unusual shapes and forms to these unique trees. Every time a tree grows up and bends back over itself, a beautiful yellow flower sprouts out and waves its beautiful sight and scent, attracting any insects that may come along to be stuck on its gooey petals and digested by the tree.
The Decadic Marshland runs about fifty-five miles, completing the base of the Mirrimya Mountain. The east-flowing winds drive the acidic clouds up the Mirrimya Mountain, but it is too high for the clouds to pass over, and they drop their acid, forming long, sharp ridges and gullies all along the west side of Mirrimya Mountain, spilling into the Decadic Marshland. Only very unique animals and time-adapted species can survive in the Decadic Marshland. However, pure moisture does cross over the mountain and at times drenches the eastern side of Mirrimya Mountain with pure, clean, fresh water, nourishing and bathing the beautiful green Pinegrow Forest, where somewhere Xanorax makes his home.
The Pinegrow Forest is a very neat and beautiful forest where only the Pyramid Pine trees grow. They are all spaced four feet from one another, and their branches widest at the bottom neatly grow in rings around the trees, getting narrower and narrower as the tree grows up, giving them this neat pyramid shape. The pines are thick and prickly, deep green in color. All the trees are neatly trimmed up to about four feet, like a professional landscaper painstakingly trims all the trees, but this is done by the unique Pinegrow deer that have adapted to feed exclusively on the pines. The forest floor is a soft bed of decaying pine needles, perfect for borrowing animals and for the pine deer to make their beds. The branches of the trees where the pine needles have been eaten off by the deer die and fall off the trees, making the forest very nice to walk through, except for the only four feet height where the branches of the trees grow out, meeting with branches of other trees, making travel difficult if you stand over four feet tall. The ground is full of browns and reds, merging with the deep brown color of the tree trunks then becoming the deep green color of the pines, which extend upward some sixty feet. Looking at the forest from the air looks like a land of sharp-tipped spikes. All the trees grow to a pointed tip, getting wider all the way down the tree. There is no human life here, no elves, no orcs, only the animals that make Pinegrow their home. Xanorax lives here but is rarely seen and somehow sees all.
Xanorax is walking down a stairwell. The wall is rock, and stairs protrude out from the wall. A doorway leads to the top of the stairs, and the stairs lead down the wall about twenty feet to the rock floor. There is a whisper in the air. “Xanorax.” Xanorax gets to the floor and walks to a rock structure in the middle of this circular room. The room is all rock, with nothing in it except a rock cylinder in the middle of the room, which he walks up to. It’s about four feet high, and he puts his hands on the rim of it and looks in. The rock cylinder is filled with a black liquid like oil, and he sees his reflection in the still-motionless black liquid, and again a whisper, “Xanorax.”
Around the large bowl of liquid are many smaller bowls that are a natural part of the structure. These bowls contain different colored powders. Xanorax pinches some white powder and sprinkles it over the black liquid. The powder falls but hangs in midair above the liquid, forming a white cloud. It hovers for a few moments then falls to the liquid. The liquid ripples and turns to crystal-clear water, and an image appears. A bright star is shown falling from space in a slow, organized way. It falls slow and straight, bright diamond white. It falls into Bore Bog. The water ripples, and the crystal-clear water turns to the black thick liquid it previously was. The liquid starts to rise out of the cylinder, and Xanorax takes a few steps back as the liquid grows up and takes the
Michael Pollan
Sheila Radley
Roz Lee
Crystal G. Smith
Valerio Massimo Manfredi
Laura Kirwan
Brian McGilloway
Rae Earl
Sandra Owens
Kathryn Haig