The curse of endless ink
Once upon a time a shaggy inky cap mushroom dreamed of belonging to the treetops. This desire set them apart from other inky caps, so the sun cursed it with endless ink.
Ordinarily, a mushroom would start to dissolve into ink once it reached maturity. Eventually the entire cap would transform into a dark substance which spread the spores of new inky caps over the forest floor. An endless cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth.
But Inky never ran out of ink, so they couldn’t finish decomposing. And one day, when the last mushroom they had met returned to the earth, they were alone.
Inky cried for thirteen days. Their ink penetrated deep into the forest floor, killing every other organism until nothing new could grow.
The moon took pity on the lonely fungi and gifted them with the power to move. Inky didn’t know what to do with this brand new ability, so they stayed hidden and watched all the creatures of the forest go through the motions of their life cycles.
After many years of observation, Inky was brave and wise enough to venture into the forest for themselves. Still alone, but armed with the knowledge of generous animals, plants and insects.
They dripped their ink onto a notebook of rice paper and searched for others to dance with across the earth. But here’s the twist, I cannot tell you how their story ends because it’s still being written.
