Franklin & the Five Flower Hovel

Franklin & the Five Flower Hovel

As told by Whitney Mooncap of the Butler Troop

By Chelsea Parisi

The following story 

Franklin was a red-cap mushroom, from a small colony at the base of an ancient fir tree along the shore of a great sea. A lone stone rested at the tree’s base, across from where Franklin bloomed. He awoke on his first lifeday across from his first friend Herschel. Franklin’s eyes opened first. As he blinked the soil away, he saw Herschel stir and clear the dirt from his own. Their gazes met.

Franklin flushed. When Herschel flushed in return, Franklin reached out underground. His mycelia stretched through the dirt, sending a signal in search of Herschel. A warm response returned, and with it Herschel’s kindness flowed into Franklin’s body. Their filaments wove together into a dense blanket. Franklin released nutrients from his stores and he felt Herschel’s mycelia probe and return his own nutrients. Their signals combined into a small ball of new energy.

From the brush at the base of the tree, a beast pushed into the clearing. The dark-furred cat loomed over a frightened troop of Sporanids at the edge of the colony. With a sudden snap of its jaws, it swallowed the troop in an instant. Another troop it flung skyward, catching them again as they fell.

Franklin sent a signal of distress through the colony. Herschel answered with a pulse of fear that shook Franklin. When Franklin looked again, the beast was gone and the massacre was over. He craned his stalk as far as the soil allowed to search the surrounding forest. The cat pounced and fur twitched before Franklin’s eyes. Herschel’s signal reached him, but it was laced now with an unnatural voice: May… it hissed through Franklin’s cap.

As the beast turned, a gap between its legs revealed what Franklin already knew: Herschel was gone. The stalk was shorn to the ground. Rage surged through Franklin as Herschel’s final word pulsed inside him.

May… the signal growled again as the shadow cat’s yellow eyes locked onto Franklin’s own. Spores burst from Franklin’s gills in a cloud of fury as he drove every ounce of anger into his mycelia. The cat’s fangs sank into his flesh, but Franklin’s cap held against the worst of the blow. Pain and rage thundered outward. Spores filled the beast’s mouth and lungs, and it recoiled.

“May the Terrible,” Franklin felt—an amalgamation of his own signal and Herschel’s. The cat’s eyes widened with blackness until the yellow was a no more than a sliver. Its fangs pierced Franklin’s cap one last time, dragging him into darkness.

“I have been called worse,” purred May’s signal across his consciousness.

 

***

 

Out of the blackness, Franklin felt Herschel’s signal calling to him.  It was stronger than he remembered. May’s purr coiled through his core. A dizzying fog filled his cap, the same haze he recalled from the bloom. His eyes fluttered open to a dull orange glow on the horizon. The sea was gone. In its place stretched a barren expanse of cracked clay.  Heat danced across the landscape in shimmers of ghosts. Franklin lay within the woven hovel of a bird.

“It is called a nest,” came the signal of a bird. Franklin turned. The nest was woven of living sticks and leaves that seemed to shift at his touch. At its center lay a clutch of white spores, so like Herschel that Franklin’s gills ached. Perched atop them was a long-necked bird.

The creature burned.  Its body was a silhouette against the red sky, without clear form. Its neck arched, supporting a stubby beaked head, but its edges blurred, light pouring through it as though it were made of flame. The bird spread its wings, met Franklin’s eyes, and with a few powerful beats rose into the sky.

Franklin stared into the brightness of the horizon as the phoenix faded into distance. The beauty of the perpetual sunrise filled him, and with it came the hollow sadness of his First Friend lost. May had taken everything he had known in life. A warm breeze wound across the desert, carrying Herschel’s voice: Come home.

From the vastness came another voice, a hiss that curled around the wind: Come to your fate.

Franklin, lost and afraid, sent his fear into the nest around him. Voices answered him, rising from the twigs, from the spores, and even from beneath the packed clay.

“Franklin the United! Franklin the Connected! Franklin the Protector!”

The spores at the base of the nest burst open in trios, each release marked by a puff of dust. Small red caps emerged, one after another. Franklin felt the unique essence of each as they hatched. He greeted them warmly, introducing each new bloom to the ones who had come before.

Then, faint but unmistakable, he felt Herschel’s signal. It pulsed deep beneath the clay from across the Great Desert. Franklin strained his eyes toward the horizon, but from the height of the nest he could see nothing. I must climb higher, he thought. The nest shuddered in answer.

The living branches stirred, weaving tighter into one mass. The nest began to rise, lifting into the air. Large leaves unfurled from its trunk, and Franklin, along with the newly sprouted Sporanids, rose with it. A broad leaf formed beneath him, cradling his stalk.

Now suspended high above the desert, Franklin realized the nest had become a tree.  It felt like the Great Fir which had once sheltered his troop. Against the ember glow of the horizon, he saw a distant silhouette: a Sporanid.

Franklin sent his signal deep into the tree, then down into the earth, reaching as far across the horizon as his mycelia could extend. He searched, pushing his focus outward until he felt it: a familiar warmth. Herschel.

Another signal followed.  It was darker and heavier. May. Dread seeped into Franklin’s stalk. He strained against the leaf, desperate to reach Herschel. Rage coursed through his fibers and spilled into the leaf beneath him. Around him, the spores recoiled, sharing in his hate.

Then they answered. The nearest spores clustered around his stalk and bloomed, lifting him shakily until he balanced on two vines. Farther out, other spores grew together, rising to meet him. They arched upward and bloomed into vines that clasped his upper stalk, bracing him.

Empowered by the Great Tree, Franklin leapt to the ground and broke into a run. Ahead, the silhouette of his first friend sharpened with every step. He signaled toward Herschel, and the reply came.  First it was a wash of kindness, then May’s venom threaded through it. Franklin pressed harder, racing forward as Herschel’s warmth grew stronger.

At last, the figure took shape. Herschel seemed to stand before him, a splinter jutting from his cap. Was it a shard of May’s claw? A fang torn loose in the struggle? A splinter of wood from the cat’s violent pounce? Franklin felt the pain radiating from the wound.

But as he drew close, the truth revealed itself. It was not Herschel’s body at all, but a stone in his likeness. The signal drew Franklin’s focus to the stabbing pain in its crown. There, lodged in the stone-cap, was a tall wooden stick, its top branching into two short arms. From the junction of wood and stone poured Herschel’s agony.  And underneath Herschel’s signal was May’s hate.

Franklin leapt onto the stone and seized the splinter above its cross. He pulled with all the strength of his mycelia. At first it shifted only a fraction, scraping against the edges of the crack, locked tight in place. Franklin poured his signal into his limbs, down into the wood itself. Vines unfurled from his stalk, wrapping the handle, creeping along the blade, and driving deep into the stone. At last, his signal flowed into the rock itself.

The stone answered. Herschel’s love returned to him, warm and overwhelming. The splinter loosened, sliding free at last. With a burst it came unsheathed.

A darkness fell over the stone as a shadowy fog poured from the crack, stealing the warmth of Herschel. Franklin’s gills quivered as May’s presence filled the air. The fog coalesced into the shape of the shadow cat, yellow eyes blinking open to meet Franklin’s own.

Without hesitation, Franklin swung the splinter across May’s body. The cat’s claws flashed, batting the blade aside as he slipped behind Franklin. Leaning back, Franklin barely deflected the return swipe.

May’s calm, smug tone filled the air. “Come join your friend.”

Spinning on his vines, Franklin turned to face him. “What have you done to Herschel?”

“Your friend is well. Come see.”

The lie twisted through May’s signal, but Franklin felt its poison. Herschel’s warmth had pulsed from the stone before May emerged. Franklin shrank under the weight of May’s words, suddenly small in a vast, unyielding world.

May’s purr curled around him. “I sense your confusion. I can show you all the wonders of this world and more. The connection has been kept from you.   I can reunite you with your friend.”

“You killed them. You took them from my troop. You took them from me!” Franklin cried, striking with the full weight of the splinter.

May knocked the blow aside and slashed again, but Franklin sensed his intent and parried. Rage surged through his fibers. With all his strength he plunged the splinter into May’s clouded form.

The shadow cat howled as his body dissolved into smoke, scattering on a sudden wind that tore across the desert.

“You cannot be rid of me,” hissed the fading signal.

The lunge carried Franklin from his perch on the stone. He stumbled to the ground, clutching the weapon. Above him, spores poured from the gaping crack, cascading down the stone in shimmering waves. Their chant filled the air: “Franklin the United! Franklin the Connected! Franklin the Protector!” A thick vine forced the last spores from the fissure. At its tip swelled a single spore, ten times the size of the others. It burst with a cloud of pollen, revealing the red cap of a Sporanid. It grew and grew until it towered above Franklin. Silence fell.

The giant leaned close. A signal of peace entered Franklin’s mycelia, filling him until he felt larger than the Great Tree itself. Only he and the red-capped colossus remained in the desert.

“I am the Great Spore. Three things will bind the troops together: speak with other beings, remember your lifedays, and carry the protection of five flowers. All spores spring from the same web, and all are created as equals. Spread my signal to all.”

Power surged through the splinter in Franklin’s grip. The cross split open, budding on each side. The blade peeled back to reveal three more buds within. One by one they unfurled into blossoms of soft pink. Franklin watched as the petals withered, falling from their stems and drifting toward the desert floor.

Where the first petal touched the desert floor, the ground shivered. From a crack in the arid soil a green blade of grass emerged, then another, then a tuft. The patch spread, curling around the base of the stone.

Above, the Great Spore continued to grow.  It stretched upward, swelling into trunk and branch until it became a tree. A vast tree, pulsing with the signal of the web. It was the Great Fir.

The stone broke away from the Great Fir and rolled toward Franklin. He tried to move, but his body would not obey. His limbs crumbled into dust and blew away on the wind. Confused, he looked down and saw Herschel’s body lying once more on the green earth of their troop. Then he looked at himself.  He was a white spore, a little closer to Herschel than he had been the lifeday before. Herschel’s signal called to him, as if it came from within his very core.

Darkness took him.

***

When Franklin’s eyes opened again, dawn’s dim light reflected across the Great Sea beside the Great Fir. The water blazed like fire, a path leading straight to his troop. He remembered the phoenix. He remembered the Great Spore. He remembered May the Terrible. Most of all, he remembered Herschel.

His gaze shot to the patch where Herschel had bloomed. It was bare still, only a sheared stalk clinging to the soil. Franklin sent his signal into the earth there. Cold emptiness answered.

He reached deeper, to the place where his mycelia had once entwined with Herschel’s. May’s scream lashed back at him. But then warmth surged through Franklin, flowing from somewhere deep inside. It was Herschel. Together they battled May’s venom to the very tips of Franklin’s fibers, driving the predator’s signal from the troop and into the woods. As Herschel’s warmth faded, something new remained at the edge of Franklin’s mycelia—a small pulse of energy. A spore, preparing to bloom. It was Herschel’s.

Franklin turned to his colony, still buried in lifesleep. Their signals pulsed strong through the web, while his own was weak. He was decaying. Soon he, too, would sleep. He had not been prepared for this end, but May’s attack had stolen time from him.

Anger welled inside of him. He poured every last flicker of signal into the web, stretching farther and farther. His essence surged up the Great Fir, through the unexplored forest, and into the roots of neighboring trees. Millions of voices answered. Four other colonies lay nearby, and their Great Trees welcomed Franklin, lending him strength.

Terror struck. He felt May stalking the forest edge, each silent paw-step pressing down on the soil. Fear rippled through the land but Franklin met it with fury. He signaled to the spores at the border of his colony. The five Great Trees joined him. Grass and vines sprang up, weaving together into a low wall. Tree suckers threaded through the hedge, binding it tight. The barrier rose to cap-height, open to the sun above yet strong enough to shield the colony. The structure pulsed with living energy. It was the first hovel.  It was woven of plant, tree, and web, all joined as one.

Exhausted, Franklin gave the last of himself to the stone where Herschel had once stood. At first it was only cold rock. Then, from a hidden crack, warmth called back.  It was Herschel’s warmth. Franklin pressed his fading signal into it. As his body dissolved, the hovel’s growth slowed, and around its crown bloomed five flowers that never withered.