“We awoke on our backs. Gazing in silent awe across a vista of electric ziggurats as the din of a new reality, thick and buzzing, swept across us.”

“This world was a sea of towers, but dry, our wet clothes evaporating into a hiss on the electric night air. Strange smells on the wind.”

“We wandered the streets of this neon jungle, our stomachs grambling for dinners uneaten, following the scent of a distant meal as it bellowed on the urban breeze.”

“This reality appeared closed, reverberant after hours, alive in neon language but missing the shopkeepers, the bustling city life. Who manned this linguistic ship? Our stomachs lead us on, captained by the scent making love with our nose.”

“We began seeing glimpses of beings in this new reality, difficult to make out what they were at first, our hunger pulling us ever further.”

“We were getting closer to that deliciiiiiiiiicious aroma…… a universe of flavors gliding a parade into our nostrils.”

“We began charting the city on a spare napkin (napkin? maybe this object had an entirely different use in this reality) mapping our path with the glizzen towers.”

“The food found us, winking it’s golden eye as we pulled in to the aromatic seduction.”

“s if all at once, the beings whose city belonged to arrived, gliding out into the night a flifting humber of hair that swung in waves as they walked. And they, like us, glid in for the food.”

“The food… was. Incredible.
A collapse of bacchian textures and erotic flavors that tucked your tongue in to bed with a kiss and then woke you immediately after with an air horn and a righteous fuck. We were hooked.”

“So… I don’t think you get it. This stuff was goooooood. Like, frog in your pajamas good. We guzzled it baby boy. And they didn’t even ask for payment they just handed it over.”

“We slid through the dense alleys and side streets that folded these magical oasis of the mouth into the veins of the city, documenting the luminous diversity with our tongues and our camera.”

“These guys were zong buffrin, they kept it sly, my guy. Their art, illuminated murals chanting slorn magic. Their food, gah!! Their fashion. Buzingah!”

“As we ate their food we began to understand them, and they explained in a language of gestures and head motions that the food contained a fungus that interwove throughout their city, a mycelial network that transferred meaning between them.”

“The more we ate the more everything spoke to us, the food, the art, the streets themselves. This reality was alive in mycelia, an internet of fungal orchestra buzzing between all things.”

“They were culinary masters, the food was embedded with meaning, a semantic tapestry that wove the mind heart tongue and gut, transforming digestion into a literary experience that communicated in its own olfactory language.”

“They inquired through a delicious dish prepared as the question what the purpose of our camera was and whether we could serve them each a portrait.”

“We went on to explain to them our purpose here, as travelers and explorers, and of our origins in the multiverse. Tasting this they pulled with a wild glee their finest cooking books and brought us down to explore them.”

“Captivated by our interest in their reality and our mysterious origins, the beings of fur, food, and fungus , whisked us to the heart of their city, the museum. A seemingly infinite expanse of exhibits on all things them.”

“On the way to the museum the beings began following us, larger and larger groups began joining in the migration, seemingly aware of the collective journey toward our cultural illumination.”

“This array of buildings housed various themes of their history and their knowledge, each displayed and described with a loving poetic depth that spoke to the complexity of their inner lives and the nuance of their social interdependency.”

“We spent days in the museum, which even had a built in capsule hotel of sorts, remarkably comfortable inclined beds that we cozied into, rejuvenating ourselves in this knowledge temple as we absorbed the intricacies of their culture.”

“We wandered the display halls for days, a seemingly infinite array of dioramas, exhibits, and tableaus.”

“For a while we got lost, endlessly pursuing the literally otherworldly displays and bathing in the description of their alien anatomical complexity. It seemed that their evolutionary ancestry had an entirely different architecture than anything we could have even fathomed.”

“They explained to us that their species was entirely fungus, multiple interdependent colonies of fungus that formed their bone structure and their furry bodies. Their forms could change with the seasons and they took on shapes to resonate with their needs.”

“On our final day in the museum, we explained our multiversal travels and how we had become lost, tumbling into their reality from the drenched world, unclear how to make it home. They rushed us to the edge of the city and pointed to a path heading into the wood.”

“Go to the witches of Urr, they said. ‘They will serve you where you are trying to go.’ ~~~ As we journeyed into the woods we saw them form themselves together into one massive being, a wilding storm of fungal fur peering after us as if to say goodbye.”