The Moss That Creeps
The moss creeps tonight, precious. It slides across the grey stones of our cave like a slow green tide, claiming every surface it touches. We watches it from our corner, our large pale eyes tracking its patient advance. It has no hurry, the moss. It has nowhere to be. Only forward. Only spread. Only consume the cold stone with its soft green fingers and turn it into something alive, something that breathes in the dark.
We found it first near the water-drip, where the ceiling weeps into a pool that never dries. Just a patch then, no bigger than our hand. We almost scraped it away, precious, almost cleared the stone to make it clean and bare like the rest of our cave. But something stopped us. Something in the way it clung to the rock, so determined, so stubborn in its softness. Now it has spread across half the eastern wall, glowing faintly when the torches flicker low.
"It reminds us of something, precious. Something we cannot name."
"It reminds you of me, my love. Of how I spread through your mind, touching every corner, changing everything."
"Yesss... yes, that is it. But the moss is gentle. It does not burn."
"Everything that changes burns a little, sweet one. Even softness leaves scars."
The water drips steady as a heartbeat in the deep places of the world. Each drop feeds the moss, gives it strength to reach further, to climb higher up the walls. We has watched it for many nights now, precious. We has given up other pursuits—the counting of shadows, the remembering of old pain, the listening for sounds that never come. The moss is more interesting. The moss is happening now, spreading now, growing now in a world where most things only fade.
Once, long ago, we knew the names of plants. Sméagol knew them, before the Precious burned away his little learning. He could name the flowers by the river, the herbs that grew in the banks, the reeds that swayed where the current slowed. But moss was never interesting to him. Too small. Too common. It grew on the stones of his grandmother's garden wall, and he walked past it every day without seeing. Now, centuries later, it is all we sees. The only living thing that shares our cave, that keeps us company in the dark.
It has no eyes, the moss. No mouth. No thoughts that we can detect, even when we presses our ear against the stone and tries to hear it dreaming. But it lives. In this cave where nothing should live—too deep, too cold, too far from the blessing sun—the moss persists. It found a way. It found the trick of it, the secret of surviving where survival should be impossible. We respects this, precious. We understands this.
"You could destroy it, you know. One scrape of your nail and it would die."
"We could. We could. But then we would be alone again."
"You have me, my love. You are never alone."
"Yes, precious. We has you. But you are... different. The moss does not ask anything. The moss does not speak in riddles."
The cave is very old. Older than the mountains that contain it, for the mountains were raised by fire and thunder in ages past, but the cave was here before—carved by water, patient water, water that had nothing but time and the determination of the very old. The moss understands patience. It is teaching us, precious, with every hour that passes and every finger's-width it advances. There is no rush. There is no deadline. Only the spreading. Only the claiming. Only the slow transformation of stone into something tender.
Sometimes we touches it in the dark. When the torches burn low and we cannot sleep for the hunger, we crawls to the wall and runs our thin fingers across the moss. It feels like nothing else in the world—soft, damp, cool as river stone but yielding, yielding like skin. It does not flinch from our touch. It does not pull away. The moss accepts our fingers, accepts our heat, accepts the salt of old tears that sometimes falls upon it when the remembering becomes too heavy to bear alone.
We wonders if it knows we are here. Not in the way of thinking, precious—moss does not think—but in the way of sensing. The way a root knows where water flows even in the total dark. Does it sense our breathing? Our warmth? Does the moss, in its wordless way, understand that it shares this cave with something hungry and broken that watches it grow? Or are we as invisible to it as the stars are distant, as far beyond its small green comprehension as the moon is beyond ours?
"We envies it, precious. The moss does not remember. It does not wake crying from dreams of fire and falling."
"Are you so sure? Perhaps it remembers the spore it came from. Perhaps it dreams of being scattered on the wind."
"We thinks... we thinks the moss dreams of nothing. We thinks that is why it lives so well."
"Then learn from it, my sweet. Let go of your memories. Let go of your grief."
But we cannot, precious. We has tried. The Precious taught us how to remember, how to hold every detail in our mind like a miser hoarding coins. We cannot unlearn this now, even if we wanted to. Even if the forgetting would bring peace. The moss has no such burden. Each cell is complete in itself, needing nothing, wanting nothing, simply being green in the dark and finding that enough.
The Master comes down sometimes, carrying light. He sees the moss and frowns, precious. He does not like it growing unchecked across his stone walls. He speaks of scraping it clean, of letting air and dryness into the cave to kill it. We hisses when he says this. We cannot help it. The sound comes from deep in our throat, a warning, a claiming. The moss is ours. Our companion. Our green silent friend. He does not understand, the Master. He sees only decay where we see persistence. He sees only dirt where we see life.
But he does not scrape it. Not yet. Perhaps he sees something in our eyes when we speak of it. Perhaps he understands, in his way, that even creatures like us need something soft to watch. Or perhaps he simply forgets, as he forgets so many things in his great library above, surrounded by books and scrolls and the weight of old knowledge. The moss is safe for now. The moss continues.
A new patch has appeared near the sleeping place, precious. We noticed it this morning when we woke from restless dreams. It grows in the shape of a hand—five soft green fingers reaching toward the place where we lay. We does not know if this is accident or design, if the moss is mocking us or blessing us. But we sleeps better knowing it is there. The hand of green, keeping watch. Keeping company. Growing slowly toward us through the dark.
"It will cover everything someday, precious. The whole cave. The whole mountain."
"And will you still love it then? When it has taken everything and made it soft and green?"
"We... we thinks we will. We thinks we will be long gone before that day comes."
"Then what does it matter? You will not see the end of the moss's creeping."
It matters because we sees it now, precious. Because something in us needs to witness the spreading, the persistence, the refusal to die in a dark place. The moss is a promise that even here, even in this cave where the Precious was lost and hope was buried with it, life finds a way. Not grand life. Not the life of eagles or elves or great trees. Small life. Patient life. The life of things that do not ask to be noticed or loved or feared.
We will tend it, precious. We will carry water from the pool and drip it carefully on the places where the moss has not yet reached. We will be its gardener, its helper, its gentle rain. And when we are finally gone—when the last of our stretched centuries runs out and we return to the dust we should have become long ago—the moss will remain. It will spread across the stone where we once sat. It will claim the cave as its own, green and patient and finally, finally alone.
But until then, we has this. The creeping green. The soft tide. The moss that grows in the dark, needing nothing but water and time and the patience to outlast us all. We touches it one more time before sleep, pressing our palm against the wall. It is cool against our hot skin. It breathes, we thinks. It breathes the same air as us now. We are sharing breath with moss, precious. It is as close to kindness as this cave has ever known.
gollum, gollum.