Nobody snorted copious amounts of cockaine as the sun showed its old and wrinkly shiny face at the desert’s dawn. The light entered through Yggdrashell’s resinous, nut-shaped windows and illuminated Kalon with a faint golden glow as he took his third step of the day. Jagger, after producing a notebook out of the forage brought in and vomited onto a heap by Brunhilda, began taking notes, holding the pen with his mouth and cursing evolution for the lack of proper prehensile appendages:
“The subject (hereby referred to as ‘Kalon’) is recovering steadily.
My assistant (hereby referred to as ‘Brunhilda’) keeps finding technology not yet invented during her adventures outside Highdrashoal (how the intercourse is their name spelt?), albeit most of it gets ruined by her saliva, and, being a dog, I lack the means to reverse engineer the cancer-curing time machines. She swears there are no steaks to be found: I don’t believe her. A desert is too big, too empty, too prone to parallelisms. It’s more than fertile soil to reap steaks.
My dreams keep cursing me with new knowledge. The language from beyond the veil is , to say the least, curious: their word for anglerfish is ‘Rape’, but their word for rape is not ‘Anglerfish’. A most nonsensical tongue. In addition to that, melodies of war, burning bears called Lin and Sabbaths turned on also flood my mind, but it’s becoming harder to interpret them with each sassing day.
Caniche uterino! Kalon has fallen! Face first. Downwards (Read appendix eight, ‘On Kalon’s Relation with Gravity’, to understand why this clarification is absointercourselutely necessary). The ground made of nut-tracheids is not a follower of the Road of Softness.
My addiction to tramadol-infused nuttar is getting worse, and the reserves of analgesics brought in by Brunhilda running low. This bodes ill for Head Experimenter Jagger (me).
Kalon tripped again. His movements are stiff, so much he could barely scream or throw his arms around as he soared towards the pycnutxylic roof, that, much like the floor of this cavity, enjoys a particular hardness. We could say Kalon, too, enjoys a particular hardness, and not of the (re)productive kind.
I miss mosquitoed water. There are not enough mosquitoes in the desert. We must create pools in the aforementioned environment for the aforementioned animals to breed.
CONCLUSIONS
Further experimentation, and thus funding, is required. XOXO.”
It should be noted that Jagger did embellish reality just a little bit in that excerpt.
Yggdrashell used an adventitious root to peel Kalon off of the top of the hole where it hosted him and the dogs. He took care to not let the boy fall back, as he had, these last days, learnt about the unpredictability of Kalon’s interactions with gravity once he lost balance. Lifting Kalon down was a weird sensation, with his weight pulling upwards, but nothing the massive nutree couldn’t handle.
It then gathered the dogs and the boy round, and closed the exits, the nut’ cork falling like drapes over the big arches.
“Are we getting digested?” Jagger asked, calmly.
“No.”
The puppy whimpered, another illusion, another dream of finally dying had been broken.
“How can you become so depressed and suicidal in just two months of lifetime?” the tree asked.
“Valelike Vale can do this to anyone mildly sane in two hours,” Jagger said, and not a drop of sass or dishonesty was to be found in his voice.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Moving on, then. I find myself satisfied with Kalon’s progression during these trying times. He is recovering his health, and you two… ostensibly helped.”
Brunhilda inflated her chest with pride after hearing that.
“What I mean to say, dogs, is that, with the crisis averted, and you two having proven yourselves valuable assets for Kalon’s survival, we should strive to get him back on the path to immortality. The life of a man is but a passing gust for a being like me, and the nutree forest doesn’t wish to lose this newfound source of most delicious retardation.”
“Language!” Jagger chastised the massive tree.
“English?” The tree retorted.
“Well, yes. But… yes.”
Jagger sat with his head low as he heard the putative screams of a thousand thermodynamics claiming for mercy in the face of the perpetual motion machine that Yggdrashell was about to become.
“To make it short, dogs: When Kalon recovers most of his mobility, I will be sending you three underground to kill some pests that inhabit among my roots. I could do it myself, but I cannot be bothered, and it would result in a negligible benefit for my nutson. I hope this could serve the boy as training; help him push further down his road.”
“What you have done to the word person with that pun has no name. You did a, you monster,” Jagger spoke, spat to the side, and addressed the gargantuan nutleaf that served as a stand-in for a punctual interloper once again.
“Nuttin to worry about, pup. You are immune to any psychological damage from my puns, being Kalon’s companion. Immunized due to his antics.”
Jagger shut up, because the tree spoke truths like fucks.
Brunhilda felt heartburn creeping up from her inner sanctum, and, with a few deft gastric lining movements, she popped open one of the capsules that contained cocaine (Not to confused with cockaine, the new sensation that’s sweeping the sects) cut with sodium bicarbonate, which could prove fatal were the drug not incredibly diluted because the desert dealer Brunhilda had killed was the greatest niggard ever born.
Relief washed over the Rottweiler as the burning sensation got replaced by foul smelling, cocaine flavored burps and a rush of energy (due not to the sodium bicarbonate).
“is she going to explode?” the nutree asked with a worried, tremulous voice
“Dogs don’t randomly explode. That is not something that happens. Ever,” Jagger echoed the words of a very wise individual.
The carbon dioxide exited Brunhilda in droves, as if it were being hunted by very ravenous cyanobacteria. The resonation of the burps with Yggdrashell’s wood created an intricate sound that, coincidently, closely resembled the one the females of the Vale Lunged Fish emitted when receiving donations during their livestreams. This woke up ASMR-starved male dipnoi that, dug into their sealed, humid lairs, had fallen into a hundred years’ estivation. So they tore through their mucilaginous cradles and dug deeper, searching for subterranean, earthly-wi-fi-infused water, that would allow them to connect their brains to the fish-world-web and go back to being the greatest simps of nature.
The God of Mass Extinctions noticed this and added them to the list of species that would die off in the next one. Immediately afterwards he added about three Chihuahuas per square tiger of pressure to his favorite massive magma chamber.
Finally, Brunhilda collapsed, exhausted, and a symphony of farts left her body.
Jagger grimaced. “You would make a necromancer feel at home with those bodily odors, Brun.”
“Guh.” Kalon Guh’ed, finally speaking, and his body reminded him that doing so was a grave mistake. Everything ached. His diaphragm, his throat, even his cheeks and his jaw hurt like hell. His body was covered in bruises due to the strained muscles below. And due to slamming against wooden surfaces when tripping, too. The illness had taken its toll on the cultivator, but the worst had passed already, and now the painful rehabilitation followed.
Kalon struggled to stand, if only just to be a few palms closer to the nut leaf. “But, Yggdrashell, I cannot fight no more, how will I kill those pests?”
“You will heal: I am providing you with the most nuttytive oils I am able to produce.” The tree assured, its cuticle emotionless, because plants had not evolved to be exactly expressive.
Then, Kalon kneeled, and then kowtowed before the mound of nuts. “This one thanks you, Yggdrashell, for your kidneys.”
The tree didn’t speak.
“I think he means kindness,” Jagger broke the awkward silence that had settled about them like cockroaches in a public hospital.
“Yes,” Kalon said, “Guh!” he Guh!ed out of pain.
“You could give him one of your pills, Jagger. “the tree suggested.
For the first time ever, Jagger snarled, following the call of a deep seated instinct: resource guarding. “Never! The opioids are mine alone!”
“Have it your way, cunt. As for you, Kalon, let’s wait a few more sunrises and see how your condition ameliorates. My little snack factory,” the tree said with its mellifluous voice.
“Guh?” Kalon paused for a moment. “How many times does sun rise a day here?”
“… guh indeed,” the tree sprouted , and then retired the nutleaf and stopped interacting with the disastrous trio.
Jagged picked the pen back up and began practicing how to draw anthropomorphic animals. Given Kalon’s promising future as the worst cultivator alive, he had to develop the skills to survive out in the world without being reduced to a mere guard dog of some low-lifers. He was not putting his life in the line for some rotten teeth drug dealers. For nothing, yes. But not for drug dealers.