Two more days had passed since Hasa had announced his “discovery” of the existence of consciousness among the pannula. Two more days of traipsing through constant rain, avoiding potential pitfalls and predators, while striving to extend their dwindling supplies by foraging in the forest. Two more days of having to listen to the human extol the virtues of a still hypothetical enormous underground organism that might or might not possess, at best, a rudimentary form of sentience.
The rain beat down on the outside of the hollow log in which they had taken shelter. It was a fallen sokulaa, one of the forest giants. But even a sokulaa’s specialized roots eventually gave way to rot and the effects of having its lower trunk submerged in water for most of the year. When this one had finally toppled, it had landed atop a dense network of decomposing brethren. That was what had kept its hollowed-out interior above water and provided them with one of the drier havens they had found since leaving their skimmers.
Still, it had proven difficult to go to sleep inside the cylindrical chamber because of the lights. Thousands of them, each one an individual phosphorescent fungus of the kind known to Jemunu-jah as ovatu. Flashing their light in sequence, they formed multiple lines of rainbow luminance all along the interior of the fallen sokulaa. The spectacular streams of color strobed like a giant internal pointer to the far end of the trunk, down where the roots began. There dwelled a single tavawau: a legless, eyeless, antennae-laced carnivore that relied on the ovatu to attract food. Masurathoo was nervous about going to sleep in the same hollow tree as a resident carnivore, but Jemunu-jah had assured him that the tavawau was no threat to them. Even if it could detect their presence, its lumpy body was permanently fixed in place. It was less mobile than a sponge.