2020-04-05 - The Woods are Lovely

It was a short drive to the trail head, and then about a 45 minute trek on the official trail Then there's an official but rough and not heavily maintained trail off of that which is clearly meant to walk on - but not for Sunday hikers. Niall's got layers for the weather and a survival pack, and he's wearing his official Ranger jacket but not the rest of the uniform. "It's a bit of a hack down here. If we time it right, we should get there about dusk so you can see the fungi doing their glowy thing."

August is definitely no Sunday hiker, not with his heavy hiking boots and down jacket. He's in a Hoh Rain Forest hoodie in dark green, so could be mistaken for a tourist or visitor, except his survival pack suggests otherwise. He's got his new hunting knife handy as well, though that's for in case things get dicey. Who knows around here.

"Sounds good. I'll get a drawing of them, since phone pictures don't usually come out if it's something effect by Over There." Ah, the Veil and its tendency to hide itself. How did it expect them to do science if they couldn't record things? Just plain rude.

"I suspect they're just some cool mushrooms," says Niall as he picks up over a bit of a rooted path. "But you're the real expert. I kind of hope they are just glowy 'shrooms. Nice to think that boring old mother nature still has capacity to be magical." He pushes a branch aside. "Any new gnome news?" Good thing about hiking in the woods: no one to weird out by overhearing. Not that anyone keeps their voice down in town anyway.

August makes a low sound, carefully picking his way along the trail. There's plenty of snow here and there in the shadows, and mud otherwise, that they both have to take care. "Honestly I've seen as much amazing, normal nature as I have crazy shit, and I'll take the former any day of the week and twice on Tuesday. The real world's not actively trying to corrupt your memories. Its magic is..." He's quiet a second. "It's a magic we come from. Maybe that's why the Art makes us forget; we're not from it."

He shrugs that aside. "Nothing from the folks who went to, ah...finish off Enzo's deal, but they didn't wind up dead, so...I guess it went okay." He snorts. "Honestly I've been afraid to ask." Things he doesn't need: a mental visual of how one thousand gnome babies were made.

Niall chuckles and sets his feet with the skill and care of a man at home in the woods. "What about your whole reading fiasco? Are you and the other fella all right? Seems like that was quite the power whiplash." There's the sound of running water up ahead, and soon they're following a path along a small creek bed. It's quite fast-running from the spring thaw, but not particularly voluminous.

Now August grunts. "Yeah, so. About that." His eye is just about back to normal, at least. He pauses to smile at the sight of the creek. "Not sure if you've used that ability much but...sometimes, the stuff you get off it can be overpowering. Really overpowering." He grimaces. "This was definitely one of those times. I mean," he eyes a bit of moss on a rock, resumes walking, "I'd just been expecting, at most, our fight with the poisoned trees and maybe whatever came before." He sighs heavily, shakes his head. "Instead it was like getting a brain dump of every emotion that spot in the forest had ever felt. Shorted me out pretty hard."

"People seem to be different in which areas they're strong in. And the mind tricks don't seem to be mine. Which I'm sort of relieved about, to be honest." Niall scrambles up a rocky part of the path. Anyone not wearing good hiking boots would be slipping, but fortunately they both came prepared. "From what I know about it though, yeah, touching old stuff can be real problematic. Like learning a life story in a millisecond. And trees have long-ass lives."

"Honestly, sometimes...I really feel like I can do without it." August goes a bit slower than Niall, exercising a bit more caution than he maybe needs to. Certainly he's moving like someone still favoring an injury. "But it's useful, too. And normally, you only get a bit. Flashes, a few moments--stuff fades the longer it's been gone. There's a trick, I think, to really," he gestures, gripping with a hand, "getting things to stick. But this was...different. It was more like everything was there, stretching back centuries." He's quiet for a few steps, then, "I think maybe the graft merged with the Veil. That's the point of a graft, and the Veil seems to be more literal about intent. And...it might be that the trees aren't trees like they are here. They're just an extension of the Veil. So I wasn't grafting to a tree. I was grafting to the Veil. If that makes sense."

Niall thinks about it a moment, shrugs. "It makes as much sense as these things ever do. Which is to say, barely." He clambers Billy Goat-nimble up a small embankment. He's leading August off the path now, down a trail barely marked with yellow tags in the trees. He offers a hand down to the other man in case he needs it to get up the ridge. "Honestly, I thought I had this stuff figured til I moved back into town. The town itself is both more chaotic and more stable. Slipping through the Veil in Gray Harbor and doing it out here are real different experiences."

August accepts the help with a murmured thanks, wincing a little. "Yeah, kind of my thinking. The Veil is just all one big thing, and trees are just extensions of it--sure! Why not. I can make fireballs and bring down buildings, a world that's kind of full morphic doesn't seem that big of a stress." He eyes the trees as they walk, old habit settling in. "But it might also mean that anything we do over there changes all of it. If that makes sense. So, if I pull out a dandelion in my yard, that doesn't effect your yard directly." He waves a hand. "Obviously you can make arguments for how ultimately it effects the carbon load and exchange of oxygen for CO2 in the air, but--it's not a specific effect. I think Over There it is direct. By grafting those trees I was changing not them, but the whole space. Same with the chalk marks--that's why suddenly all the trees had chalk marks, I think. I'd changed the nature of a 'tree'."

"Terrifying. Also fascinating. But that sort of describes the whole business, ay? Not too much further now." That second bit refers to the direction they're now hacking. There's no trail, but the ribbons do stand out against the gray of the early spring trees. Niall nudges one of them. "Wonder what would've happened if you put these on instead of the chalk marks?"

"All of nature's that way--the real, and Over There," August says in agreement. He eyes the ribbons, thoughtful. "I've been thinking about that sort of thing--like, what if I'd just put a stake in the ground. Would I have come back to a forest of stakes?" He has no answer for that. "Probably going to try it, next time. I'll do ribbons too, see what happens." Will he be assaulted by ribbon-hating dryads, ents, and gnomes? Only one way to find out.

"I admire your gall, sir," says Niall. He digs around in his jacket until he finds a head lamp. It's got a blue-green filter on it so as not to destroy his night vision, but it'll help them pick their way along the thickening path. "Out here, I don't feel it nearly as much as I do in town, or in Firefly. This is a different kind of forest. The rules, such as they are, make more sense the closer you are to town. Out here, if I fall through the Veil, I rarely come out again in the same spot. That's how I found this grove in the first place."

"Admire it, or are amused by it?" August fishes his own headlamp out, tilts it down so he's not shining LEDs in Niall's face. "Was the same way in Hoh. It was there, and I knew it was, but my power was a lot weaker. Things were quieter. And down in Portland..." He licks his lips. "The one time we tried to cross over, back in November, we wound up in one of their constructs. Kind of wonder if that was a mistake on our part, or if their Veil's just not very stable at all. Isabella had the same problem, in Wales. Crossed over and went right into a Dream." He thinks on that, then, "Of course, our forest is a little stable...so I wonder if there's something specific around here, holding it together."

"I would bet on it. If the Veil has logic out here..." Niall gestures around, "...it's protected itself by messing up my notes. I mean, there's always that danger in town too, but it feels more...stable seems the wrong word. Ah, watch your step up ahead here. It's going to get a little steep." He flashes August a grin.

As they move deeper, the surrounding area gets very fairytale-ish in the waning light. The shadows get longer, bird calls get softer. There's a deep gulley with ancient trees with twisted roots. A few trees nearby are burnt like they were hit with lightning and burned bright before fading. A giant nurse log bisects the gulley. August would be forgiven for missing what they came here to see, but as they look closer (and get closer) the bright neon dots of bioluminescent mushrooms start to appear. They get more vibrant as the sun dips lower. There's only a few at first, but as they move along the ridge, they find the gulley full of them.

August heeds Niall's warning, using handholds where he needs to, pausing here and there to take in the gully. "This is amazing," he says, voice low. And then there they are...little glowing fungi. "Damn. Well you're a bunch of handsome devils, what are your names?" He crouches down next to a log with a healthy fan, tilting his head this way and that as he examines it. He goes still, a hand hovering over them. "Yeah...feel normal. Or, if they are touched by something from Over There, I can't feel it. Great news: your awesome fungi are probably normal."

He shrugs out of his pack and pulls out a sampling kit: tongs and test tubes, and a Sharpie for labeling. "Thinking...bitter oyster, maybe..." He takes a minuscule sample, which for any purposes but a microscope would be woefully insufficient. Next comes the smartphone for a photo, then he's off to the next one, tiny little fairy-cap sorts. "Not sure about these. Maybe some kind of Mycena."

"I don't know if they're normal. I think that rather sells them short, don't you think?" Niall is careful where he places his feet, then squats down by a particularly vibrant cluster. A banana slug slinks between them, all fat and slippery and mottled. "Not otherworldly, maybe. Also I think I saw some bioluminescent insects around here in the spring. Not just fireflies. Something bigger. But I'm not an entomologist." He's very careful where he places his feet, careful not to crush spores. "I've never seen so many of 'em in one place before. And different sorts as well. Seemed a wee bit unusual."

"Fair," August says, voice muffled by the Sharpie cap in his mouth. He caps it. "I'm no mycologist, but I do know a couple. I'll get you some IDs, maybe you can have this marked off for protection if you want." He pauses, hands dangling between his knees, to take in their gently-glowing surroundings. "Yeah, it is a little odd to see them all here like this. I had something similar around my cabin--a single aspen tree, all by itself. No grove. I," he makes a face, "had to cut it down, and when I did, it threw up a whole grove from its root system." He licks his lips, toys with the pen in his fingers. "I wonder, sometimes, if the thin spot moves around. So as it moves, it," he turns his attention to a particularly large ghost mushroom, its coiled ribbon shape a gleaming white under the bright green, "encourages things to behave in ways they wouldn't."

"So you think maybe...the Veil affects things in nearly invisible ways? Ways that we can manage to quantify, but that's not really the whole story?" Niall reaches out to gently push back a branch to see a little nursery of tiny mushroom spores, their little caps a brilliant green. "That sounds like hand of God stuff. But I'm not a religious man. I suppose that would also depend on whether we think there's any kind of intelligence at work. Or if it's just...chaos that sometimes looks like intent."

Shaking his head, August says, "Definitely not intent. Chaos, for sure. Like--there are things, over there, beings. Not just the gnomes. And they can come through, even without us interfering. We had a fair bit of that happening," he gestures unerringly in the direction of Gray Harbor, despite the distance, as any Physicalist can, "maybe four or five months ago. They do all kinds of stuff. Think, like, Bigfoot. What if he's just something from over there, stepping through sometimes? And we had a bad flu come through which was caused by a being over there called the Vivisectionist. I'd have thought it was just a bad flu which made our powers go out of whack, except, she confirmed she'd done it." He grimaces, gets back up and resumes collecting samples. "So maybe, your little mycology grotto here, was influenced, subtly, by Over There. Not in an unbelievable way--like you said, that'd just get lost in notes. But in a way that could be remembered, held on to."

"Why did the creepy lady with a very ominous name give people a flu that made their powers go wacky? That actually put a couple of my seasonal staff on their arses, so I heard about it. Avoided it myself." Niall moves along the ridge, inspecting the downed nurse log, and looking around for other signs that people other than them have been here. Thankfully not. It would be so easy to trample the mushrooms, and who knows if they'd ever come back again?

"Oh, you're gonna love this," August assures Niall. Collecting done, he stows everything back in his pack and resumes just enjoying the gully. "It was an experiment." He raises his eyebrows, expression bland. "And then they sent us some soup mix which could do the same thing I can do, with the healing. Which, ah," he flicks a wary look at Niall, "if anyone offers you any, hard pass. We found out how they made it a few days ago, and let's just say calling it 'Soylent Green' isn't as far fetched as it should be."

"I'm guessing you mean in the classic sci-fi movie sense and not in the soy-based beverage for meal replacement sense." Niall stands up and brushes his hands off on his pants. He shudders involuntarily. "I didn't realize there were like...beings you could talk to from Over There. What's that like?" He sounds both creeped out and fascinated - which are good traits to have in combination when you're living in Gray Harbor.

"Really, I wish I could say I meant the later, and not the former." August looks apologetic, at least. He stands on tip-toe to eyeball some roots from a tree overhead, maybe inspecting them for rot. "It's terrifying and incredible. I mean," he turns to face Niall, "the gnomes are one thing. They were pretty delicate and small and...I won't dare call them non-sentient, but they're clearly not very powerful. This woman, though..." He rubs his neck. "She attacked us, and someone wound up killing her. And her whole factory just started imploding. We had to run for it. She almost killed a few of us." He shudders. "There's more than just her. Powerful ones, dangerous. I don't think they're necessarily with Them? But they're not with us, either."

"If there's one thing I've learned about being out in nature is that there are lots of dangerous things out there. A bear might not want to murder you, but it still might kill you if you cross its path at the wrong time." Niall picks his way carefully back towards August. "We should probably start back if you've got what you think you need. The Veil might not be thin out here, but yeah. Spring. Aforementioned bears." He rattles a container of bear spray attached to his belt. "Agents of chaos. Doing their own thing. Maybe they see us like we might see...a deer or a chimpanzee. Alive, but not the same?" He shakes his head. "I get a headache trying to apply logic to any of it, to be honest."

August stands and pulls his pack back on. "That's how I usually describe it. When we go over there, or when they come over here, they're like us wandering into a bear's territory. Of course we freak out. And of course they freak out." A helpless lift of his shoulder, then, "I think the only logic we can apply is its own kind. Ephemeral. Uncertain. You have to be willing to roll with whatever's the new normal, and to that place, 'normal' is in flux a whole hell of a lot."

He takes a final look around them, then nods. "Yeah. Don't really want to have to magic a bear into leaving us alone." He smiles; it's hard to see in the combined light of the mushrooms and their headlamps, but there. "Thanks for showing me this, it's amazing. I might get your permission to add it to a book. With the location redacted, of course."