Sublime

Fungi are in between animals and plants. Their cell walls are made of chitin—a substance never found in plants—which makes them more like insects.

The weathered surface of the chunk of exposed volcanic stone smoothed, and paled. Where before there was only stone, a horizontal slit opened. An eye. The rock slivered itself into two.

We passed a shelf where a wheel of cheese had exploded into some kind of fungal overgrowth. Tall, mushroom-like fruiting bodies rose up and swayed slightly in the air disturbed by our passage. I sucked in a sharp breath. “Is that . . . there . . .” I pointed. “Is that all right?” Agrippa nodded. “Oh, it’s fantastic. An empire is rising, lifting up

I was thinking about golems. I was thinking that I am like a golem. I feel more like earth now than like an animal. Mud and sticks and rags that look and act something like a live thing. And I thought: But really I’m more like an owl pellet. A boney, furry, coughed-up turd that walks and talks. But then it wasn’t just a joke to myself. It became an