text: Hi peoples! So, I'm relatively new here, but I've recently started writing short stories to deal with my anxiety, and this was the first story I wrote. I can't say that my anxiety is gone, but I feel like life is beautiful again and that I've found my purpose. Better late than never, right? Why do you write? I'm sharing it here as I would love to hear your feedback. Cheers! \ In a green-lit forest that’s buzzing with all kinds of life, under a strangely shaped birch tree that’s 125 years old, on a forest floor that no human has ever set foot before, grew an *Amanita Muscaria* mushroom with red skin and white warts distributed more or less evenly across its surface. 🍄 This was no ordinary mushroom. It was sentient, and it went by the name Anita. She was different from all other mushrooms in her community as she was the only one who was aware. All other fellow mushrooms had no idea of what world existed outside of their little stems. She would give living things around her a name to make them more sentient, even though she couldn’t communicate with anyone. Mimmy and Emmy were the mushrooms closest to her. They were mushrooms of a different kind, a special kind considered to be one of the most beautiful: *Laccaria Amethystina* or *The Amethyst Deceiver*. When young, these mushrooms would have a distinctive deep purple color, a color so vibrant and alluring that Anita would often wonder if they were really a Terran species or something brought to Earth by aliens. 👽 Anita liked to imagine how her life would have been like if she was a mushroom of a different kind, a more unique kind like Mimmy and Emmy, or even like Dea and Lea, who grew two trees down and were of a dazzling kind called *Phallus Indusiatus* or also known as *The Veiled Lady*. Dea and Lea rose from the ground a few weeks ago as the most ordinary mushrooms. Very unassuming at first, they soon grew a net-like skirt that made them look very gracious and elaborate. “Why is everyone more impressive than I?” Anita would often wonder. 😔 Days in the forest went by very monotonously. Everything was happening as it was supposed to, each thing casually interacting with other things in its surrounding as if they had been programmed in advance to live in perfect balance with each other. The tree that was giving her shade from the sun was thin but with a rich crown, its slender branches swaying on a windy day, and delicate leaves changing colors with the passing of the seasons. The tree was host to many insects Anita wasn’t fond of; there were ants, spiders, wasps, and even moth and butterfly caterpillars. The abundance of insects also meant the tree was often visited by insect-eating birds like woodpeckers. 🌲 “What if the woodpecker gets tired of eating moths and develops an appetite for some mushrooms? What would I do if he decides to expand his menu? And how come he doesn’t get a concussion from so much pecking?” Anita would wonder. Not to mention how terribly annoying these woodpeckers were. Anita was a night owl, and she would often get lost in thought while gazing at the stars above her, contemplating the meaning of life and her place in the vastness of the Universe, only to get awoken by the maddening pecking of the irritating bird. This bird seemed to peck for all kinds of reasons -- to establish territory, excavate a nesting hole, and find insects. Anita would often worry, “What if this pecking fool eats his tasty meal and then poops on top of me?” 💩 Anxious, Anita would look up at every pecking sound coming from the old birch tree. When she wasn’t annoyed by the woodpecker, she would be overwhelmed with melancholic thoughts. “I’m just a FUNGUS, and there’s nothing FUN about it. You’re doomed to remain grounded in one place, your destiny depending on the mercy of woodpeckers, insects, birch trees, rain, the wind, and other things the Universe seems to like more than mushrooms.” She believed someone was playing a weird joke on her, making her sentient but unmovable. She was becoming increasingly anxious about the future, knowing that if danger ever came, she would have no choice but to fade into non-existence without having accomplished anything meaningful. Time flew by as she jumped from one thought to another, blaming the Universe for her uneventful existence. It hadn’t rained for three weeks, but one summer night, on July 17, the rain finally came, and it came in abundance. It would rain uninterruptedly for seven whole days. 🌧️ There were times when only a few drops would fall on her cap and nights when she would be completely immersed underwater. On one occasion, a slimy snail climbed on her cap, trying to avoid the incoming water. Anita didn’t worry that she could drown; she could actually hold her breath for several hours. What she worried about was rotting away. “Finally, my greatest fear will come to be: dying slowly in solitude by rotting.” She tried to deal with her overwhelming anxiety by shifting her thoughts to some other things. She started thinking about rain and how all the hydrogen and oxygen atoms bound in each water molecule have been here for eons. “It’s the same water molecules changing from water to vapor to water again. The only way we can get new hydrogen or oxygen atoms is if a meteor containing water crashes on Earth.” 💧 “Does that mean that some of this water passed through the kidneys of humans? Was this water once part of the Aegean sea? Have some of these drops fallen on a mushroom that’s as sad as me?” Wondering about random things tired her. She rarely slept, but that night, she drifted slowly to sleep. When she woke up, she was 2 cm taller and had a friend: a new mushroom rose from the ground right next to her. “Just another fungus that does nothing,” Anita complained about her new friend she considered to be very ugly-looking. “He’s not even a day old, and he already looks like a badly aged mushroom.” “That’s not a nice way to make friends,” the new fungus said with a sharp-witted voice that only someone who has lived through thousands of years and witnessed the rise and fall of species would have. Anita had been waiting for someone to speak to for weeks, and she’s imagined the conversation multiple times in her head, but now she was lost for words. 😨 The wind came and went, seventeen butterflies flew by, and the crescent moon appeared and disappeared from the sky by the time Anita uttered her first words. “Do you have a name?” she asked. “You can call me Myo.” “Do you know what’s wrong with me”? she asked Myo. “The thing that made you sentient made me sentient as well. We call it the mycelial network. We don’t know its origins, but we know it’s been here for a billion years. We’re all part of it. You’re not the only one who’s sentient. We all are. Mimmy and Emmy. Lea and Dea. Everyone. You’re just the one who’s trying to detach herself from the mycelium.” “The mycelial network?” “The mycelium we’re part of is 2,200 years old and has given life to hundreds of thousands of mushrooms over the ages. The mycelium senses everything that’s happening above ground; leaves falling, insects crawling, the wind blowing. Nothing passes unnoticed. Recently, it sensed you. Your anxiety, to be precise. Your anxiety is untangling you from the network, and it’s making your symptoms worse. And so it sent me to act as your mentor mushroom and tell you our story .” 📚 “What do you mean our story?” “We, fungi, came to Earth some 1.3 billion years ago. We were here even before plants. There was a period of a few million years when giant fungi existed. Can you imagine that? Huge fungi a few meters tall; we were the tallest thing that existed for a time. It was we who made life on Earth possible. All the life you see around you in this forest exists because of us. We prepared everything so that other life can exist. Today, we keep a lower profile, but our goal is still the same: maintain life on Earth. That is your purpose, too. Your purpose is not to exist for yourself. It’s to exist for others. You will grow and die, and new life will grow out of you. And so on for billions of years until the Sun consumes the planet.” 🌎 “But I want a different purpose. There must be something more than that,” Anita rebelled. “What higher purpose is there than existing in perfect harmony and balance with other organisms in order to support all kinds of life?” “My wish is to leave this forest and see what else is out there.” “I knew a mushroom just like you once. We called him Bebel the Rebel. Every five hundred years or so, a mushroom like you and Bebel appears. We believe it’s due to some kind of an error in the mycelial network. You want to detach and exist on your own.” “What happened to Bebel?” asked Anita. “We had to let him go. He was trying to detach from the mycelium by force, risking to poison every fungi and plant in his local area.” “Did he find happiness?” “He didn’t find anything; it found him.” “What do you mean?” “The mycelium is also like a messaging system. We use it to send signals to each other; look at it as an early warning system to protect us from things like pests. That week when Bebel detached from the network, we had a terrible aphid attack. Aphids are these creepy-looking, sap-sucking insects that can infect us with viruses that are deadly to us. A few of us died in the attack but managed to send a signal. Unfortunately, no one was able to warn Bebel as he was no longer attached to the network. He died three days after becoming an independent mushroom.” 🐛 Myo’s words slowly turned into an echo. Anita was now having an internal conversation with herself. “Should I trust this weird mushroom? Could he be telling the truth, or was the story about Bebel only that, a story?” But the more Myo talked, the more she grew to believe his words. It was a too-detailed story not to be true. Anita was about to ask Myo to tell her more stories about fungi when she heard a voice she had never heard before. A few seconds later, she would also see something she had never seen before. Humans. And not just any humans: tiny humans. 🧒🏻🧒🏽🧒🏾 The approaching humans seemed to be a group of ear-splitting children accompanied by an oddly-tall grownup who was their teacher. They were on a field trip, looking for curious things that grow in the forest. One of the children shouted, “Miss Day, we found one. Oh, it’s so beautiful.” Before she could activate her defense mechanism, a group of a dozen five-year-olds surrounded Anita and stared at her with curious eyes. No one had ever looked at Anita the way these five-year-olds did. At first, she felt slightly uncomfortable, but soon, that discomfort transformed into enjoyment. She was heartened by their zest for knowledge and adorable nosiness. Truth be told, she felt flattered they were taking such a keen interest in her. 👀 “Can I touch it, Miss Day?” one of the students asked. “Go ahead, Penny, but be gentle.” Anita felt a chubby and squishy finger touching her red cap. It touched her a few times before it retreated. “What you’re looking at here is an Amanita mushroom, which is part of the fungi kingdom. Do you want to hear a fun fact? The mushroom you see here is just the fruiting body of the fungus. The rest of it is buried underground, and it’s part of a larger organism we call the mycelium.” “Why is it hiding from us?” asked Tommy. “It’s not hiding from anyone. That’s how this mushroom connects with other mushrooms and plants around it. They need the soil to be able to cooperate more effectively.” “Do they go to sleep when they’re tired?” Jojo asked. “That’s such a good question,” Miss Day laughed in excitement. “They don’t experience sleepiness like we do when we’re tired from learning new things at school. They never take a break from keeping this planet alive.” “Does the mushroom know we’re here?” “It knows. It can sense us. The entire mycelium network below us knows we’re here. It’s very sensitive to vibrations.” At that moment, the tiny humans started jumping and thumping on the ground. “Let’s make the mycelium network dizzy.” “And that’s why it hides from people,” Miss Day thought to herself. “Take a look at the Amanita mushroom. Do you know that we wouldn’t have been here today if it wasn’t for mushrooms?” “We would have been at school?” asked Jojo. “No, I mean we wouldn’t have existed at all. Not me, not you, not Tommy, not Penny, not your parents, not your grandparents, not your brother or sister. We wouldn’t even have forests or flowers. Mushrooms made life possible.” 🌱 “Mushrooms are superheroes. They should make movies about them,” Penny said. “They surely don’t get the credit they deserve. But they’ve always been fascinating to me, and I hope you find them too. Now, shall we get going? We have so many things to explore in this forest. Follow me; let us go look for some woodpeckers.” The children left, but Anita would hear them in the distance for a few more hours. She even felt a bit heartsick when they left. “I can tell you’re sad the humans are gone. They tend to have that effect on you. Such a remarkable species”, said Myo. “They seemed fascinated by fungi. I had no idea people thought that of us. But how can I now exist with all this immense knowledge contained in me?” To that, Myo said, “Learn to appreciate the little things and the world you shaped. Start looking at things through a deeper lens, knowing that a small part of this world exists because of you. You’re a creator of life. And such a beautiful life you’ve created. This birch tree that imposes itself above you? It’s here because of you. That annoying woodpecker? He’s pecking on that poor tree because of you. Wouldn’t you rather be a part of something grander than yourself? Don’t detach from the network Anita; your place is among us.” 🥺 It suddenly seemed like ages ago when Anita would dream of being something more than a mushroom. Now, she couldn’t imagine herself being anything else. It seemed like Myo’s storytelling aged her considerably and transferred some billion-year-old wisdom to her. She knew that her inner voice was telling the truth: she was destined to do something great. Only not alone but in connection with others. Together, they will protect the age-old tradition of maintaining life on Earth. Kingdoms will fall, and civilizations will come and go, but she and the other fungi will be working secretly from underground without anyone noticing. They will be the imperceptible weavers of life, silently pulling the strings from behind the scenes. There was a pecking sound coming from the birch tree, and she looked up. It was the annoying woodpecker. The only difference was she didn’t find him annoying anymore. On the contrary, she was fascinated by his untiring persistence to find a tasty meal and survive. She glimpsed at Mimmy and Emmy, and instead of feeling jealous, she was in awe of the beauty of her species. Even the wind felt differently. Only a few days ago, she found the wind to be an inconvenience, disturbing her comfort and de-focusing her from her deep thoughts. Now she felt its power and importance, trying so hard to make Earth habitable. She even heard a voice, as if the wind was speaking to her as it passed. She didn’t capture every word, but to her, it sounded like it was saying: “You and I are very similar, Anita, whoosh. We both bring balance to this world, whoosh. Your power lies underground and mine above. Accept your role. Whoosh. The planet needs you.” 🌬️ The wind and its whispers disappeared unannounced as they arrived. Anita looked at Myo and said, “I’ve existed for three and a half months, but I’ve never had a friend. Would you be interested in becoming my friend?” To that, Myo smiled and said, “Gladly. Now let me tell you the story about how our Universe began.” 🌌 “Our Universe?” “Yes, there are many universes, each different from the other. But that’s a story for another day.” Myo started talking with that wise voice that made Anita a little bit uncomfortable and suspicious when she first met him. She looked up to the cloudy sky, as she often would every night since the day she grew from underground. Suddenly, the clouds cleared, and a bright star appeared. At that moment, she knew: it was going to be a beautiful night.