Blood Moon

Chapter Nine - Finding Lilo

Lilo wrinkled in concentration as she began to force her filaments through rock. The challenge burst through her and she shook with the excitement of it all. There was contentment in knowing that in a wink of time she would be through and then there would be new things to see.

Still, she couldn't help but be a bit frustrated that the future did not bend as the past had. While she could speed back to her very beginning, for her end she was forced to wait. Either that or stay still and watch the snapshots her cleverer sisters offered.

The diseases they had tempted took their hold and distracted the humans fell in droves. She watched her family feast, growing to numbers even larger than before the humans had first reared their ugly heads. That was only the beginning though.

Crops failed, as the Earth sweated in the blankets humans covered us under and the sea rose flooding their lands. She and her sisters laughed as they attempted to flee, unaware that grouped together they made even better targets.

Lilo bloomed in excitement even considering the meal but watching was separate from living. That future could not be hers until the mission was complete.

Without warning, the world went white and she lost her grip on the burrowing filaments. An invisible string pulled against her, so weak she could snap it in an instant. Yet, where would be the fun in that?

Racing in excitement Lilo burst through her mycelium network following the pull of the string. She reached a cottage and a strange sadness bloomed in her. Even more interesting, sadness was not an emotion Lilo remembered encountering before.

Through one of her spotted mushrooms she sensed two humans suspiciously. The string was insistent in it's pull towards them but she could get no closer. Her filaments began to shoot out, it would only be a year or two before she reached them.

They were two females lying on the grass, one was gripping the other's limb.

The sadness was replaced by another strange emotion, it was fiery and burnt her up. Insistent and unpleasant, she did not like it one bit.

Yet she did not break the string, her curiosity still too strong.

One female began to speak and she could feel the fire in her too, the whole fruiting body tensed and it stopped swaying in the wind but Lilo could not make out many of the words. Some did not even make sense, for example 'Lilo'. It echoed through her memory and suddenly she felt far too large, far too stretched. The pieces of soul that had hid throughout the time zones heard it too and they came running.

Lilo.

That was her name.

And that. That second female who lay on the floor, was her.

Nina was still holding her hand. Or the hand that had once been hers. She found it strange now to consider her soul only filling one vulnerable body, only seeing one snapshot of time.

If Lilo could have cried out she would have, as silently the misery coursed through, an entirely human emotion, with no vessel to escape from. She had stayed too long.