During the day, the seeds scattered in bursts of breath, little grappling hooks skipping on wind, but in the evening they disappeared to root below, digging subterranean out and in.  They were Little Worm Tail and Twists-a-Lot, Tortoise Bean and Breaks the Case—spinning stools all night long in gambols of glassy chatter.

            “Twigging toward the water table, those two,” The Tender said as he swiped a grey rag along the deck.  Little Worm Tail twisted a curlicue neck to see Tortoise Bean and Breaks the Case playing by the pool.  The two were perched on the edge of the green felt groping.

            “Sss.  Sssh,” Little Worm Tail said, sipping and sapped.

            “Sounds about right.”  The Tender watched with a watery eye as Breaks the Case cracked a little fracture.  The two were banging up against one another—Tortoise Bean bellying against Breaks the Case while a tiny tendril eked through an outer sheath that reached.

            “I was seedy once,” The Tender said. “But now I’m shoot and shaded.  A lot of time has passed.  Maybe a day. Possibly ten.  I don’t know why, but I know when.”

            Little Worm Tail wrapped some threads around the ledge, eyeing flickers of moonlight that leaned through the soiled windows.  Little Worm Tail was excited at the sight of shafts squirming around in a screw. 

The whole place was damp with dew.  It was grubby and stank of depth.  It was a tunnel, a hole where dirt muddied those who loved muck.  It was where the seedy went, so it burgeoned with contained purpose waiting to burst.  They called it The Chalaza.

            The Chalaza sits at the center beneath the daisy chain where electric voices singe.  It’s been there forever—at the radicle’s edge and corner of root.  All who enter are fashioned in coats striped with raphe and hilem.  Some are discoid or globose, others ovoid or digiform.  All are welcome in The Chalaza and The Tender takes them slow.

            Twists-a-Lot was new.  Triploid and rich in oils, Twists-a-Lot grazed against wood with a fine-grained band and plopped in a plot near Tortoise Bean and Breaks the Case, now in a helix of fine twines curling, the green beneath felt and pilled.  Twists-a-Lot didn’t yet know how to unstitch a husk, but there was a weather that suggested Twists-a-Lot would be just fine and eventually find some stake to claim or crawl upon like everyone else who moved through this grime.

            Twists-a-Lot swiveled toward a withered hull who lay wrinkled in a heap.  The Tender watched as Twists-a-Lot leaned against the furrowed crag.

            “Be careful!  That burdock’s got a bite.  It’ll hook if you creep by. They’re wooly and belie burrs.  They’re famous even, so watch the wound around them:  ‘black from dust but still alive. . .it asserts life to the end alone in the midst of the whole field’.  That old fugue is so ornery it spurred its way into poetry. Ignore the dormant fool.”

            Twists-a-Lot coiled away from the bumptious burdock and slid onto a stool next to a Silicle branching.  It had been there a while, forked towards the ceiling where little grubs nibbled the roof.  The Silicle was lingering near the gauzy skull of a beetle that had left one body behind for another.  Twists-a-Lot watched as the Silicle moved on to caress a lacebark curtain lit up with wireworms.

            “So,” Twists-a-Lot said.  “Sew?  Sough?” Twists-a-Lot queried, since those were some of the only sounds the seedy can susurrate without working mouthparts.

            “Skin beetle baby.  It’s the speckled setae that shows.  A bow bug, lover of the violin, it snacks on dust and hair, cleans corpses, solves human homicides sometimes,” the Silicle said, since there were many ways to usher sound through more fully formed filaments. 

            “Another case that does not involve mystery,” The Tender looked at the oft wriggling ceiling composting.  “We’re lucky to avoid the instars—they can keep changing form for all I care.  The Chalaza is a spores bar, and when we finally make our way, we won’t forget our roots because they will remain.  Some of us are in the heart—like those two over there.  They can’t leave one another—a loam!”  The Tender stretched a spindle shoot at Tortoise Bean and Breaks the Case while they vellicated.

            “Sow?”  Twists-a-Lot asked.

            “Sow so sow,” The Tender responded, in a way Twists-a-Lot could understand.  “In other words,” The Tender continued, “our ovules are in a cupule which protect developing seeds.  Nectar anyone?  This round is on me!” 

            The Tender touted the blue globe drops, and all the seedy shimmered for a sip. Even the old burdock loosened its burry grip to move closer in.  Together they congregated, swaying in the glistening orbs, lump and bulge in a breakout game gone green with nutritive tissue, sunk deep in the frenzied rapture of fluid, gymnosperm drunks exposing palisades of promise to mother plants later covered in cork as a suberose.  The endosperms were soaked in rapture, thick cell walls in dates or mottled like palms.  Some had spent such time alone.

            Little Worm Tail was sloshed, a little strand clasping the earth below and seeking as new threads formed a shag on top.  “Shhhut ssssome shhhove sssssome shhhhhine,” Little Worm Tail said as more mouthparts began to motion.

            “Soon,” The Tender said.  “In the dispersal you’ll arrive where you belong.  It’s the last call.  A wing might aid your flight.”

            Little Worm Tail crunched a samara and caught a glimpse of its future as a maple.

            “Or maybe a lovely liana like Tortoise Bean will drift down the river towards a beach.  They are buoyant and float down streams,” The Tender added as it dripped more dew onto the blooming congregation.

            Tortoise Bean stopped bumping against Breaks the Case to ponder its possible liquescence, lush with new knowledge made known in a lumen grown flush as it spread.

            “Aren’t you going to tell them?” the Silicle asked, sitting stationary in the stool for the rest of its stages.  “Don’t you want them to know why we’re always here, Tender shoot—slinger of the sap?  Let them know why The Chalaza loves the seedy?”

            The Tender polished a syrup drip against its chest.  “We are of the myrmecochory, carried along the backs of ants.  We are bloodroot and acacia, The Chalaza is rooted in their nests.  The Silicle and I, we are mutual, life partners among the ants.”  The Tender raised a tendril while others lifted a sozzled glance.

            “Here here, the legless!” the Silicle shouted.

            “Sss Sssmashed,” Little Worm Tail slurred.

            “Whose seed was in itself, upon the earth, and it was so,” Twists-a-Lot recited from a sampler on the wormy wall.

            “Cheers to the seedy—seedy one and all!” The Tender said, drizzling dew upon the group as they grew up and downed.

Rebbecca Brown is author of the novel They Become Her (What Books Press) and the lyrical prose collection Mouth Trap (Arc Pair Press). Her work has appeared in The Hunger, American Literary Review, Confrontation, Eclipse, Masque and Spectacle and Miracle Monocle (among others). She currently lives in California and teaches in the College of Creative Studies at UCSB.