Creatures Caves

You need to read this in a really awful, nasal, self-important voice for it to work. Add in a verbal tic or two, if it helps you.

My brothers,
I believe that I have been 'tricked'.

Far be it from me to accuse one of sabotage within our commune, but a colleague of mine -- long face, round nose-bridge, you all know who I mean -- has been vocal and crude in his criticism of my valuable work in xenobotany. In our predicament, I fully understand that the tending and teaching of higher creatures is very important. However, it is my research that sets the stage for these brave creatures to live. If it weren't for my discovery of the torch lotus-- and this is just one example of many-- how much wasted bioenergy would our ships stream to the lighting of their interiors? How much?

I've suspected an outside agent for some time. Perhaps that notion became confidant to me, and turned into a drive to complete my work out of spite; a silly notion, but I suppose it was effective enough to appear in writing. It is only now that I have truly begun to entertain it. Enter the candyfruit.

Initially, I thought I had found a sweet, novel new strain of tuba fruit, or a chilling victory for tea. In light of my discovery, I relaxed in the belief I had done something good. Then they started growing out of the walls.

A costly and unpleasant naval surgery later, I learned much more about the properties of candyfruit.

The candyfruit can grow without light. This is a remarkable divergence from the ancestry I had assumed. Aphotosynthetic growth among our known species is usually reserved for fungi, and rare other life that frequently blurs the line between plant and animal.

It is a soil-setting plant that can fortify the environment for other, less durable plants to colonize. I was forced to excise a mass of tendrilous vines from inside the living wall of my laboratory, lest they take over completely. Like the candyfruit, these tendrils -- a native of Albia, I later found -- thrive in complete darkness. They are a remarkably tough fiber to begin with, and within the wall, had formed a lattice I found nigh indestructible. I loaned one of my colleague's Ettins to assist the removal effort. His disinterest in my plight was characteristic.

All these would seem valuable characteristics in our fleet's aging, worse-off ships. Certainly an edible building material with a natural tendency to patch up holes can't be all bad, even if it tends to grow wherever it likes -- for Shee's sake, I found them growing off the mineral buildup on the metal hatches in my salt-water aquarium. But no, there is a factor laughing in the face of all this creative engineering. Just look at the thing!

Its appearance is hardly illogical. Like the tuba, it seeds when eaten. But it's a joke! Someone threw a tuba, a clown fish, and a slime mold in the genetic blender and planted it for me to discover, in mockery of my achievements. I'm not sure what it's supposed to say -- is it being implied that it is pointless to discover new plants when they can be just as easily made? Is it simply a ploy to frustrate my work? Who can truly delve into the minds of my 'friends'? He probably did it for a bet. I heard him laughing after I borrowed the Ettin.

Bastard.