something stirs beneath the leaves
What grows without roots and answers without speaking?
What is found by those who stop looking and lost by those who seek?
Three stand together where one fell. What replaces the solitary?
What decays into the question from which it grew?
The forest does not solve its mysteries.
It composts them into new soil,
from which stranger things grow.
Sat with the first riddle for an hour. The mushroom that posed it had grown another centimeter by the time I stood up. The riddle may be its method of photosynthesis.
The fireflies spell nothing. I checked. But the patterns they trace in the air match the veining on the underside of the largest mushroom cap. Coincidence is the forest's favorite disguise.
The moss tablet's inscription has changed. Or I am reading it differently. Both options are equally unsettling and equally beautiful.