Evening. I've been working as a landscaper for about fifteen years now. Started right out of high school, and I've never wanted to do anything else. There's something about working with plants, with living things. It just feels right to me, if that makes sense. I take pride in understanding what each plant needs, you know? How much water, how much sun, when to prune, when to leave it alone. I'm calling because something happened to me three years back that changed how I think about the work I do. Changed how I think about plants entirely. I've told maybe two people about this, and neither of them believed me. But I know what I experienced. I was there. This was July of 2016, middle of summer. I was working on a property outside Eugene. Big yard, maybe half an acre, lots of mature trees and flower beds. The owners had just bought the place and wanted the whole landscape cleaned up and reorganized. It was a two-week job, and I was on day four.
It was hot that day. I remember because I'd gone through my first water bottle by 10 AM. The kind of dry heat we get in Oregon summers where the air feels thin and everything smells like warm grass. I was working alone, which I prefer. Just me and the plants and the sound of my tools. Around noon I took my lunch break. I'd packed a sandwich and an apple, and I was looking for somewhere shady to sit. The client had a big oak tree in the back corner of the yard, and underneath it I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A perfect circle of mushrooms growing in the grass. Must have been six feet across. Beautiful little cream-colored caps, maybe twenty or thirty of them forming this complete ring. I knew what it was, a fairy ring. You see them sometimes in lawns, usually in the fall. rings in lawns are such a neat fungal phenomenon - Kevin' I'd seen plenty over the years, but never one this perfect. The circle was so precise it looked like someone had planted them on purpose. I figured it was as good a spot as any to eat lunch, so I sat down right in the middle of it. Cross-legged on the grass, inside that ring of mushrooms.
I was maybe three bites into my sandwich when I first heard it. A voice. Except it wasn't really a voice. It was more like words forming directly in my head. Clear as day, but not coming through my ears, if that makes sense. Like when you read something and you hear it in your mind, but this was someone else's thoughts. The words were, 'He's resting now. The tall one who cuts and moves us.' I stopped chewing. Looked around. The yard was completely empty. I was alone in that backyard all afternoon, no one else around. No neighbors visible over the fence, no cars going by. Just me and the plants and this voice in my head. Then another voice, different but similar, 'What does he do when he cuts? Does it hurt?' And the first voice again, 'No. He removes the dead parts so you can grow stronger. He's careful. He knows which parts to take.'
[ Story continues in the full game... ]