Chapter 5 – Sir D.Forest

That visit to the Round Bale had allowed all the creatures, and the plant messengers, to gather.  Since plants can’t move easily, the roots of the trees, and companion butterflies relayed the information to the garden, forest and field.  Dragonflies took the messages to the wetlands, as they were the most comfortable there.  Underground, the fungus and the

bacteria spread the knowledge through their roots.          One problem with having so many creatures in one space is that they don’t all speak the same language.  Snails have a S L O W way of speaking, with s’s sliding between words. Bees talked so fast only other bees could understand them, but the Magic of the Bale had a solution for that problem. While everyone stood around the bale, everyone could understand everyone else. No translators were needed because the magic of the bale made it possible to find a common way of communicating.

  For some, images were sent between brains.  Others used their “danger sense,” to understand how another species felt.  “Danger sense,” was very helpful when someone was hunting them, but it could also send the feeling of peace. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it worked for the most part. But once the group disbanded, the magic did not travel with them. Unless, someone had the forethought to grab a piece of hay to bring with them.  For Sir D.Forest, bringing a sprig of hay was not so easy, but he asked for help from the ants, and together a brigade of ants carried the hay to the new meeting place.      “W-e-l-l,” crawled out of the snail’s mouth.  A radula, the snail’s tongue, made it hard to speak with words, so it always took awhile to talk with other species. “Isssss anyone having any prob lems? “ he asked the group. An earthworm popped up and waved his head to get Sir D.Forest’s attention.    Now worms don’t have a regular mouth, so they relied on sending pictures to the snail, and they weren’t always very clear.  Worm eyes are nearly non-existent, so an image was hard to form. But the worm was able to get across the image of a baby earthworm wiggling through the soil and bumping into something.  It was flexible, not hard, but not really edible. When the wormling tried to digest it, it hurt going down  his gullet.        “S-s-s-o, one of your wormlings-s is s-s-sick?”  said Sir D. Forest. The worm showed another picture, one of a dead wormling. The worm’s body had a bump in the middle, and the wormling’s face was a bit wretched. (He thought, because it was hard to tell when the face started and the body ended, in an earthworm.”)     “Did your wormling die?  Was-s-s it the thing he tried to eat?”  The worm nodded his body, again, not able to just nod his head. He then put a picture of a whole bunch of dead wormlings, all with bulging bodies.  “Others-s-s-s died too?  Do you know what it was that killed them all?” For a worm to shrug its shoulders is nearly impossible, so the worm just bulged at the area below its head. He then turned his body into a strange image.  It was curved around like a circle, but open at one side. The worm’s body grew suddenly straight, and stayed rigid until the end of the worm’s body.  It looked like a ?,  but without a dot at the bottom.   Sir D.Forest paused a bit, realizing how sad it was to lose an entire family of wormlings. Snails weren’t great parents, but they knew that each generation of creature or plant was important to the species’ survival.  “Can you s-s-s-how me where they s-s-s-aw the substance?”   Again, the worm nodded his whole body and agreed to show Sir D. Forest when the meeting was over.  Other topics that came up in the meeting was the loss of topsoil, especially on a farm that is built on ledge.  There are some things that can’t be fixed, but Sir D.Forest did say he’d talk to Queen Agra and see if the farmer could beef up her composting program.  That made the soil dwellers very happy.  The meeting had started as the sun was rising, by the time they got to the source of the hard stuff, it was nearly dusk.  The snail and the worm came up to a shattered plastic cup that had been thrown out of a car window.  The worm tried to show a series of images. The best that Sir D. Forest could do was translate as he saw it.  “You kids tried to climb into the plastic cup, and their bellies started bleeding?  All of that hard stuff cuts off the oxygen to the soil below it. As the cup breaks down, tinier and tinier bit worked their way into the dirt.”

    “So, you’re worried that your wormlings-s-s will die from this s-s-s subs-s-stance?  Is that what you want me to address?”  The worm nodded, and dove into the soil, and Sir D.Forest slimed his way back to the woods.   Early the next morning before the sun was above the horizon, Sir D.Forest called for Queen Agra.  She had asked that each knight report any concerns that they felt they couldn’t handle on their own, and this substance was definitely beyond the scope of a snail.   “What is it, Sir D.Forest?  You look very troubled,” said the Queen.  “The worms-s-s told me about s-s-something that I had not seen before.  S-sssince I live on logsss and under rocksss, I have not come across it. It is a hard s-s-s-substance that doesn’t rot. It seems to just break up smaller and smaller, and each one is sharper than the one before. The wormlingssss are ssstarving because they are picking it up with their dirt meal, and they can’t digest it.  I’ve never seen it, but I live back in the woods. The sample I saw was by the edge of the road.”     “Oh, that is a problem.  It’s called plastic, and it is everywhere.  I’ve tried talking to the farmer about it before, but all she can do is try to avoid it on the farm.  She can’t change everyone else’s behavior.   I will talk to her again, but meanwhile, tell the worms, and those animals that eat soil, to stay away from the roadside, or any cars.  Cars seem to spit plastic out like other animals spew manure.”    With that, he gave a quick wrap up of the rest of the Grousing Day problems, and slimed his way back to his log. The fairy disappeared into the forest, before any human could see her. She would have to think about how to handle this plastic problem for her forest.