Part 1: Entwinement
The rain pressed all around like a great, solid curtain, blurring the world around her. Her lithe hooves fought for traction as she scaled a tree. A bestial grunt of defiance hissed from her nostrils in a steamy haze. She took temporary refuge underneath a great bough, nearly as wide as a road. The rain just below pooled on the other branches, forming great rivers, carrying the detritus that would some day soon become silt on top of the massive, elderly limbs. Above, the rain fell like a constant ocean wave, undiffused by the branches and leaves under which she sheltered.
How had she let things get this bad? Adventuring on this planet had been her dream. Her heritage was nature by construction, a chimeric human built to the specifications of a survivalist. She had been raised on the outskirts of Sol as a miner, living in metal ships with tiny bonsais keeping them alive. Echoes of this grand place, this hyper-real planet far beyond Earth.
She had come here to explore, to seek some form of fulfillment, to feel what her grandparents had on other worlds. Here alone could she do so. Untuned to any planet-bound ecosystem, she could have conceivably died from the simplest pathogen. Here, there were no pathogens. Here, there were no animals. Here, there was only forest.
And the great rains from the great moisture these plants drew had visited her. She had been out scouting ahead when they struck. Flash flooding and extremely low visibility quickly rendered the terrain both different and inscrutable. Safe branches that had been like trails with hollows for safer walking had become raging rivers full of biological debris. Other limbs had bowed under the new weight and swift steps from one branch to another had become massive gaps.
She now sought her way by instinct. Never too high where the rain would overwhelm her. Yet, never so low that she risked being swept away in another sudden upwelling. She scaled from tree to tree by her reflexes alone, technologically naked, sparing only the clothes on her back. She moved from smaller to larger cover. Twice already she had encountered two islands of safety that remained inadequate. They were drafty and water pooled at her feet. She had been forced to forge out into the rain again, searching.
Searching until now. Three smaller branches formed a wide crook, overhung by a much greater branch bountiful with leaves. These branches were short, leading directly onto a trunk nearly as wide as she could stretch her arms. She knew there was nearly a kilometer of tree below her feet, so she could only guess how wide they grew that far down.
As she pulled herself up into the space, she slumped against one of the limbs. The entire area was incredibly dry, so much so that the bark beneath her was barely saturated. If she wanted to sleep without dying of hypothermia, she would have to dry off.
She sighed. To dry off, she would have to shed her clothes. They were heavy and dripping with rainwater and doing her far more harm then good. She raised herself upward, now feeling soreness and hunger, two things she'd been spared by her body as she fought the rain. Now, with the immediate threats dulled, the lesser ones began to seep back into her consciousness.
Her khaki shirt and shorts dropped easily from her lithe frame, poorly hidden by her wet, drooping pelt. She pulled her Lycra top over her head, revealing her modest breasts, peaked by two points of flesh that had grown pale in the cold. Even in this weather, they were flat like saucers, glistening with rainwater. Her clammy underwear went next. It curled down her legs, as saturated as any other bit of her clothing.
Now completely freed, she shook from her head to her toes, sloughing water from her water-resistant, earthen brown fur. Her stomach protested with the motion, tapped dry by her flight from the storm. Frustrated, her eyes instinctively darted around her. There were no fruits and berries in a land without animals. But, she was the sort that could handle that. If it came to it, she could eat leaves right off the branches. Though it would be an everlasting labor and one she didn't want to undertake. She wanted secondary options. She expected none, but there was nothing like desperation to drive someone to irrationally hope.
And, she was suddenly quite glad that she had. A great, hive-like, fleshy growth had been hidden in the shadow of the wafting leaves. Within the spots of light that escaped, she made out the growth's vivid colors. It was crowded inside a great knot within the tree. Every space within the round opening was full with growth. Spheres of green flesh were pressed against each other and ballooned outward from the knot. Flowers sprung from within the clefts between the spheres and, surrounded by three of the largest growths dead center of the mass, a long fruit poked outward. Its tapering end hung slightly downward, dripping liquid that lingered too long to be water.
Curious, she leaned forward, kneeling then dropping onto her hands to get closer along the sloping branch. The air around the fruit reeked of sweet, fruity scents. Esters. Nothing here should have evolved esters, unless it was by chance. There was nothing to advertise to. She was likely the first being that had come into this plant's space that would ever care about those smells.
But, these smells along with the growth's bright colors, reduced to a mere variant of blue in the night's darkness, told her so much. That long growth was likely a fruit, and it wanted to be known as such.
She leaned down and stroked a finger over its length, collecting a few drops of liquid on her finger as it twitched under the contact. She pulled back, startled for a brief moment. However, she surmised she must have imagined the event. Nothing moved in a forest with no creatures.
