Radical Mycology

Kurri walks in the morning sun along the path through the katal field beyond the barns. He keeps his grey bandana over his face just to hide from the smell lingering over the plants. Just as Krev said, a massive old tree stands here by the cliff top. It partially hangs over the edge, with its roots reaching down the mountainside. Its trunk is nearly the width of Krev’s little house, and looks like a cluster of smaller trees fused together, connecting to the wide branches just about three Length off the ground. The great trunk has an opening where it meets the field, just big enough for a person to slip through, and looks hollow inside. The limbs spread out far and their dense foliage casts a shadow over an area of bare soil without grass or moss. Vertical stems like woody vines grow downward from the limbs. But a wide area has been cut from this forest of tangled vines, and tilled into neat shaded rows.

Kurri sees Filla tending this little shaded garden, he thinks, but when she notices him and turns his way, she seems different.

“Oh hey! Ain’t you the new medic?”

“Um, yeah, I’m Kurri...don’t you remember me?” Kurri says.

“I don’t think we’ve met, actually.”

“We haven’t?” he says, very confused.

“My name’s Perra.” He leans on the shaft of the hoe in his hands. “I’m mostly over here tending my garden when I’m not out on a mission, so we ain’t run into each other.” The voice is similar, with the same heavy Zintaian accent, but not quite right. He speaks a little faster, and louder, but at just a slightly lower pitch, and he doesn’t enunciate as much.

Perra is Filla’s height, smaller than Kurri, and he has her brown eyes. It looks like his hair is about the same length, but he has it covered up with a grey bandana tied over his head. He has brown leather boots caked in dirt, like hers, and loose fitting grey pants held up with a leather belt. A handmade leather vest much like Filla’s is draped over his chest and left hanging open. His light brown skin underneath is drenched with sweat.

In other ways he is very different from her. His stance and his movements, where hers seem careful and timid, his are more boisterous and confident.

“I’m sorry for mistaking you!” Kurri says. “Wow, you two must be twins or something.”

“Ah, we’re closer than that,” Perra says.

“Identical twins?”

Perra laughs. He lets his hoe drop to the ground and approaches. “I’ve heard about you. Welcome to my little domain.” He extends his arm out across the little field.

The parts of it on the edges have some sunlight filtering through the branches, and numerous herbs grow there, a few of which Kurri recognizes but most he does not. Closer to the tree are mounds of dirt that are starting to sprout little mushrooms, many varieties.

“I’ve been building this up since I got here early spring. It was just the right time for planting. But some of the most useful mushrooms we won’t see until fall, or next year.” He looks toward the great hollow in the tree. “But I got plenty growing in there, it’s the most absolutely perfect environment, dark, warm, humid.” He walks that direction, and Kurri follows.

Kurri pokes his head in the opening and looks over the small room inside, but as he breathes in it feels like inhaling a fiery spice, and he immediately sneezes, and sneezes again. He backs off and gets a breath of fresher air.

“Oh yeah, I guess the spores are overpowering to some folks,” Perra says.

“So this is where Filla gets her ingredients,” Kurri says.

“Our little plant witchery operation, yep, I grow it, she mixes it.”

“You’re quite a team.”

“Always have been,” Perra says.

“Well actually, I was looking for your sister. We were supposed to work on organizing the medic tent this morning.”

He looks up and turns his head aside, seemingly lost in thought a moment. “Hmm, she ain’t around, sorry. But I’ll help out.”

Suddenly a blast rings out over the mountaintop, echoing across the valley below, bigger than a gunshot, and close by. Kurri and Perra’s heads both turn that direction to see a cloud of dust rising over one of the barns.

“Aw fuck, what’ve those boys done this time,” Perra says, picking up a medic bag from beside the tree and throwing it over his shoulder.

“This time?” Kurri says.

“Kurri, with this reckless-ass crew, a medic’s work ain’t never done.”

They hurry back through the field, following the dust cloud. It leads them around the big barn. As the dust clears, they see two people sitting on the ground, coughing and clearing the air with their hands.

“Alright, what did y’all do?” Perra says.

“Ask them,” the taller one says, his light-brown eyes staring daggers at the smaller one. He’s the tallest and largest resistance fighter Kurri has met. His light skin and his black-dyed leather vest are covered in dust, but Kurri makes out tattoos all across his huge arms, more even than Zal. He has a grey bandana tied around his shaved head. Perra sits down next to him and starts to look him over.

The other is much shorter, just more than Kurri’s height, with a small frame and much slimmer arms. Kurri goes to tend to them. “Just a little miscalculation,” they say. Their pale skin is coated in grey ash, and some spots look red with burns. Their grey hempen shirt, much too big for them, is ripped and frayed in the front, and one sleeve is still smouldering.

“You’re pretty scorched up,” Kurri says, pulling some clean cloth out of his bag. “Can you take your shirt off?”

They pull it over their head, letting their long messy braid of blonde hair fall over their shoulder. Beneath it they have a smaller sort of shirt covering just their chest, thick fabric sewn together to tightly fit them, but it seems undamaged. And their face--round in shape, with grey eyes and a short blonde beard growing in thin--looks unharmed. The burns are concentrated on the arms and the stomach, like they shielded their face and chest from the blast. Their skin is marked with the remains of a number of old cuts and burns, but just a few spots look freshly injured.

Kurri soaks the cloth with some of his drinking water and presses it to one of the larger red areas on their arms. “Hold this here,” he says, reaching for another one. “My name’s Kurri, I’m your new medic.”

“I’m Ketha!” they say, putting their hand on the wet cloth. “I think I’m fine, but thanks.”

“It looks fine now, but the under layers of your skin are still hot, and continuing to burn you from the inside, if you don’t get it cooled down.” Kurri puts another wet cloth on their other arm. “Here, lie down.” He gets one more, and lays it on their stomach when they fall backwards onto the dirt.

“It’s superficial. You’re lucky after an explosion like that,” Kurri says. “And you look like it’s hardly your first burn.”

“Ha!” the bigger one says. “This little one should’ve stuck to poems and left the bombs to proper alchemists.” He reaches around Perra’s arm to extend his hand to Kurri. “Maris Koronova.”

Kurri takes his dirty hand. “Kurri.”

“Hey, I blow up the enemy more than myself, I think that counts for something,” Ketha says.

“You’re supposed to blow yourself up not at all. How many Points of powder did you add to that one?” Maris says.

“Point five o’ five, ish,” Ketha says.

“I told you it’s four!” Maris says.

“I just didn’t think it felt like enough was all.”

“Damn it Ketha, you don’t feel a bomb, you measure it, this is science! You’re not just adding an extra line to a sonnet here,” Maris says.

“I would never do that! Verse has rules!”

“Bombs have rules!” Maris says.

“Just be more careful in the future,” Kurri says.

“Yes mother,” Ketha says.

Kurri hears footsteps rapidly approaching. “Maris, the fuck did you do to my boy this time?” the newcomer says, running up and sliding across the dirt to kneel down by Ketha. He has a black field jacket and a grey bandana around his neck.

“What did I do? Tried to teach them something, that was where I went wrong,” Maris says.

“Elliv! I’d hug you but I’m under doctor’s orders to make myself wet,” Ketha says.

Elliv bends down over them and kisses them. He is a tall and broad shouldered man of Razha’s height, with her brown skin, and long black hair tied behind his head. He looks over at Kurri with his dark brown eyes. “They alright?”

“They will be fine,” Kurri says.

“Great to hear. Just another explosion here at Helbender, nothing to worry about.” He extends his hand to Kurri. “I’m Elliv.”

He takes it. “Kurri.”

“Well, well.” It’s Razha. Kurri looks over to see her and Nadia approach. “Squandering my teaching again, Maris?”

“To Hel with all y’all,” he says.

She walks up by him and rests her hand on top of his shaved head. “Aw, you know you’re still my favorite student.”

“I ain’t much of a teacher myself, though,” he says. “Good thing I dropped out when I did.”

“So,” she says, her eyes scanning the whole group on the ground. “If Lein and Krev weren’t at the gate I’d have all my Helbender boys in one place.”

“Need somethin’?” Elliv says.

“Just someone to make a delivery,” Nadia says.

“Specifically, we gotta get that reappropriated food to the Korben workers. Sooner they’re secure in their livelihood the sooner they can strike, and we can begin our plans for this valley,” Razha says. “Also we made kind of a mess of things the other day and from the looks of things it’s crawling with sents now. But it did give them down there a mess of chaos to work with and one less traitor.”

“Can you sneak a wagon full of food into a town under martial law?” Nadia says.

“I’m pretty sneaky, we can figure it out,” Ketha says.

“Always down to knock some sentie heads in if we gotta,” Maris says.

Elliv nods to that.

“We can take the chance to check in at the clinic, Filla made some salve to bring them,” Perra says.

“Perfect, the boys can go, girls and Zals can have a day off,” Nadia says.

“Sure, leave it to us!” Elliv says. He turns to the boys. “Let’s everyone get together later and discuss a plan, and we can head out in the morning.”