6 Onwards! For Food!

If I'm going to be looking for ways to eat, and what I can eat I'll need a lead. And what better than the good old monkey see monkey do strategy? That's right! Just like any good student, I shall copy what my fellow flowers do! It's a foolproof strategy. And what better name than operation ghost for such a task? I mean I am basically stalking another flower. But stalking is a harsh word so I'll just call it ghosting to make it child friendly.

Now I just need to find a flower that looks like me to follow. I mean can't be sure if different types of flowers eat different things, so this is the safest choice.

And so I began to search around for my kin to start operation ghost. The forest being the huge green blob it is didn't help my search much though. The only reason I was able to tell objects apart in the first place was that I still had some semblance of depth perception. It was a far cry from what I had as a human, but even so, it's enough to do the job.

So I now have myself a specific target to search for which means I'd need to be more attentive to my surroundings. Much more than I was before. Mistakes were made last time. Many mistakes.

I started to walk through the grass receiving tingles from the grass whenever my roots touched it. Jellybeetles, slugs, and a variety of other alien and familiar-looking insects were crawling around searching for who knows what.

And occasionally one of the jellybeetles would get into a small scuffle with one of the other bugs. One such conflict was happening right in front of me. A jellybeetle was facing what looked like an earwig with pincers waving its tentacles threateningly. The earwig clacked its pincers and waved its tail pincer above it while emitting a hiss. I didn't bother sticking around to see which of the two would win and continued to walk past them.

As interesting as it was I did have more pressing issues than some death battle between two bugs. I have a stomach to fill! Besides this place is crawling with bugs everywhere you look! I can always just watch another one later or something.

After another minute or two of wandering, I managed to spot some movement up ahead. From over where I was at it looked like a massive green blob writhing and squirming. Taking a moment to gather up my resolve I decided to approach the blob to see what it actually was. As I got closer My vision gradually cleared and revealed the color blob to actually just be a gathering of plants!

Excellent! I've finally found a potential lead! If I had a mouth I'd be grinning in glee right now! Alright, enough diddle dallying gotta find me a flower.

Once I rushed up to the plant gathering I found a number of plants around for me to see. The majority of them were made up of what looked to be bushes and flowers. There were a couple of plants here and there which I couldn't immediately recognize. One such plant looked like a cross between a pate and leaf that seemed to hover across the ground. Like I said not immediately recognizable.

But back to the flowers. Out of the dozen or so I could see only three-fourths of them actually had flower buds still. The remaining having fully bloomed petals of various primary colors. But the ones with flower buds were the ones I was currently after. With my targets now in sight, all I need to do is choose one and follow it till it leads me to some scrumptious food to ease my aching stomach!

After deciding upon one of the flower buds I began to follow it from a good distance. Social distancing is important in new worlds after all! Despite having my target chosen and in my sight I soon found out it was much more difficult to keep an eye on it than I had thought. This flower just like me had milky white roots but the grass in this area was particularly tall and hid the roots away from with the exception of the occasional flash of white.

This left only the rest of the body to keep an eye on. Both the flower bud and stem were pale green and occasionally faded into the slightly darker green background of the forest. Between that and the apparent superior control, it had over its roots made it far faster than me.

I was going as quickly as I could without stumbling over my roots and the damned flower still looked like it wasn't even trying to outpace me! Why is it that this flower gets to move so much faster than me!? Looks like I still have a lot of practice to do before I can walk normally in this body…

But despite these setbacks after several minutes of trailing it I still managed to keep the flower in sight! So all hope was not lost yet. But the longer we walked the easier it was to see my target. Actually now that I think about it everything in my vision was starting to become a lot more clear…

Hmm… Maybe it's just my bad vision acting up again but isn't the ground starting to rise? Yeah, we're going up! Oh man, I wonder what we're going after if we need to go up to find it? Well, that's if the other flower is going after prey. But I guess this is explora- wait what's that?

Out of the corner of my vision, I spotted a strangely bright area on the ground. Almost as if the entire area was glowing! Now curious I began to turn to take a look at it before spotting another glowing spot on the ground. I twisted and turned myself to look all around me spotting the occasional patch of light.

What is this… Wait, the other flower! I need to catch up with them!

I whipped myself around fervently looking for my green-skinned brethren. It didn't take long for me to spot them a good couple dozen flower lengths ahead of me passing through a patch of light. I hurriedly stumbled after it intent on not being left behind.

As we began to slowly ascend and the ground became steeper I noticed there were fewer and fewer insects around. Not only that but there were small gaps in the ground here and there. With some being barely wide enough to fit my thinnest root in and others wider than I am tall.

This is certainly strange! Fewer bugs, small lit-up areas, and crevices in the ground. Maybe this forest isn't what I thought it was..? Either way, I've gone too far to stop now! For I must survive no matter the cost!

Turning my attention back to what was in front of me I saw far more lit up areas than before. Not only that but they were far brighter than before… In fact, it's starting to look more like rays of light shining down on the ground… Does that mean this entire time I was underground? But there's grass down here! Grass can't grow without sunlight, right?

Instead of continuing my inner monologue, I decided to just follow the other flower silently and wait till we reach our destination before making any conclusions.

I was more than a bit curious about where the light was coming from and there really wasn't much to do on this walk. So, in the end, I decided to take a look upwards to see what I found. There wasn't much other than a huge expanse of darkness with countless holes where rays of light shone in from. But there was an odd thing with how there were hundreds of tree trunks extending to that darkness before eventually disappearing from sight.

Well, it's certainly interesting to know that I was underground or something along those lines. But that only raises more questions. Such as what the surface is like if there's this much plant life down here. And why the hell is there a forest down underground to begin with? And why do those tree trunks extend all the way up there? So many questions and no answers.

A sudden pang of hunger hit me inciting a displeased shiver from my leaves.

Ugh. Let's hope that damn flower actually leads me to some food…

~~~~~~~~

Ten to fifteen minutes later

Light! So much fucking light! What the hell is this!? What type of nonsense is this forest!?