The little skull creature has been following me for a week now. I say that, it sounds like stalking — well. It might be stalking. Though I think stalking needs… Secrecy?

The plant does nothing. They usually do nothing when I tell them things. I breathe on it, and its little seedling body shakes derisively.

It’s not as bad as it sounds. She mostly just follows behind and chatters away. There’s enough spaces where she lets birds speak instead that I could forget she’s there when I need to.

Wind; leaves shudder.

Well, no. Even when she’s silent there’s the watching. It’s the kind you feel. A stare that wants.

As I look, the seedling goes still, straight.

Maybe I should get rid of her. I’ve seen her when she thought she’d wandered far enough that no one would interfere. The way she lured in birds with seeds she’d gathered one by one off the forest floor. Something said to them, like tar. Bubbling sounds as she grabbed a cardinal, a dove, a sparrow. They went to an arm that was starting to go sour, plumage plugging holes in skin.

The stem is so still it quivers.

But I don’t think they died. She found me after that, asking again if I could just tell her to make something. As she got close, I felt birdsong. Like they were confused, trapped in this new cage. Like they had forgotten that their throats were gone.

A spider crawls up the stem to one of the tender leaves. Pale green bends beneath all those legs as stillness is knocked away.

Her want when she looks at me isn’t like when she looks at flesh to take. She is a spider, not a caterpillar. Even with all her eyes, her want looks through me. Something about helping plants to grow sharpens that want. She sees the plants unfurling and blooming, the life flowing through them.

The spider squats on the seedling to rest a moment, and the seedling bends lower to the ground.

The lights in her head wriggle when she tells me how great it is to have so many arms you forget a few pairs here and there; they flicker when she asks if I want more. They recede into dimness when she asks for gardening lessons.

The spider, sighing, leaves the seedling to find a proper tree for a proper web. The seedling, with its two sparse leaves, gathers itself.
She asked me to go deeper into the forest with her. She said spring had finally arrived, that something good was coming. Something good is not coming. Something on the wind is sour, like a pond choked by algae. I think I’ll ask her to leave.

I extend a finger to the seedling, and it sips away at life.

If she leaves for the deep, I think I’ll follow.