Sunflower - Chapter 38 (Patreon)

The worm crawls in the apple.

Burch looks downward, staring at the half-eaten, red fruit in her hands.

She has mischievously stolen it from the thick, fat boughs of a healthy tree we have passed.

— I am glad to see that my friend still has her sharp eye for the act of the harvest.

However, the thing she has taken, the apple, which was one of many that now accompany me in the rucksack, has a worm inside of it.

Rain trickles down softly around us, splashing down against the soft grass and against her soft hair. It runs down the greasy surface, trickling to her shoulders and to me.

Burch stands there, slowly chewing the apple in her mouth as she watches the confused worm dance around in the fruit.

The way it wiggles and squirms in the sweet, broken womb of the treasure, now that it has been exposed to the fresh air, reminds me of the worms of the soil below her feet.

— They too like to dance in the rain.

Lifting my gaze, I look up towards the gray sky hanging above our heads.

In years prior, Burch would have looked for shelter from a minor drizzle like this.

But now, we just stand here in the rain.

She chews, indifferently.

There is no squeal of surprise. No shriek and twitching of disgust. There is just a gray sky and a gray expression on my friend’s face.

It is most unbefitting of her.

The worm dances.

The rain falls.

And I, being a sunflower, feel melancholy at this poor weather.

The worm continues to wiggle.

Thank you, worm. I appreciate the effort.

Bending my stalk from side to side, I mimic the wiggling of the worm. Perhaps this will cheer my friend up a little?

And perhaps there is something to be learned from this small creature?

Much in the same way that I have learned from Burch and she has learned from me, perhaps the worm too, has a lesson to teach us?

— Burch eats the worm.

…Ah.

Life is a fickle thing.

We continue walking, now one passenger less.

The worm may be gone, but the lesson it imprinted onto me has stayed.

I wiggle in the rain, despite Burch’s face as she bites into the apple of equal sourness as it.

I am a rainflower.

Haha.

Isn’t that silly?

Burch pays me little mind. She seems lost in her thoughts.

_________________________________________________

My roots crawl through the fibers of Burch’s strong, thick muscles.

It has been a while since I have seen a creature of her ilk in a healthy condition.

But in comparison with others who are of similar build and make as her, Burch is an unusually muscular creature.

— This is to be expected, however. After all, she is alive.

Survival requires strength.

The old, gray, male; her first kill of a person. He was wounded and feeble. Weak.

The people of the city that we found when she was younger – they were soft and lived in comfortable domestication until the hobgoblins came. Weak.

The worm, put into an inferior position on the food-chain through no fault or failings of its own. Weak.

There is a reason that out of all these things, my best friend Burch is the only one that remains.

If you are weak, you will be the worm that is eaten.

If you are weak, you will be unable to survive the dangers presented by the predators of the world, to which my friend belongs; not by birthright, but by claim.

Be strong. Eat.

Or beware of those who are and do.

— This is the way of nature.

Heartless.

Cold.

Burch walks through the rain as I feel around inside of her body, my roots pressing in through her back, as I examine its unusual state.

I wonder, if every one of her species had the choice to be strong, then why did they not make it?

Hmm…

It is perplexing.

Perhaps they did not get enough sunlight to think clearly?

It would make sense to me.

________________________________________________

The snarling man lunges towards us, his face haggard and wild. His movements, like that of a feral creature; his eyes, vacant.

The metal collar, locked around his neck, chokes him as he reaches the end of his chain and falls down onto his back from the slipping of his feet on the muddy soil beneath himself.

Burch looks at me and I tilt my head, not sure what it is that she wants.

Her gaze returns back to the person.

He is a howling man.

He lays on his back now that his binds have reaffirmed his position in the world.

All of the rabid violence of a second ago is gone.

Now, he stares up towards the sky and the sky returns the favor by washing away the smears of new mud on his face with warm rain.

And that is the sublimation of our encounter.

That’s it.

There is nothing more.

Burch and I stare at the howling man who gargles and lets out miserable, weak sounds like a wounded animal as his emaciated body lays in the mud.

I wonder, who has captured this howling man and for what purpose?

On his neck is a collar of metal and attached to it is a chain of metal that returns to the center of the clearing, where a metal post is driven deeply, deeply into the soil.

I feel the muscles of my friend’s back loosening and I feel the tiny twitch of her dropping shoulders, pressing against my roots.

A familiar sensation. She is feeling empathy.

Perhaps because she too was once a thing not unlike him.

The rain drops and the howling man howls, opening his mouth full of broken teeth to let out a wordless, sorrowful cry that is made indistinguishable by the water that falls into his mouth.

— A moment later, something shifts in his demeanor.

His eyes lock, his body spasms and he lunges forward out of the mud in a violent lash.

The chain pulls taut and his hand, adorned with broken nails, falls short of Burch’s face once again.

He flops down into the mud again.

But this time, he does not find quiet rest in the soothing song of the rain. Instead, he howls. He gurgles and screams and pulls against the chain like a wild creature as he tries his very hardest to get to Burch.

She looks around the area and then spares only a glance towards the rabid man, crawling after us through the mud as she walks away from him.

Perhaps she does her best to avoid looking into his eyes, green, which show a hint of the creature that might have once remained behind them.

But she sees them nonetheless and the water running down from them is just as pitiful a sight as every time I have seen her do the same.

The rain might offer a kindness in trying to hide the man’s tears. But they are clear to see nonetheless.

Why is it that the howling-men howl?

“It’s the meat,” says Burch, watching him crawl after us like a worm, wiggling in the rain. “After the hobgoblins came and destroyed the city and the farms, it caused a famine,” explains my friend, who is far more versed in these things than I am. The howling-man drools, his face spasming as his spit mixes in with the rest of the wet below himself. “So people ate each other.”

Burch walks away to the other side of the grove, leaving the howling-man stuck in his binds, crawling through the mud.

The man flops back down to the wet, defeated, as we leave the clearing and from behind us comes a wretched howl.

“— It made them sick,” she explains. “So they need more, or they’ll become like him.”

Ah.

Interesting.

Strength.

The howling-men are indeed, strong. They have what it takes to survive this world.

To eat those of your own ilk, it is perhaps not unusual for a crab of the ocean or for a spider of the web.

— But for the people of Burch’s blood, it is very unusual indeed.

The howling-men may be interested in eating my friend and I.

But I must say that I don’t find them such bad people.

They like the sun. They long to survive. They chase after a thing that they can not sustain in the long-term.

In a sense, are they not exactly like us?

Very interesting.

Lifting my gaze towards the sky, towards the sunless gloom above our heads, I take a page from their book and I howl.

It is somewhat enjoyable, if not a waste of energy.

Oh well.

— A howl returns from back behind ourselves.