The End of the Beginning

It’s been a week since he revisited “The Incident”, and the subsequent “pastel bomb” that was unleashed by the moss, and… nothing. Not a peep. They spent almost every waking moment in his room with various family members popping in to feed them, or more often than not just chat. Corinne was not in the mood for any of it, however. Her attention was hawk like on the moss at all times to the point Danny became concerned she had stopped blinking. “Hey sis,” he began.

“What if we recreated the exact movements you went through and see what happens?” Corrine interjected in a way that felt to him borderline hysterical.

“We have. At least a dozen times…” Danny paused, “Sis I think its time we drop this for the moment and you show me around, I still haven’t really left this room since I got here you know.”

“You go get one of the kids, shit, all the kids to go, they’d love it. They’ve been dying to get you alone since you woke up.” She exclaimed

“Really?” he asked with a genuine surprise.

“Yes, its all they talk about, or did, while you were in the hospital. Shit there’s probably at least 2 sitting just outside the door listening to us right now… am I right kids?”

Sheepishly, the youngest, the one he still couldn’t get a bead on gender wise and didn’t want to be rude and ask so he’s just tried to pick up on context clues, pops around the corner.

“I’m the only one here right now, everyone else is at school. -Except dad, who’s at work.” they said.

“Why aren’t you at school?” Corinne asked in what Danny realized was her grandma voice

“We all take turns taking the day off to make sure someone who isn’t currently just woken up from a coma or possibly insane is here.” Danny audibly chuckled at the obvious shot at him and Corrine.

Corinne stared at them so hard they physically recoil, but they held their ground impressively well under her hard gaze. “Very well, would you mind showing uncle Danny around today while I continue my observations of the moss?” Her tone indicated that they would, in fact, be showing their uncle around independent of their personal preference.

“Are you kidding?! that sounds-” Corrine shot them a look that told them she had heard enough. “-I mean…! yes Mima!” They corrected themself as they reeled back in.

As they walked, almost sentences began on both their lips. Finally Rain said: “So whats it like, waking up in the future as an old man?” They chuckled softly as Danny let out a hoot.

“You know, great question, honestly I still feel like a kid, my body doesn’t feel much different, I always thought the way Poppop talked these years were just one long complaint about something or other hurting.”

“Yeah... I guess 60 plus years of sleep does a body good.” they said back to him and both chuckled.

“I haven’t really had an opportunity to really dwell on it all, but I guess I’m pretty sad that literally everything I knew is gone.”

“Not everything!” Said Rain in a way that was oddly comforting. “You still got Mima!” they looked up at him with that twinkle in their eye that he would recognize anywhere.

“What...?” Danny asked and felt for the first time that he was staring into a type of funhouse mirror.

“Nothing. Just, it was really hard for her, and these last 2 and a half months have felt like we have a version of her we’ve never seen before… it’s… nice.”

As if for the first time Danny looks up and sees a deer eating the side of what he assumes is a house. “What the fuck?” He squeaked instincively.

Rain laughs a big bold laugh that fully stops Danny in its tracks with its similarity to his mom’s.

“What is it?” Rain asked with genuine intrigue, catching his stare.

“Oh, nothing.. you just... laugh exactly like my mom.”

They turned sheepishly to the other side from Danny and said “That’s what Mima says, but she doesn’t really like to talk about your parents, so we don’t ever bring it up.”

“Actually, that makes a shitload of sense as they weren’t really talking at the time of ‘the incident’.” He Threw up finger quotes to make clear which ‘The Incident’ he could possibly be talking about. “I teased her about not being at my birthday party, but turns out, that saved her life. I can’t even imagine what that does to a psyche you know?”

“I do.” they reply

Before this convo has a chance to get any darker, Danny pivots back to the deer. “That happen a lot? Random animals just… chewing on peoples homes?”

“Oh! Uhhh, yeah! Its really cool, the animals have as much right to be here as any of us ya, know?” she said.

“That’s nothing like when I came from.” Danny sighed, “I used to hunt them with dad and Poppop.” He says with a sudden tang of guilt, pointing at the deer.

“Yeah, Mima told us, she said you.. like... loved it?” they ask in a way that hurts his heart a little and he doesn’t really know why.

“Well it was really cool to get to hang with Dad and Poppop they would let me drink beer with them sometimes if I promised not to tell mom, and you know, the deers if we let them live would have overrun us in like a generation or something dad always said” he finds that he isn’t able to stop talking and that he wants more than anything for this person to understand why he did this thing that he shouldn’t have to justify anyways. The moss on his shoulder started to turn a dark green color and he could feel his face start to redden.

“Its cool Unc, it was a different time.” they said with a compassion that meant they didn’t really believe it, but saw how flustered he was… “Just don’t go around killing any now.” They said with a small, almost forced chuckle. “We all live together now and they are pretty important here in the community by eating all the grass and keeping it from wildin out.”

Danny both did and didn’t hear any of that, he felt his head start to swim and the color on the moss started to shift to the cherry blossom color that he knew meant sleep.

“We, uh, we should head back.” Danny mumbled.

Rain grabbed his arm and guided him back to the house where Corinne had yet to leave his bedroom.

“What happened?” she snapped at Rain.

“I-I don’t know! We were having a nice chat then he just kind of started swaying! -I’m so sorry Mima!”

“It’s not the kids fault” Danny mumbled on his way to the bed. “they’re right as rain… hahaha, get it…?” and down he crashed as both the room and his shoulder went cherry blossom.

This time he awoke to the soothing sounds of the moss cascading like an ocean across his soul. When he sat up he was alone. The moss was that color teal that was starting to make him think immediately of family, and love, and being wrapped in a warm blanket on a chilly evening. He realized he was still in the same jumper he had been in when he fell asleep and he had a layer of ick on him. So he went into the bathroom to shower.

When he came out of the shower, Corinne was sitting at a desk in the far corner facing the wall that Danny swore he’d never seen before. “Hey.” She said and raised her hand over her head without looking back. She was face deep into what he realized was the first piece of tech he had seen since he woke up. “Whoa! A laptop?” Danny exclaimed, “I was starting to get the impression that we didn’t do that anymore!”

“Oh yes, we still have them, we just rarely use them. Most of us, anyways. There will always be some people who live online for one reason or another. -But we do support this and work very hard to keep any stigma out of it.” Corinne continued, “In research for instance we have chat rooms set up where all of the people of a certain discipline, in this case moss, and its applications, congregate to share information and the like.” While she was saying all of this he was dressing in what had become his favorite color jumper, which surprised him: lavender. As he got closer and peered over her shoulder he saw this was not a laptop at all but a sheet of glass displaying the info like a magic mirror. She had appeared to be typing on the desk itself until he got close enough to see a projection coming from under the sheet of a keyboard that she was using.

“...Cool.” was all he could get out.

“It is pretty cool huh?” she said looking up at him and smiling like it was the first time she had seen him. “I forget sometimes because I was a part of all of this as it happened just how different it is from what you remember.” He sat on the corner of the bed that sat closest to this new desk, eyeing it for the first time. It appeared to come out of the wall in the same manner as the dressing drawers in the opposite corner closest to the bathroom. The chair she was sitting on, he could see now, was attached to the desk by an arm of some sort, that looked to be able to bend at any given point necessary to position the chair anywhere in front of it. The table and the chair (and the arm for that matter) had a wood like quality except, he now saw that the seat which had the same type of material that the beanbag chair ball had when he used it in the garden of the hospital.

Danny looked around as the moss started to cycle colors again, catching Corrine’s eye despite the fact she wasn’t even directly looking at it. However unlike before, it was doing all the colors it has turned for him: Teal, Lavender, Cherry Blossom, Dark Green, and Orange, Corinne looked up for a quick second then started fumbling with something in her pocket, pulled it out, and tossed it into the air and yelled “Record” and just before she got the whole word out, it stopped and returned to the Teal color that always made him breathe a little deeper and fuller. “Shit” she mumbled and started to close up shop on the laptop, then she massaged the underside of the desk and it began to fold in on itself while pulling the chair into it before sliding into the wall as if it had never been there at all.

Corinne turned to walk out and Danny hopped onto her heels, all the way into the kitchen. This was just passed the main room he had seen the kids in last time, and the entryway, he was poised to say something super witty when he looked onto the couch and saw what looked like 2 pugs, and a wolf curled up on one side and a bear cub on the other, “Whaaaaa?” is all he could choke out before Corinne realized that she wasn’t alone for the first time said:

“Yea, thats a bear cub, -and a wolf... -and 2 pugs.” then she walked over to a door, that wasn’t a door but a heavy slab of material that when pushed wiggled in and out like a doggy door. When this action occurred, the pugs and the wolf looked up, but the bear cub did not.

“Ok, EXPLAIN!” Danny shouted in a way that DID wake the bear cub and its movement sent Danny into even more of a panic.

“Danny, its ok” Corinne chuckled, “Come sit at the table and I’ll make you some breakfast and do just that.” Danny backed to the table, never once taking his eyes off of the animals on the couch, but they were not taking their eyes off of him, either. The table was nestled in a corner and had booth seating all along the wall side and 4 chairs on the other side. The window above went not just to the celling he realized, but was in fact part of the ceiling as well. This felt nice, juxtaposed to the slight terror he still felt from his current standoff with a fucking bear. He saw his moss turn lavender and get a sparkle where it crossed paths with the sun. He took a deep breath and everything felt… better. He still kept eye contact with the monsters on the couch though they no longer looked like they gave a shit about him (except the pugs who stared in a way that said if he were to drop some food they would be there before it hit the ground). Just then Molly, Maredeth, and Landis come bounding down the hall from their rooms further down the same hallway as his room, Maredeth comes straight into the kitchen, while the other two flop down on the couch between all the animals and start to wrestle with them playfully and kissing them like family. Danny wanted to scream a warning to the kids, but realized that for them this was totally normal and him yelling would be seen as out of place. So he just nodded to Maredeth as she sat across from him with a grin the size of a baseball diamond.

“Whats up unc” she practically spit with joy through that smile that wouldn’t quit and made him feel like a zoo animal.

“Nothing much, just trying to understand… everything.” Danny said as casually as he could.

“I’ll bet, what a total mind fry this all must be yea?” she responded in a way that felt like both a question and a statement.

“It... really is” he said, shaking his head as if that would make everything make sense.

“Well, Rain told us about your walk yesterday, and I gotta admit I was sups jelly, we all were actually, us kids I mean, we’ve been waiting to get a chance to hang with you… since, well our whole lives! This is just the coolest.”

Danny realized that she could have continued talking forever, like literally forever, but at that moment a great wave of human/animal bodies bared down on them starting with the pugs who jumped up into his lap and began licking him like he was made of sugar. Landis sat at the other end of the booth closest to the door, and Molly put herself into a chair next to Maredeth. These kids looked so much like all the people in his life before that he started to get vertigo, thats when the moss began to shift from teal into lavender and he felt his breaths deepen and elongate. The vertigo passed as quickly as it had come on, and he realized that the kids have been talking to him this whole time and Corinne (from the kitchen area) was looking at him like he was a science project. “...then we gotta show you the school.” He finally heard Landis as he snapped back fully into reality say, but she said it in that giddy way that only teenagers can talk about things. He realized in that moment that all the kids were staring at him, awaiting his response no doubt. “Ahhhh, yea, no, that sounds like a blast!” he practically tripped one word over another in an effort to not look like he had been lost in the recesses of his mind. “holewagus” they all said in that weird unity that occurs from time to time amongst them. He tilted his head sideways in confusion. “It just means cool, unc.” Molly said (though later he would learn it was an old seminole term for bad, but kids did what kids do with words and turned it on its head, which was strangely comforting to Danny)

As all of this is happened Corinne came over to the table. “Breakfast is ready.” she said.

They all jumped up to go into the kitchen, pugs first as they took their positions directly below where they thought was the greatest chance for spillover. Just then, the kids all attacked the mountain of food, as they nibbled at bits and shoveled other bits onto their plate. It was all very colorful and the only thing that he really recognized was the biscuits and gravy so he proceed to lay into that, dumping enough on his plate to make the plate shift in his hands and tilt at a 40 degree angle that made the pugs faces light up in anticipation. He was able to equalize his plate, though and turn all that anticipation into crestfallen sadness. That was until Maredeth let some strange, what almost looked like oranges, drop from her hand and the pugs made sure those bits never made it anywhere near the floor. Eventually, they all made it back to their original positions (plus Mima who had made her plate first and was already sitting in the booths corner) and began what was the most quiet time they would all collectively spend together, ever.

As the meal wound down and the chatter kicked up, Danny asked to the entirety of the table: “So is someone gonna tell me why a wolf and a bear cub are on the couches?”

They all chuckled and Molly (who Danny noticed stopped eating a while ago as if waiting for this very opening) said, “The bear’s name is Nocossa which is just Seminole for bear, as we live on Seminole land we are taught it from a very early age, they don’t enforce it in anyway it is a kindness we do, eventually the plan is to phase out english entirety but the sheer amount of people that only speak it still made that not possible right away.” Danny nodded, Molly continued “So nocossa was a baby when dad found him in the woods with a broken leg, we searched for his family but could find none, we brought him home and helped get him healthy again and so now he just shows up when he likes and takes advantage of our couch.”

“And the wolf…?” Danny started and then saw that Molly was very much on her way to that story and gave her what he hoped was an apologetic look.

“Eyaha is a very similar story only she has since found her pack and will bring them all home from time to time.” Danny couldn’t get his eyes to push back into his face at this particular revelation. They all chuckled at this.

“Don’t worry” Maredeth said quickly “They don’t bite, or at least they haven’t yet.” to which they all began their chuckles anew.

“And the pugs?” Danny asked.

“Gopher and Snorts. We let Rain name Snorts when she was little, and Gopher just kinda showed up at our house one day and hasn’t left, we asked around and no one claimed her, so… yeah. Plus, these animals are all free to leave whenever they wish, thats what the giant door is for.” Maredeth beamed.

“What’s to stop all of the animals from just overriding your home and taking it over?” Danny asked, slightly mortified at the all but absolute nature of his question.

“Well…” Corinne began. “Nothing really, except that we’ve found that most wild animals prefer the wild even when given access to all that we have here.”

“Yeah, now that they know that their ‘worlds’ aren’t in danger of people creeping into it and destroying it, they mostly keep to themselves. The ones that interact with humanity still are almost exclusively the ones we have helped in some way. Like Nocossa and Eyaha over there.” Landis said with a sheepish grin.

It was at this very moment that Danny’s shoulder moss began to hum and vibrate and change into that cherry blossom color that he knew meant the end of… well whatever this had been. As he stood up to excuse himself, he realized that the entire table was already aware of what was happening and the table began its retreat into the wall as all the kids all jumped up and Landis came to his side immediately and hooked himself under Danny’s shoulder. “Let’s get you to bed unc.” Landis said with upmost kindness.

“Yea… looks like thats the plan, huh?” Danny said as the lights began to go out.

This time when Danny awoke he did so with the strangest feeling, he felt as if someone else’s words were sitting on his tongue. As he looked around and soaked in that similar teal and its shimmering he noticed something else, he had this urge to record himself. Like he had something to say, something desperate and immediate, but with no one there to speak to and no way that he understood to film himself, this urge dissipated. So he got up and went to the rest room to clean up. As he was getting dressed he realized that he was alone in his room, but he still had that nagging at the back of his brain saying he was sure he had wanted to say something, but could not figure out what. He shook it off for now and got dressed and went out into the living room.

Corinne and Colt sat on the couch with a screen dropped from the ceiling and on that were what looked to him like charts, he was trying to read the words, but they were gibberish. So instead he went with the straight approach “Hey” he said all calmly, they both turned around with looks that said ‘you shouldn’t be seeing this’, but they both boomed like two octaves to loud “Hey, yourself” and he couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“You look so dorky right now.” he finally said, but then got immediately serious, and out of his mouth came something that he was sure didn’t come from his brain.

“The mother says thank you, she knew you had it in you.” and then he crumpled right there on the floor.