myth for snow plant

Sweetie woke in a warm room that glowed orange with a central fire. Her whole body felt thawed, and she felt, after many long days, that she had slept enough. The long body of the fox stretched along with her as she stirred. She rose and found she was alone in a small burrow that was well lived in. knives hung at the door and bowls were placed in the corner. Herbs hung all around, drying, wedged into the soil that made up the walls and floor. The place smelled like pine. The fire sang in its pit of stone. Above, she could see an opening where the sky was a clear dark blue. The cool color of dawn. She drew out the food in her bag that lay at her mat where she slept and she split the food with the fox. Outside, she filled bowls with the expanse of snow, for them to drink. She could have wept for the gentleness of the space.

Someone must have taken her here because this was not the flimsy structure into which she had curled herself, submitting to the storm.

She found a salve for her chapped arms, and massaged it into the paws of the fox.

Before long a figure breeched the fur-lined door. They, themselves, were lined in skins.

“Ah you’re up! I was wondering when you’d wake. It has been almost three days. You were near the end there. And I couldn’t stand to see you covered up in snow. You know living in cactus flowers can’t save you? So I had to take you before the hordes came. That fox just came trotting along behind, and it didn’t seem right to shoo them away.”

This was all more than Sweetie was prepared for. The freezing. The giant cactus flower and how it got there.

“Hordes?”

“Tell me you’ve not seen them. I’ve heard they’re calling it smoke in the valley, but that’s not what it is. They gather in swarms like starlings, moving in murmurs and eating everything they come in contact with. I’m learning their tell, but it’s not perfect. They seem to be triggered by something, a smell, a sound. A change of wind.”

The fox jumped up then and sniffed around the figure’s feet.

“What do you do here?” Sweetie asked.

“I’m a thief. I steal mushrooms. But I’m looking for the right mushroom, the one that will lead me to my king. In the meantime we steal mushrooms to eat them.”

“But that’s not stealing,” Sweetie replied. “That’s foraging.”

“Oh? Someone told me once that I was a thief. Is foraging stealing?”

Sweetie thought about the grass people. They seemed to steal something. Or maybe it was everything. Only she never felt like she owned it. She loved it - the thing that they had taken. But once they took it it was gone, it seemed to have become - well, half dead. Which is why she was here in the first place. That ambient love was what made the difference. “Maybe it’s the intention behind stealing. If I am taking what I need, if I am taking it with care and respect in my hands —” Sweetie interrupted herself and felt that pang in her stomach. She had forgotten her hands were gone and she looked down at the stumps of her arms in renewed shock.

The thief was prepared. “I’ve already solved it. You can use these!” They beamed as they brought out prosthetic hands in the shape of spades. “We don’t have to dig too deep, and I know that fox can dig too. I want to warn you, though. You’ll know that I’ve found my mushroom and gone back to my king if you see my shoes, and not me. He doesn’t like shoes on in his house.

Through the following weeks, the thief told Sweetie and the fox all kinds of stories as they walked around the mountain. “Back before I lived on the mountain, I was a knight of the red king. He always had me questing out on his most important duties. One of them was to find all of the doorways and such where any enemies could potentially walk through. This was confusing because there there are lots of way enemies can walk. So I decided to take down every entrance, so that no one would be an enemy. That was how I fought the bridge of the river of oats. I had to trick it by pretending I was a stream. You’d be shocked at how afraid of water those structures are. But that’s bridges for you. Well, you’d be surprised, but I got myself lost while I was trying to find bridges and walls and doors. I tell you, I lost my way. I know that the door back to the kingdom was somewhere on this mountain, but I have been looking for it for many seasons and haven’t been able to find it. I was so good at getting rid of doors, you see.”

The knight was obviously brave, living alone and surviving on this mountain, but they had their ways and made sure Sweetie knew as they meandered the pine tree ridges, looking for that missing door.

“You always have to ask the trees. I survived when I clung to a tree. Especially when the hordes come.” The thief said.

And then one day a dark cloud did cover the sky with a tremendous speed.

“They are here.” The thief slunk away. “You must hide.” Sweetie and the fox followed the strange thief behind a fir tree, where they clung. The sound was consuming. It thrummed with the tenor of cicadas, but stronger. So powerful she felt her whole body shake. Her eyeballs trembled. When the thundering passed she and the fox were alone. All that was beside them was a red shoe and a hole in the ground. the thief had escaped. Sweetie trembled and only then, realized there was a thaw in the snow. Winter was not over, but this would be enough to continue her journey to the top of the mountain where the moon sometimes settled. The fox picked the shoes that had become two snow plants. For they would need them for food later and the two continued up the mountain.