I Am A Carnivorous Plant

I was stuck there eating my smorgasbord of animals for about a week. It took a lot of dragging, dismantling, and digging, but in the end I managed to stuff a majority of them in the hidey-hole I was sitting on top of. I especially had to make sure to keep the boar from the prying eyes of the wolves that lived around here; It would be bad news if they finally decided that I was worth it enough to attack for the food. I had to leave some of the corpses out of course, I mean even if I’m getting stronger by the day that doesn’t mean my digging skills have suddenly become great. I only left either dismantled scraps or creatures that were on the smaller side next to me though, so I could eat them as soon as I made some room, and my poisonous gas that I was keeping running for safety seemed to make most things too scared to get close to me!

 

All in all, it was a peaceful week of gorging myself!

 

By the time I started thinking that I might need to go find a drink somewhere, my stockpile of food had basically run out, so it was perfect timing! Now I no longer had anything left keeping me tethered to this decently sized hole I’d dug next to the emptied out rabbit warren. It felt so much like leaving an old home to look for a new one, that I might have wanted to shed a tear from sentimentality if I had the ability to. Good thing I’m a heartless plant! Goodbye old home, you served me well! I’m off to do something dangerous!

 

It’s finally time!

I’ve grown much bigger and stronger!

Now let’s go conquer that stupid lake already!

I’m coming for you, death lake!

 

~~~

 

You know, this is the first time in a while that I’ve actually walked around on my own two root-feet. For the past week I’ve been so busy looking after my hoard of war spoils and photosynthesizing that I didn’t really have much time to go anywhere. After the first day I even had to neglect finding those nutritious little eggs that I like. Honestly it’s not like I was missing out on anything with my diet, so it’s not like I needed to go find them, but… you know… I like them. Maybe even when I’m so grown up that even a bear isn’t enough to satisfy me, I’ll still go and find some eggs to eat sometimes. They’re just a special kind of nutritious, I can’t explain it! Maybe this is what it’s like for a plant to have a favorite food? I can’t really taste anything, so I guess this is the closest I can come to it. If I hadn’t gorged myself on the last of my food before I left, I might just be swinging through the trees like a monkey right now searching for an egg or two, since it’s been a while; That’s just how much I was missing them. Too bad I’ve probably already picked this area clean from the last time I came through.

 

…Wait, is that even a thing?

Can I swing around on my vines yet?

 

…Well why not test it out?

 

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about trying this before, you know. In fact I’ve even attempted it once or twice when I was smaller, but my tendrils were just a little bit too weak for it. Now that I’ve gotten a good bit bigger and they’re a whole lot stronger, maybe it’ll work this time! I could swing like a monkey like I said, or maybe I could even fling myself super fast by launching myself between two trees like a rubber-band gun! Okay no, maybe that second one is kind of unsafe, but I won’t know what I can do unless I try it!

 

Alright, first attempt!

Let’s swing from trees!

Testing, testing~!

And the result is:

 

It’s kind of really hard!

 

My tentacles are definitely strong enough, that’s not the problem. The difficulty comes with the fact that I’m not really coordinated enough yet to pull it off! If I keep practicing I’m sure I could learn it, but that’ll take time, and I’d like to reach the lake before sunrise if I can. I have plenty of time for experimenting along the way, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really have time for practice, if you know what I mean. It’s totally not that I’m disheartened and giving up a little ‘cuz I missed and fell and hurt one of my root-feet a little bit, okay? It’s all fixed up, so you have no proof.

 

Anyways I’m gonna need a little bit of recovery time before I try and learn more of that one again, so… On to the next one!

 

I’m a little, um, wary of hurting myself now, so I’m gonna give the whole flinging thing a pass until some other better time haha, so instead let’s try something different! Instead of growing explicitly longer over the past week, it’s more appropriate to say that my tendrils have learned how to extend for a tiny while. Not forever, mind you, but they can stretch out about an extra one-third of their length for a little while before they start feeling uncomfortable. And with that being the case, I have a nice little idea to try out!

 

First, I’ll climb onto the side of a tree like I’m some weird little forest octopus!

Next, I’ll jump off and pull myself to a diagonal tree with my extendo-arms!

Once I’m safely on the side of the next tree, it’s just a simple wash, rinse, and repeat!

Voila!

 

I’ll be able to move so fast like this, especially if I get used to doing it. It’s… basically just as good as the monkey swinging and the flinging myself, okay? So there’s no need to do those, right? It’s just as fast! I promise! Really!

 

Anyways I’m here at the lake again.

 

It’s night time right now, so everything seems really serene and quiet. Looks like everything won’t be coming to murder and eat me (hopefully in that order) until the sun comes up, so I have an hour or two until the sun starts to rise to prepare myself. No matter what happens, I’m going to get revenge on those deer today! No matter what.

 

This day is a day of vengeance.

 

For now though it’s time to meditate and drink up before the big battle. Hydration is important, as they say! Let’s plant myself by the side of this horrible lake and dip a few tendrils in for soaking. I still don’t know if that actually helps me hydrate faster, for the record. I’m just a plant, not a botanist! People don’t understand how good they have it to be able to just look up the answer to whatever question they have! I have to find out everything about myself by trial and error! What a harsh little life I have. Boo hoo. Woe is me. It is so difficult, this life of plant-ness that I have!

 

…So in more interesting news, I’ve noticed something.

 

It’s obvious I don’t have eyes, right? And yet I actually do have some odd version of vision going on. It’s not exactly like how I saw back when I was a human, it’s more, um, I guess I’d say it’s… buzzy? Like, I can see colors and everything just fine, but I can’t see shapes exactly? It’s like seeing everything through a slightly smudged glass. I think I only think it looks ‘buzzy’ because some of what I’m seeing is actually vibrations? Or maybe it’s being transmitted into my mind (seed) through magical waves? Either way, it’s really wavy and a little uncertain. I guess I could say nothing has outlines and it all wiggles a little bit? Ah, this is so hard to explain.

 

Yeah, you get it, I can see but it’s weird.

 

And this weirdness also has odd little kinks in it besides the obvious ones. Like, I can spot the fish and frogs and other fun things swimming around in the lake, but I can’t see a single reflection. I especially can’t see my reflection, although it’s not like it matters since I can somehow see myself just fine. Yeah, weird kinks. I’ll never understand it, I’m simply not smart enough. I can only make guesses.

 

By the way, since the reflection won’t tell me what I look like, let me mention all the results I’ve gotten over the past week!

 

So my vines gained that new extension thingy, I already talked about that, yeah. Honestly I’m pretty glad they didn’t just, you know, keep growing? Cuz then it would have just been too much for me to constantly keep track of. These things are already crazy long compared to my body size, so I’m already losing out on a bit of fine control with them. It was much simpler when they weren’t like trying to control long muscley jumping ropes. You know, like the red and white gym class ones that can fit multiple people. Yeah, any longer and my tentacles would just be impossible to move how I want. Thanks for not doing that to me, plant body.

 

I grew more roots and of course they grew longer and thicker overall. Strangely enough I’ve only grown maybe half a head in height since last time. Maybe I’m the size of a ten year old now? More than making me taller, my roots have instead bundled together to look more like a child’s legs, rather than the tiny elf on the shelf-like little twigs that I’d had before. And that’s not all! The rest of me has also made a bunch of new changes!

 

My mouth finally stopped descending about half a water bottle’s length down my stem. At first it was really awkward since it made eating a bit more difficult, but three days ago I realized something very important! Below the first layer of my petals (the ones right below the two differently colored layers of leaves), my stem had cracked open, and now I had a new, bigger mouth! The previous hole at the top of my stem is busy closing itself up, so I guess I don’t get to eat through there anymore. It feels odd and a little bit wasteful that this new lid to my mouth consists of so much of the upper half of my body. I kind of feel like some weird muppet character every time I hinge open my mouth. Or maybe I look like a very leafy decorative trash can? I’ll take whatever I can get if it means eating becomes easier, though. You do you, plant body, I’m not going to judge.

 

That first row of petals before the cutoff was still the same size as before, and so was the next layer of petals after the cutoff as well. However, the silver layer of my leaves, as well as the two bottom layers of petals, were still growing longer! From my viewpoint it looked terribly uneven, but hey, I said I wasn’t going to judge. If my body was willing to make that beautiful camellia flower for me (which by the way is still doing just fine, thank you for asking!), then I just have to believe that it has pretty plans for the rest of me as well. For now I’ll just have to accept that I’m in some off puberty-like stage and roll with it. I’ll save my complaints for when I get to see the finished product, thank you very much.

 

Ah, I'm getting distracted by my cute little plant body. This is supposed to be time for strategy! Stra-te-gy! I have a mission to complete, dammit! Those deer are gonna pay for messing with baby-me!