The Vine Mother

It was blazing hot outside. It had to be one of the hottest summers in a while, but honestly, I thought that same thing every time summer rolled around... I had been out for hours, exploring the nearby forest, searching for a few accenting berries for tonight's dinner. Unfortunately, I had picked the area close to my cabin clean. With the sun in the sky, I knew my bearings; the river was just south, and from there, I just followed it to the village.

"Ehhh, exploring a little further won't hurt anybody," I said aloud.

Half an hour later, I thought I had found a promising berry bush but was quickly disappointed as the putrid smell immediately told me of its poisonous nature. So, I continued walking farther from home than I have been in years (further than ever if you took out the well-used paths). My stomach growled, and I decided that it was time for lunch.

When I found a small clearing with the sun peeping through, I set my bag on the forest floor and started digging through it. The light brown paper sack crinkled as I pulled out some homemade bread and cheese. I leaned against a nearby tree and started to eat when I felt a gentle stinging on my arm.

"AHh!" I yelped, scrambled up, and nervously looked around, searching for some sort of venom-using predator. Instead, my eyes met a very unusual specimen. Now, I had come across my fair share of strange and exotic foliage, some useful, some deadly. But none of them had caught my eye as much as the one I found at the edge of that small clearing.

I just couldn't take my eyes off it. It was different from anything I'd ever seen before, well, maybe it was close to a sort of upside-down jellyfish. The red tendrils were long and thin, stretching into the air, obviously intending to lure smaller insects toward its center. It almost seemed to glow a crimson from within. I was mesmerized by how it moved, and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I wanted to touch it, to feel its coiling lengths against my hand, to explore its strange beauty.

I stepped closer, and as I did, I noticed that the plant seemed to be responding to my presence, its coils slowly attempted to grasp my fingers as my hand got closer. I touched it for but a moment when the same stinging sensation as earlier broke my trance, and I yanked my hand back in pain. My palm was still pulsing from the sting, but I think I could manage it with a little... alchemical assistance.

No one in the village had ever really been interested in me, so I grew up making do with the local plant life. During this time, I picked up a few tricks. I learned that, when masticated and boiled in mead, salmaci root made for a great "experience enhancer" with the added benefit of being an intense pain reliever.

Now that I was an adult, I still had the habit of coming out to the woods from time to time and enjoying myself amongst nature. And I always carried some distilled salmaci root with me. You never knew when you were gonna need it, right? Looking at the tendrils protruding from the unknown plant, I smiled and blushed as I imagined what they might feel like.

((This is the first snippet of a story I have already written quite a bit of. I will likely upload the rest soon, but I really like the idea of different paths, so here we go!))