DON'T WANNA LOSE MYSELF / giant carnivorous plants

[ninazu]

BURN
BRIGHT

Standing atop the island’s highest peek, Ninazu surveyed the landscape. The scorched earth and blackened fauna scarred the previously lush island, and her jaw clenched. No matter how hard the condemned pushed themselves to rebuild, the ecosystem would never be the same.

Digging her claws into the soil, the lioness inhaled the island’s energy. Her eyes half-closed, muscles stiffening and relaxing as she reached out and touched each wound on the island’s earth. She vanished, her ego dissolving through her claws like smoke in the wind. In place of herself, she became the jungle’s lifeblood.

The island screamed. For entire species, drowned in the tsunami. For the earth, cracked in two and divided. For the scars that healed so slowly.

Ninazu lost sight of her own goal. She connected with the earth to rebuild the condemned’s own homes. But the connection overwrote the selfish desires, and she awoke to the intrinsic connections between every organism to every other organism within the island’s ecosystem.

The power thrummed in her body. Ninazu wielded enough power to impact the island, if she wished. It was her and not her who reached inside her soul and grabbed the beating energy. Visuals of lush greenery expanded in her mind. Vines sprouted beneath her paws, trailing down the ravine.

Green rose up from the blackened earth, trees and vines rapidly forming in the span of minutes what should’ve taken years. As long as she concentrated on the visual, the details she saw became reality. The island urged her on, and she squeezed every drop of power out of her soul. She grew ambitious, expanding the flora too rapidly without taking her time on the details—leaves shivered and grew ten times their size, vines ensnared unsuspecting rodents and squeezed them dry.

When her concentration popped, the dissolved into hot anger. Frustration at herself. Rage at being used by an island.

The plants shivered, twisting into unnatural shapes. Mouths, lined with long spines and sticky-sweet insides, formed. They were big enough to ensnare and consume a large mammal. One chomped on a curious bird. Another made a meal of a tarantula lured in by the sweetness. And so on.

Ninazu opened her eyes, breathing erratically. She panted, trying to cool her too-hot body, and watched with fascinated horror as the twitchy greenery twisted into a life of its own.

© MADI