It takes Bob an embarrassingly long time to get the furry leather bag open. Bushwhacker had lacked the strength, the salamanders lacked the dexterity, and Masque would have probably just eaten the thing by accident. She probably shouldn’t judge. Bob had no thumbs and a brain the size of a walnut. Liv knew she should probably be happy she was able to coach him through opening the damned thing at all. Finally, the cord woven roughly through the lip of the bag was pulled free, and Bob stood over it like he’d felled some beast of legend; wings akimbo as he gave an almighty squawk. Liv offered a polite, albeit silent, golf clap, but Bushwhacker, perhaps chagrined by his defeat at the hands of the bag, briskly pushed between Bob’s legs and thrust a tiny hand inside to see what treasures there were. It emerged a moment later with a plump, reddish seed about the size of a grape.

“Ooh! I wonder what THAT is!” Liv said excitedly. “Let’s see what it does!” Running over to the far side of the puddle, she waved excitedly for Bushwhacker to follow. The vaguely humanoid shrub held the seed over its head and awkwardly bounded around the water’s edge to a patch of young grass that had yet to fully grow into her serrated little defenses.

“Okay, stick it in the ground,” She said, cracking her knuckles. The motion provided neither auditory nor tactile satisfaction, so Liv just hissed out a faux crunching sound. Some day she’d figure out why it was that she could talk but otherwise was incapable of making noise… But not right now! Now it was time to see what this funky seed turned into.

Bushwhacker skipped back several feet from the tiny mound he’d just made, as Liv reached down and pushed her energy into it. She hadn’t known how much it would take, and half expected it to be more than she could invest at once. So she was pleasantly surprised when a massive vining plant practically exploded out of the dirt. It covered a good ten square feet when it was all curled up, just a tangle of fleshy green tendrils about as thick as her wrist in most places.

“Wow. Shiny!” Liv remarked with a grin. Bushwhacker sidled in closer to inspect the new plant, poking at one of the vines inquisitively. “Yeah I dunno, buddy. I’m as in the dark as yoaaAAh!!” Her explanation spiked into a cry of alarm as the vine whipped around and grabbed Bushwhacker in an incongruously octopoid motion. Twisting around the shrub’s waist, it began to constrict. Bushwhacker flipped from curiosity to frenzy in an instant. Sharp little wooden fingers began to claw deep gauges in the softer vines as the diminutive plant bellowed a high-pitched squeal of rage. Liv had half forgotten what little berserkers the shrubs could be.

“Hey! HEY!!” Liv shouted, being ignored by the warring plants. Frustrated by the lack of response from her normally obedient minions, she broke form and dropped her voice.

“ENOUGH!!!” she roared, stomping her thickly soled boot. Her outburst caused ripples to bubble out from the core of Masque’s sunken den. The battle froze, mid-motion, with Bushwhacker about to take a bite out of one of the smaller vines. She hadn’t even known he had an actual mouth…

“Drop it!” she demanded. The vines shifted slightly, and Bushwhacker looked as though he wasn’t sure which one of them she was yelling at. “Both of you! Stop it this instant.” she wagged her finger at them. Then she had the horrifying realization that she had, in that very moment, become her own mother. She couldn’t have THAT, so she tacked on a little extra. “No botanical hentai fuckery will be had in THIS swamp, understand?!” There. Much better.

The pair slowly parted, leaving the vines curled up into a loose heap and Bushwhacker glaring at them with an impressive amount of vitriol for something only a foot or so tall. Now that the drama had passed, Liv could imagine the potential applications of this new plant. It could definitely make for a good defense, but she also didn’t want it out in the open where it could hurt less troublesome intruders or scare away potential resources.

“Right… How do we move you?” she pondered aloud. With a staticky sound of shifting earth, the oddly stunted roots of the new plant pulled free of the dirt, allowing the thing to kind of floppily roll. It reminded her of an oversized koosh ball.

“Fucking A! Alright, Bushwhacker, you stay. Koosh, let’s roll.” Liv twirled her finger dramatically before pointing towards the opposite end of her domain from Bushwhacker’s favorite sunning spot. She was searching for a good spot when her eyes fell upon the tree that stood over her secret little core room.

“Well… ‘Room’ is a bit generous,” she muttered to herself as she thought.

“Yo Koosh! How do you feel about-“ She trailed off as she turned to see the new plant hadn’t followed her. “Hey! Come here!” she invited. Bushwhacker peaked around the mass and pointed at himself.

“Not you! Koosh!” Right, this new addition might be a touch on the dense side. “You!” she pointed at the ball of greenery. “Go there!” she pointed to the tree. Koosh began to roll about, somewhat aimlessly, uncertain.

“Oh crap! No eyes!” she smacked her forehead in sudden comprehension. She was just about to try to figure out how to get this thing to understand her directions when Masque apparently decided he’d had enough. Lunging out of the water like the primordial predator he was, he opened his jaw wider than Liv had realized was even possible and latched onto the large green tangle. With a thrash of his blunt snout, he sent the plant sailing through the air. It flailed, devoid of sensory input from a solid surface until it landed with a wet slap against the trunk of the tree.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“GOOOOOOAL!” Liv cheered, throwing her fists into the air at the impressive display. Koosh seemed to react almost instantly, latching onto the tree for dear life. Thin green vines began to explore the bark, and then slowly pulled Koosh upward into the branches. From there, dangling tendrils dropped down to dangle from the limbs, staying just above the surface of the water. She hoped that meant this was a species that could live like that. In all honesty, her knowledge of jungle vines was limited to how they always seemed to hang from trees in movies.

“You good?” she called across to the tree. There was no immediate response, but a few moments later a fish jumped out of the water to catch a mosquito, only to be snapped up by a vine and disappear into the canopy.

“Gonna take that as a yes!”

Man, the plant life here was fascinating! All the kerfuffle ending brought her mind back to her previous train of thought. It seemed as though whatever mechanism allowed her plants to accumulate SP could be diverted in some cases to other kinds of functions. Locomotion. Thought. What if she could do growth?

Liv’s eyes widened. Wouldn’t that lead to a loop? SP caused accelerated growth, and that growth then generates more SP, which further accelerates the growth, on and on and- No… No way it was that easy. Right? It was like one of those perpetual motion machines, it broke physics! Then again, so did a LOT of things she’d seen recently.

Sitting down near the fly traps, she called over Bushwhacker again and began to look them both over. The latter knew this routine well and seemed to opt for a nap rather than stand around bored while Liv looked him over.

“There has to be a thread here. Some point of connection between whatever brings in energy and whatever allows you both to move.”

The more she used it, the better her “sight” seemed to get. She could see all the hair-thin filaments of energy that wove into and through each creature native to her domain. It took concentration to do, but she found it easier every day. She watched as Bushwhacker’s leaves seemed to collect energy and distribute it to the rest of his body. The flytraps seemed to just generate a smaller amount of it via their soft green stalks. Liv sat there, staring, for what felt like hours. Trying to figure out what part of these two beings made them work. Finally, a breakthrough came when a mouse skittered through in a panic and got snapped up by the largest fly trap. There it was! Just a flash! A shimmer! One little thread led from the roots right up to the mouth, where it split off to countless points therein.

Excitedly, she turned her focus once again to Bushwhacker.

“Hey, little buddy. Can you give me a wave?” she asked nicely. The tiny shrub shivered a bit before part of the foliage shifted away from the bulk of leaves, revealing a sleepy face as Bushwhacker waved a tiny wooden hand. Liv stared intently, focusing on the odd skill that was this ‘second sight’. A gentle pulsing light ran along an ethereal filament from his roots to a tangled knot in his middle and then out from there to his arm!

This was it!

Running to the mangrove tree she placed her palms as close to its bark as she could, imagining touching the surface and trying to feel the details of the rough outer skin of the thing. Being less familiar with the larger organism, it took a bit of time, but sure enough, once she zeroed in on it, she could see how each sturdy root had a thread that led to a tangled nexus. The tree didn’t move, but if she focused hard enough she could just barely make out the glacial flow of energy moving in and out of those roots.

“This must be how the SP reaches me. You pull it in via the leaves, distribute what you need through yourself, and then the excess trickles down the roots for me to use…” her voice was an awed whisper. She felt an uncomfortable twinge deep in her chest as her mind once more wandered to Skye and how much better she would be at this. She shoved the feelings down, grasping instead at the puzzle before her.

“Can’t afford to lose focus.”

She went to the west side, where a patch of unmodified, and slightly trampled, grass was growing. Razor grass was all well and good, but the hardy stalks took a lot to grow compared to the simple wild grass. Liv lay on her belly, now eye level with the soggy greenery. Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply and imagined a brush in her hand. Doing her best not to tremble, she opened her eyes to the threads of the simple plant and painted in a new one. Just a single, shimmering line leading from the tap where the SP tricked down to her core, and led back up to the little bulb which she knew would cause the grass to spread if pushed. It was a tiny change, costing her barely anything at all, but the results were immediately visible.

The slow, steady pulse of outgoing SP bifurcated. While half continued on towards the earth, the other half pulsed into that little bulb, which immediately began to grow minuscule little offshoots. It was WORKING.

With a lopsided victorious smirk, Liv lifted her hand upward. Fingers splayed, she grasped at her own reserves and pushed them into that little bulb. The ground began to stir around her, soil churning as thousands of thin little blades of grass emerged to take in the afternoon sun. With each new sprout, the natural growth accelerated by the tiniest fraction. Free energy it was not. This grass would never give her as much energy now, but if she was right then this variant would be key to helping her expand her borders.

She sat there lounging in the lush, soft grass, watching her handiwork slowly explore outward into the world with a growing sense of satisfaction until the sunlight dimmed. As the swamp she’d so loathed fell beneath the blanket of night, she smiled down at all of the verdant life she’d so carefully tended to. Hell, she didn’t even mind the smell so much anymore! Her nose scrunched up then, ruining the peaceful expression.

“Scratch that…” she complained, dryly. A new stench was overwhelming her swamp. A sharp tang of carbon and sulfur. She looked around to find the source and noticed an anomaly. It was the shadows. The sun had set, yet everything was lit by a faint orange glow, and the shadows swayed and danced ever so slightly. Realization came like an ice-cold dagger to her gut.

“Oh no…”