Withered

• Jack Stevenson, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2022

The distant calls of the wildlife rang out throughout the rainforest as the radiant sun rose upon the horizon. I stepped outside of my basecamp, clearing the lenses of my glasses as I made my way into the dirt clearing between the campsite and the jungle. Reaching into the deep pockets of my lengthy, ivory lab coat I retrieved my tablet. After initiating multiple commands on the tablet several drones shot out of the top of the basecamp building, making a sharp ascent before slowly descending towards the luxuriant jungle floor. They flew out, examining the condition of the exotic plants. I watched the statuses of the drones from the tablet as they examined the flora in the close vicinity. Though soon after, the drones detected an anomaly in the nearby vegetation. Stuffing my tablet into my lab coat, I rushed towards the location of the abnormality in the undergrowth. Not long after I made it to a dense part of the jungle, the drones had shifted from their surveying positions to circling this specific area where the anomaly had been detected. Several plants within this location were in a state of decay, the plants drooped to the forest floor, with maroon streaks on their leaves and stems. The drooping leaves brushed past a cardinal mist along the jungle floor being emitted from a withered tree root jutting out of the earth. Grabbing my tablet, I trail the path of withered plants going deeper into the jungle moving steadily through the lush environment that enveloped my surroundings, weary of beasts that lurked in the shadows of the undergrowth. The withering of flora starts to encompass increasingly more of the plant life as I advance further into the lush labyrinth until the entirety of the jungle that surrounds me is in decay. A sea of glowing red flame specks drifts upwards from the withering flora. I finally make it to an area leading uphill, the bright red specks here had grown to a cardinal smoke spread throughout the forest floor, stepping back frantically I quickly tapped the bridge of my glasses, they expanded into a large visor, extending into a gas mask. I trudge up the hill, now no longer exposed to the gas emitted from the clusters of withering plants. I quickly made it to the top of the cliff, in the centre of the cliff was a crater. A withered sumauma tree stands tall in the middle of the steep mahogany pit. Clouds of crimson vapour swell at the bottom of the crater at the roots of the decayed tree. Intertwined in the wood of the withering tree was a luminous scarlet orb, made up of a cluster of cardinal fumes. A weightless feeling takes over me, I try to fight, reaching for my gas mask I realise that the crimson gas is seeping into the mask. I made a desperate attempt to cover it, however it was all too late, before I knew it, I had passed out.