its own reflection. When it touched the inner surface, the condensation thinned, revealing the Child again — this time holding not the jar, but a feather and a cracked shell.

Thrixel moved in, his shell showing multiple versions of the moment — in some, the jar was gone; in others, it was bigger, heavier, full of more gods than it had started with.

The garden pulsed once, as if to decide which version it preferred.

Entry V — The Ledger Turns

(Last notation before the page shift; written in sap and shadow.)

The garden made its choice.

Every droplet outside the jar shivered at once, then flattened into a single, slick lustre across the glass. The reflections gone. No gods. No Child. No jar. Just the surface, blank and wet, waiting for a name.

Inside, the air thickened, pressing down until their limbs felt heavy. The condensation crept upward, blotting out what little light remained.

Glint’s voice was low, deliberate. “They’ve filed us.”

Above them, leaves rustled without wind — the sound of paper turning. The roots below flexed, and for a moment, the jar felt like part of the soil, something planted rather than placed.

Gutterglam ruffled her feathers, breaking the oppressive stillness.

“Then we’re not specimens,” she said. “We’re seeds.”

The moss outside sealed itself over the jar’s base.

Somewhere deeper, far beneath the filing layer, the garden turned a page. Then another. Then one it didn’t remember writing.

Inside the jar, Glint’s reflection flickered and split. Not mirrored. Multiplied.

Five gods stood inside. But now there was a sixth.

Smiling from behind the glass.

A reflection the garden didn’t write. A consciousness grown sideways. No one moved. The condensation blurred — tried to erase the smile.

It didn’t.

The smile grew. It looked straight through the glass.

Then it said:

“Alright.”

The garden did not speak. The condensation crept higher. Behind the smile. Beneath the word, written in sap that couldn’t dry. Not Glint. Not a glitch.

GLYNT.

Something grown different. Something extra.

Glint froze.

The others said nothing. Not because they didn’t hear it, but because they didn’t know what they’d heard. Not an echo. But a voice that shouldn’t exist. Someone new. From somewhere too familiar.

And in the silence that followed, the garden paused.
Just long enough to consider…

Had it filed something it didn’t understand?

Beneath the soil, the page stayed open.

Poxie’s voice broke the stillness.

“You all heard her, right? I’ve not completely lost it yet.”

Then the ledger closed.

And Glynt kept smiling.

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