chika.monster

The specimen arrived wrapped in a damp paper bag and a quantity of apology. It is, at rest, a low mound of overlapping foliage roughly the size of a sleeping cat, from which a single madder-coloured ocellus regards the room without alarm. We have catalogued it provisionally as Chika monstrum domestica — the species epithet a concession to the fact that it has, on three occasions, attempted to make tea.

Stem-spine: present but vestigial, traceable as a thin sepia line beneath the leaf-mass. Foliage: melancholy in tone, lanceolate to cordate, arranged without obvious phyllotaxis. Roots: none observed; the specimen prefers to be carried. Defensive structures: allegedly fangs. None located. The "monster" designation appears to have been applied by a neighbour who had not been introduced.

Under the lamp the leaves show a faint grain, like paper that has been read too many times. The specimen does not photosynthesise so much as brood, taking what it needs from overcast mornings and the proximity of unfinished books.

In cultivation the creature keeps to corners. It will tolerate a windowsill if the glass faces north and there is a kettle within earshot. Watered too generously it sulks; left entirely alone it produces, after some weeks, a single new leaf of a markedly lighter green — the botanical equivalent of a sigh.

Diurnal habit: indistinct. The specimen is most active between the fourth cup of the morning and the abandonment of the day's work, at which point it relocates to the warmest stack of unread pages and is not heard from until the following overcast. Preferred companions: other quiet objects. It has been observed leaning, with what we can only describe as fondness, against a dictionary.

Reproduction has not been witnessed and is not anticipated. There appears to be exactly one, and it is content with the arrangement.

Chika (チカ): a soft, near-at-hand name, the kind given to a thing one intends to keep within reach. It carries no menace. The neighbours who supplied it meant it kindly, before they knew about the leaves.

monstrum: from the Latin monēre, to warn, to remind — a thing shown, an omen, a marvel. The word does not, in its origin, mean terror; it means look at this. We retain it in the binomial in this older sense. The specimen is a marvel chiefly in the way it is unbothered.

domestica: of the household. Appended after the second tea incident. The creature belongs, as far as anyone can tell, indoors, near books, on overcast days, to no one and to the room equally.

Day 1. Specimen received. Will not be put down. Carried it through three rooms before it consented to rest on the windowsill. Madder eye open the whole way; never blinked, or has no eyelid; unresolved.

Day 4. First tea. Method unclear — kettle was warm, two cups present, one of them unaccountably full. No hands observed. Leaves smelled faintly of bergamot for the rest of the afternoon.

Day 12. Moved a stack of unread paperbacks within reach. Specimen relocated to it within the hour and has not moved since. Concludes that the "preferred substrate" entry is correct and should be left in.

Day 30. New leaf, lighter green, on the north side. The room is quieter than it was. I have stopped describing this for the file and started describing it for the leaf, which is, I think, the point at which a monograph becomes worth keeping.