The Slow Bloom Beneath the Spiral: On the Mycochort
Some creatures walk in circles. Mycochorts walk in spirals. Each loop, a little deeper.
I saw my first one by accident—though I’m starting to suspect that’s how they prefer it.
It was early morning in the Tremblevein Mire. The fog clung low to the moss like gossip, and I had just sat to eat what I assumed was a safely inedible root when I noticed a small motion by my boot. It looked like the top of a wet hat sliding through the soil. No sound. No urgency. Just motion… and mushrooms.
At first, I thought it was dragging detritus along its back.
But no—those mushrooms were growing from it. Feeding off it. Singing, possibly.
One stalk curled slightly toward me as I leaned in, and I swear it looked annoyed.
This was the Mycochort.
Some call them mudwinks, dreamguts, or chortlings. Others don’t name them at all, believing names disturb the spiral. Either way, I followed it for nearly an hour. It didn’t mind. It didn’t care. It simply slid—gracefully, purposefully, quietly—and by the time it vanished beneath a curtain of veilfern, I realized I hadn’t once looked away.
I don’t think Mycochorts want to be understood.
But they do want to be witnessed.
Overview
The Mycochort is a solitary fungal mollusk, roughly the size of a sleeping cat, found in Loria’s marshes, lowlands, and dream-thick glades. It glides in near silence, bioluminescent slime evaporating behind it, and carries a miniature ecosystem on its back—spores, mosses, and mushrooms that shift with mood, weather, or memory.
It is not a creature of power. It is a creature of memory.
And its presence carries weight.
Dream Proximity
The Radius of Remembering
If you sleep within a few hundred meters of a Mycochort, you may experience what swampfolk call Sporesleep—a quiet invasion of your dreams by something ancient and kind-eyed.
- You may dream as the Mycochort, sliding through the mud centuries ago.
- You may see your own memories reshaped through a fungal lens.
- You may receive nothing but a sense of being watched, gently, like a stone remembers the river.
“I was a candle in the rain. It watched me melt. I woke up sobbing and hungry for moss.”
— Griswold Cain
These experiences are not forced. They are offered. And they do not return.
Behavior & Ecology
- Solitary, slow, and typically nocturnal. Appears during mist, moonlight, or fog.
- Avoids its own old trails—as if repelled by echoes of its past selves.
- Moves with a strange, gentle grace—like something remembering how to be alive.
- When threatened, it vanishes into mud instantly, leaving behind a tuft of fresh mushrooms in perfect spiral.
- Not tameable. Not aggressive. Not forgettable.
The Living Garden
Its back is not decoration.
It is an intentional body-garden of living fungi, moss, dirt, and sometimes stranger things.
- Glowing mushrooms respond to stimuli like antennae.
- Tiny violet flowers sometimes bloom only while it sleeps.
- Some grow opal dust, bone fragments, or fossil-seeds—believed to be calcified dreams.
- Rare individuals, known as Throvests, grow luminous crystals. If these are shattered or stolen, their next reincarnation will wander, not with pain… but with the sense that something once mattered.
They are not above longing.
They’ve simply had time to practice letting go.
Rebirth & Memory
Mycochorts do not breed.
They reincarnate.
When one dies—whether by violence or by stillness—it collapses into a Sporewake, blooming into a mound of glowing fungus. From this soil, a new Mycochort will rise, bearing the same memories, but interpreted differently.
- Some seem curious. Others hollow.
- Some grow old symbols in their fungal blooms—glyphs no longer known.
- A few display trauma through fungal warps: twisted stems, rotten patches, eyes that never open.
Each one is both young and ancient, born again from its own ending.
The Spiral of Age
Though they have no bones, a Mycochort’s underside contains layered fungal rings, like trees or stone strata.
The more rings, the more lives.
The more lives, the deeper the spiral.
Some whisper of one called The Everturn—a Mycochort whose rebirths have never paused. Its back, they say, now forms a spiral shell made of moss-covered boneglass.
“Some creatures evolve. Mycochorts recur.”
Mud-Wisdom
Swampfolk Sayings About the Mycochort
- “If you forget where you buried it, that’s where it wants to be.”
- “Don’t chase a Mycochort. What it knows ain’t yours to know.”
- “Three mushrooms by your tent? Sleep somewhere else.”
- “If you see it twice, it’s remembering you.”
Story Seeds
- A Mycochort follows your party for days. Each night, a different dream.
- A graveyard is being slowly overrun by Mycochorts—but no bodies are missing.
- A creature made of moss and mirrors claims to be a false memory left behind by a Mycochort.
- A Throvest’s crystals were stolen by a noble. Now the noble is dreaming… but none of the dreams are his.
Final Notes
They don’t need your help.
They don’t want your offerings.
But they do want you to stop and remember what stillness feels like.
And if one stops beside you…
Don’t speak. Just breathe. It’s probably listening.
Spirits are high.
—G.C.