Yggdrashell was pleased with its new acquisition. Kalon’s stupidity flew out of him thick and pure. Unlike that carried by the wind, Kalon’s witlessness remained untarnished by intellect. It was the kind of stupid energy that had never met a thought it couldn’t ignore in its existence.
So delightful was Kalon’s Idiocy that Yggdrashell took extreme care when manipulating the boy, doing so only indirectly, by giving orders to its disposable undersaplings. It didn’t want to get addicted, to come to need Kalon as a geologist needs to lick rocks. Geologists die if they don’t lick rocks. Ask your geologist friends.
Make some geologist friends first.
Make some friends.
This is why your mother cries at night.
Jagger sipped nuttar from a wide, bowl shaped nutflower. “This must be what the gods drink on the daily!” he said before sinking his head back into the sweet, nutty liquid.
“Grrr.” Brunhilda masterfully argued.
“Blrbblrblrb,” Jagger bubbled.
“Grrrr,” she insisted
“Blrbbblrblrlrlrblr,” Jagger retorted.
“Grrrrrrr woof,”
Jagger plucked his head out of the nuttar, licked the sticky liquid from the parts of his face the tongue could reach, and said:
“I shall see you in the courtroom for that!”
Yggdrashell felt the dogs make a ruckus at its foot, and began sprouting another nuttar flower where Jagger could smell it blooming. The nutrees had lacked pollinators since their flowers had become nuts, so they had been using the wind to carry their pollen, which was fairly inefficient. Now, if they could train dogs to pollinate them…
But that was the least of Yggdrashell’s concerns. They were giving Kalon valuable water to keep him alive, and in turn, his aura of idiocy was feeding them all. A buffet emanated from the boy, and the nutrees feasted. They could not lose him, under no pretense. Well, maybe if he got educated, but whoever did that despicable act of well poisoning would pay.
Or not.
Trees aren’t known for holding grudges.
Except for cypresses. Hell hath no fury like a cypress scorned.
Kalon drank the watery sap that bled from a wound in Yggdrashell’s bark. It soothed his aching body, made his stiff muscles felt slightly more like flesh and less like tense springs. His jaw was almost rigid, his head about to explode, and his stomach tied in a painful knot. HE had slight problems swallowing the liquid, and he wrote it off as a result of the dehydration, stress and exposure to the extreme heat.
Fever tried to get a hold of him and do what fever does, but it found itself at a loss when it couldn’t find the mental mechanisms to cause hallucinations. Sweating and bouts of cold shivering, sure, but no fever episode was complete without the delirium. Yet the facts were the facts: Kalon was too stupid to assemble fever dreams.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Yggdrashell watched the boy, cradled in a bed of roots and protected from the elements under a dome that was the half of a gargantuan nut. Every second they kept him alive, it was a little victory. Yet the grin made him worry. The grin. Nobody grinned while suffering from a heatstroke. Not even the king of morons. What was up with that grin?
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This character we are going to address now won’t survive too long, due to their own nature. You should not feel sad for them, for death reaches all things in time, and it will reach you too.
As a member of the Clostiridium tetani species, this newborn bacterium was a descendant of the bacteria of old, brave pioneers that had migrated out of Brunhilda’s mouth and into Kalon’s bloodstream an eternity (a week and some) ago. They had weathered scorching sunlight and poisonous oxygen to reach this promised land, and now she had to do her part and grow strong. Reach a stage where she could reproduce, or form spores and venture back out in search of new homes for their kind. And they did need a new home, because they couldn’t help shitting all over the place. They were destroying their only home by releasing those toxins into the environment. And that was not to mention the eukaryotic monsters that roamed Kalon’s bloodstream, eating innocent bacteria like her alive.
A newborner bacterium approached her, wiggling his little flagellum to propel himself through the liquid medium. “Big sis, why do dey say planet iz dyin?” he asked with a tiny voice one could compare to creaky hinges.
“Because we shit too much, little brother,” she lamented, making emotion course through her cellular wall. “The nervosphere gets contaminated, and the planet cannot stand it for long.”
“But wher ar we gon go?”
“Outside, to the unknown, like our forefathers and foremothers did.” Then she felt an ominous signal striking her membrane receptors and turned suddenly. “Swim little brother!” She frontbutted the little bacteria away just in time to avoid him being swallowed by the predatory neutrophil. The white cell swiftly phagocyted the big sis, enveloping her into its cellular membrane, and soon producing chemical compounds that would dissolve her into nothing.
“Big sis!” the newborner cried. “Wow… I am into vore now, sweet!” he self-reflected.
And that’s how life went for the bacteria inside Kalon. Live fast, die horribly, or reach the end of your life cycle and split into two smaller bacteria, dying horribly.
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As hours passed by, Kalon discovered the true meaning of a very important word: Opisthotonus. His back arched like an experienced porn actress’ (Pick your favorite. No, not that one. Good God above, people, your tastes suck.), his toes curled, his muscles pulled form his bones in spams that threatened to turn his skeleton to sharp splinters. And he couldn’t cry: from, his throat only a weak whistle could escape.
Jagger spent his time licking Kalon’s forehead to take the heat away. Yggdrashell, that hosted boy and dogs inside a hollowed out section of its trunk, had opened a small window to let the cold air of the desert’s night bathe Kalon.
Brunhilda stood guard, camouflaged in the shadow cast by a nearby outgrowth of giant nut-tracheids as they were illuminated by the bioluminescent, golden nutlamps Yggdrashell had provided for their comfort. His pupil would not die on her guard: he wouldn’t dare.
Yggdrashell’s worry seeped out of its cork. Kalon’s sorry state was slowly tainting his stupidity. Pushed to the extreme by pain, Kalon’s brain was trying to resort to unexplored methods to survive. It had begun to believe it could, maybe, if the situation was desperate enough, think of a solution. Suffice to say, this was an ominous prospect for Yggdrashell. Kalon was a snack sent by the gods, the perfect source of idiocy. Yet… there was nothing a tree could do against tetanus.
“My tongue is tired.” Jagger dutifully informed. “Hey, Yggdrashell, why is there a desert here? The mountains aren’t tall enough to produce rain shadows, and we are not at a latitude propicious for desert-forming. “
The tree cleared his vascular bundles. There was no reason to show worry to its guests, lest they panicked. And so it spoke. “This land used to be a prosperous agricultural paradise, soybean fields as far and wide as pollen could reach.”
Jagger tilted his head. “And then what happened?”
“Soybean fields as far and wide as pollen could reach.” The tree repeated.
“I am asking what… ohhh.” The realization hit Jagger like soil deterioration the local land owners.
“Yeah, as far as cultivation went, they could have spent more time learning the most important of techniques: Crop rotation,” the parent of all nutrees sassed. “Now, back to licking the forehead, or no more nuttar for you!”
“Boss, yes, boss!” Jagger saluted, and immediately went back to his anti-fever task.