Myconid

Before the Gleaning, before the first surface-foot ever bruised the Velvetfields, the Myconids were here. They are the elder folk of the Deep, and they wear their age the way the Weave wears the centuries—quietly, and without hurry. A Myconid rises from the loam as a pale stalk crowned in a cap of muted color, and moves through the dark with a stillness that surface-folk find either holy or unnerving, and are usually right on both counts.

Myconids do not speak as you speak. They commune. A drift of rapport spores carries thought from one mind into another, and in the great circles of the Gillforest a hundred Myconids will stand in silent congress that is, to them, the richest conversation in the world. Many take the song—maturing into the Sporesung vocation, tending the Weave and keeping the memory of everything the Deep has ever continued. They forget nothing. This is their glory and, just as surely, their grief.

To a Myconid, a single self is a strange and lonely instrument—most have never in their long lives been truly alone with one mind, and the silence of a surface skull unsettles them the way a shout unsettles you. They measure time in blooms and grudges in generations. A promise made to a Myconid is a promise made to everyone who will ever share its memory, which is why the Sporesung keep their word and why they are so very slow to give it.

A Myconid abroad is a rare thing: a young one sent to learn the surface-tongues, an elder walking a pilgrim-road toward the Heartweave, a lone stalk who left the circle to see what could not be seen from home. They are patient past the point of comfort and slow to anger, but do not mistake that for softness. The Deep has needed defending since the Waking, and it was the Myconids, always, who stayed.