Black Mould - One - Remembrance of a Distant Dream

Black Mould - One - Remembrance of a Distant Dream

Black Mould - One - Remembrance of a Distant Dream

I could remember a dream.

A life lived well. Or at least, I hoped so. A happy family, though I couldnt remember their faces. Years of study and learning, always more curiosity than I could satisfy.

Then I grew and something happened? I couldnt remember it all. It was a dream, and dreams did as they were wont. They faded and became abstract against the realities of the waking mind.

There was something else I remembered. A conversation with a great being, a woman who seemed at once sad, sickly, and yet still so strong. She cupped me in her hands and whispered a question in my ear. Do you know what it means to be loyal?

I squirmed and moved, my vision an unfocused mess. I wasnt able to think clearly, my body moved poorly. Everything felt wrong, and tiring.

I slept, awoke, and slept again. The dreams always returned. Flashes of time spent camping. That embarrassing time Leo Johnson had asked me out in front of all of his friends in middle school.

The lady was always there. Always speaking that same recitation. Loyalty unto death is what I need, shed say. Her voice was honey, so sweet and pure and... and Id wake up again, squirm some more, and then protest.

My words were cries, but cries that were heeded. I was fed, I was spoken to, and I returned to my slumber.

The dreams continued, of course, as confusing and disjointed as any dream. My mom, hugging me close, but then it wasnt her, it was another woman, with black hair and a face stained by a bit of soot. Then the pretty lady would return, smiling at me once more. But worry not, child of man, it is not your death that I want, she whispered.

It took me some time to realise that I was an infant. It was embarrassing, really. Wasnt I meant to be observant?

Being a child, a baby, wasnt ideal. A persistent hunger gnawed at me, but was rarely sated, and while I could move some, it was never enough. I was constantly tired, and my breathing was... wrong. I couldnt remember it ever being so hard to take a good, deep lungful. Maybe when I had spent too much time next to the campfire?

None of that made any sense, of course. I was an adult, a grown-ass woman! I was... mostly independent and able to take care of myself and my three cats just fine, thank-you-very-much.

Every time I slept, I had the same dream. Not just snatches of my old life, but that lady--she was not a mere woman. I dont know why, but that was too small a title for her. Female, yes, but more than that. I couldnt put it into words but it was an important distinction, somehow--and her request. No real explanation, only a request.

Loyalty and death. The one for the other.

I aged, I guess. My vision cleared a fair bit, my squirming grew more powerful, and I grew just a little less tired. The hunger remained.

My world was a box. Not a cradle or a crib, but a wooden box, with one corner poorly jointed in place. My only toys were a pair of wooden blocks with softened edges and a thin blanket, stained on the bottom.

I was rarely clothed. Which was deeply uncomfortable.

I dont think that was my parents fault.

There were two of them--as is the norm, I imagine--a reedy-thin woman with gaunt features, premature wrinkles, and so much love in her eyes it hurt to meet them. Shed feed me when she could, would swaddle me in a different blanket at times, and would bounce me on her lap under the flickering light of the only bulb illuminating our home.

Agaricus bisporus, the worlds most common shroom.

When they started weaning me (a bit early? Was mom unable to continue?) I was often given a few chunks to chew on.

Not the healthiest food out there, but nourishing all the same, and I dont think my parents knew better.

For the moment, I didnt know what I would do. Grow up and... try to make a life for myself, perhaps?

By the looks of it, I wouldnt have a choice but to make it a humble life.

Time passed in fits and starts. I listened as my parents talked. It wasnt English, but I was able to make out sounds well enough.

Then my mom started leaving the house in the morning, along with my father. I wasnt left alone though. Mom swaddled me up and brought me out of the house for the first time I could remember. We climbed up a rickety metal staircase, and I tried to take in as much of the world as I could.

All I got from it were grey skies and rust-clad buildings before I was brought to an old womans home. She fretted with me, her hands ancient and gnarled. I was placed on the floor of a house smaller than our own.

The woman sat in a rocking chair and fiddled with yarn and knitting needles, the gentle clack-clack accompanied by the creak of her chair as she sat next to a soot-stained window and focused on her work.

I was all alone for hours on end, with nothing to do but wait and sleep on a pile of blankets. I could crawl around, but there was little to do.

The boredom almost got to me.

Nothing to do, nothing to practice. I was going to lose my mind.

Then, one fine day, perhaps a month into my daily stays at the old womans place, I crawled next to her pantry. She had never cleaned the bottom-most shelf. Too low for old knees to manage, I imagined.

A few things had been forgotten there. Dust, mostly, some small wooden boxes, and, growing out of a heap of natural compost at the very back, a single mushroom.

I knew my shrooms. At least, I did back home. What if this wasnt Earth? Nothing indicated as much, I could be in some poorer third-world county, or another time... but if I wasnt on Earth, did my knowledge of mycology translate?

The mushroom seemed harmless. So I reached out with grubby baby hands and tugged the mushroom out. Were I older, it would have been a snap (literally) to pull the stem apart to examine the mushroom closer. As it was, it took all of my strength and leverage to tug the mushroom out.

[You have unlocked the [Mycologic Harvester {Uncommon}] Skill!]

[Do you want to add the [Mycologic Harvester {Uncommon}] Skill to your known repertoire of General Skills?]

Wha? I blabbered.

Oh hey, my first almost word!

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