Moth Audition

First, came the rain. Falling in silver sheets, it spattered every inch of the forest, bowing filigree flora under its weight and turning cobwebs into strings of pearls. Then came the mist, when the steady thrum of falling water eased into the intermittent plip of the final raindrops making their way from the canopy to the forest floor. Like a collective sigh from the woodlands, it emerged into the chilly autumn air as the inclement weather at long last began to pass. 

Then came Oriele, when dusk had fallen thickly over the treetops and the first stars began to gleam fitfully between the shifting clouds. With a rucksack slung over his shoulders, his fluffy hood pulled tight around his neck, and his prized lantern in hand, he set off into the rain-drenched, darkening woods. 

There was something comforting about the cover of night. When the setting sun turned all the world into silhouettes and indistinct black monoliths, it granted a particular anonymity to him, and everything else. That, of course, was exactly what he wanted - to be nondescript, to be vague, shapeless, unidentifiable. No raucous, chattery guides with high-pitched voices that would split his skull, no one to recognize him, or wonder who he was. 

But the best thing that the night truly had to offer was the fungi. Lifting his lantern as he floated over fallen tree trunks, Oriele spotted them in droves - mica caps and oyster mushrooms abound. Either of those would have made a decent meal, but Oriele glided over them, leaving them untouched. He’d come for something much more special, a secret of his that he shared only with the grey moths that flocked to the reddish glow of his lantern. 

As he approached the place he’d set out for, Oriele dimmed his lantern and brushed stray drops of moisture from his spectacles. For perhaps the first time that day, a faint smile touched his somber face. When he rounded the crooked tree that marked the spot, a new glow illuminated the surrounding trees with an otherworldly green light. A glow coming from mushrooms, as if they’d stolen the light of the aurora into their caps and stems. 

Panellus stipticus, Panellus pusillus, Omphalotus illudens… and on he went as he greeted each one by name like an old friend in his thoughts. He planted himself down on a tree root, surrounded by the soft green luminescence of the mushrooms, and pulled a notebook out of his rucksack to make notes and record changes. 

This was his secret garden, his cultivation of cold fire in the form of fungus, his personal scientific marvel. 

As he began to write, the moths that had followed his lantern light here flocked to the mushrooms, bathing in their eerie iridescence, fanning their wings, flitting here and there, spreading the mushroom spores that would seed the next generation of fungi. 

Surrounded by the soft susurrus of the leaves and bathed in the green glow of mushrooms, to Oriele, this was as close as the world came to being perfect.