Chapter 27: Chapter 27: The swamplands are full of frogs. I like frogs. They make delightful noises.

The true beauty of this world is often found in its transitionality.

 

A thing becomes another thing.

 

This new thing becomes yet another new thing.

 

A day turns into a night. This, then, turns into a new day.

 

- Enough of these transitions turn into a week, then a month, and so on.

 

The egg turns into a bird.

 

The bird turns into bones.

 

The bones turn into soil.

 

The soil turns into a plant.

 

This goes all the way and around and around, until eventually, it becomes a bird again.

 

Life is funny, is it not?

 

Burch and I have reached the end of the great-desert. It was by far the largest, longest and most arid place that we have ever needed to cross.

 

And, the transition of our position, from one side of the desert to the other, has revealed something most troublesome for me.

 

- Paradise is not here. It is even further away still.

 

Days later, we wander through surprisingly wet lands, which I find most intriguing. Crystals, like in the caves that we had once passed through, line the landscape, jutting out of dense, dark green foliage.

 

A day after leaving the desert, the soil was dry.

 

Then, a day after that, it became more to what we are accustomed to. I drank a lot that day.

 

Then, on the next day, it became damp.

 

The transition continued, as on the day after that one, the soil became wet.

 

Burch and I have transitioned from a desert to a swamp.

 

Is this not most unusual? How funny life can be. You think you are here, but then you are there. The sky might shine with sunlight now, but in an hour, it might rain.

 

We might be alive now, but in an hour, we might transition unto death.

 

Navigating the swamplands is difficult. There is only sparse solid ground and the waters, pungent and green, do not seem like they are kind and welcoming to anyone who does not belong to them already. Many things with many small teeth lurk beneath the emerald coating, which floats atop the water.

You are reading story Sunflower : [A sunflower based litRPG] at novel35.com

 

My-my, aren’t I a talkative sunflower today?

 

Perhaps I too have transitioned from a thing that is quiet and solitary, to a thing that is most rambunctious and which thrives in cohabitation?

 

This is certainly very unusual for a sunflower.

 

Burch bends down and looks.

 

Ahead of us is a frog.

 

*Ribbit* croaks the frog.

 

Excellent.

 

Burch smiles.

 

The frog does not, as it transitions from the state of a frog, to the state of food.

 

And around and around the circle of life goes.

 

I ribbit, in honor of the frog.

 

As a sunflower does.

 

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Burch plays with her skin, pulling off pieces of it, which had been burnt by the sun’s radiant grace, during our week in the desert.

 

Now that she has found shade and water, her body is starting to peel in a lot of places. It is as if she were a snake, shedding its skin. Perhaps this is an effect of eating a frog. Who am I to say?

 

I still do not really know what exactly my friend, Burch, is. I have had many theories in the past. From her being a mushroom, to a fish, to a worm, to a butterfly and so on, all the way through towards my last guess of her being a monster.

 

- This one is still the leading theory.

 

I realize that this chain of assumptions too, is a transition.

 

Burch winces, pulling off a particularly large flake and tossing it over her shoulder, revealing a burnt, red, sun-kissed arm beneath.

 

There is not much sunlight here in the swamp. At least not beneath the trees of many roots, half of which dip into the brackish water and half of which sit atop the goopy soil.

 

Burch watches my face and sees me looking at a tree.

 

She lifts her hand.

 

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