Love of Botany
(continued)
"My kind is called Larelle. The Larelle survives by attracting
other beings to it in order to spread its seed and live anew all through
the beautiful forest." He smiled, showing me perfect, ivory teeth.
"The Larelle, we sense the inside think of the being, any being that
comes by us, and we can mold our appendage to look as the inside desire
of the being. That being then will come close to love us and upon the
being will our seed stick. When the being walks its way after, it will
drop the seed upon the wonderful soil that loves life. A new Larelle will
be born, and life rejoices again and again!"
My mouth hung open. "But you are intelligent," I said. "You
are like... like me!"
"I am some like you, Valerie."
For the moment, I decided not to pursue this philosophical line. Instead,
some teenagery part of me wanted to know something else. "Um, Phylba,
so you yourself do not feel any emotion towards the being you are formed
to impress? I mean you're just trying to get your seed out there and so
will say anything you need to say to get the job done?" Like any
man wanting to get his rocks off.
His face turned into a mask of sorrow. "Oh no, no, no, no, Valerie.
The Larelle feels what the being needs it to feel. Sometimes this is more
and less. Beings are different. For you it is not as usual. I have not
met before a being like you. Like you that is equal in thinking to me."
"What about the other Larelles?" I asked. "Don't you feel
love for them?"
"Yes, yes!" he said, his voice a happy bellow. "But not
mating love, not that kind. You know how I mean, Valerie. I know that
you know."
I did indeed. Oh, how much I knew on that lonely moon.
One day I had to touch him, could simply no longer resist. A case of
"curiosity killing the cat"? He was startled. I walked right
up to him and ran my palm down the side of his face. It felt almost human.
A bit too smooth and a bit too cool, but on the whole, human.
He jumped back, startled.
"You're frightened of me?" I said. "I thought you loved
me."
"Yes," he said, his eyes wide, "I do love you. But it
is my first touch with you."
There was a pause while we eyed each other. Then he said, "What
are you, Valerie? Why is it true that I never saw such a thing as you
until now?"
"You see the sky up there, Phylba? It's hard to see through the
tree tops, but it's there, the pale blue. You see it?"
"Yes," he said.
"I come from there, from far away from your world."
He considered this. "Up there is where Creator lives."
Ah, religion. I had to tread carefully. "Yes, Phylba. The Creator
lives everywhere. But some of us can travel through the sky. On the other
side of the blue sky it is like night. Like when the stars twinkle here,
only darker still. I traveled from far, far away through the night sky
from another world, a little like yours but much larger. Many beings like
me live upon it."
"Any like me?" he asked.
"None like you."
"All like you?" he said.
"The sentient ones are all like me. As far as I know."
He did nothing but ask questions the next few days. But I was curious
myself. Now I wanted to touch and examine him to my heart's content but
how could I go about this? "When I am not in the woods, do you still
look like this?" I asked.
He smiled. "I return to normal form."
"And that is...?"
"As the rest of my appendages. You see yourself." He gestured
towards the other gracefully down curved branches ending in the huge fern-shaped
leaves.
"I don't understand how you can appear so human."
"I would love demonstrate for you how I become as a fal-fal or ringpu,t
but to do such I need to have one near, to sense its desire. I cannot
do it by wish alone."
"So basically, the way you appear is how you sense I would want
a human man to look? You've read my deepest wishes in that regard?"
Phylba smiled radiantly. "I did that, Valerie. I do that. I am what
you want."
"But only when I am here in the forest?"
"I look like this when you are here only."
"You don't remember me when I am not then?" I asked.
He looked truly pained. "Oh, no, Valerie. I am loving you when I
look this way and when I do not. I am loving you all time, all time."
He paused. "Valerie, it is the first time I love like this. You are
deep in my... in my being."
"One more question," I said. "Why do you speak English?"
He smiled adorably. "I speak your language. What is in your mind,
I try to speak."
And he did that, oh yes he did.
Edenal, the month of April
It was a sweltering day even for Edenal, and the only relief was the
shade of the forest. Even there, the heat was almost unbearable. I stripped
to my underwear, basically bathing gear. I was acutely aware as I did
so that Phylba would see me. I reminded myself that he was a plant, but
the feelings that rose in me at the idea of his watching did not follow
any logic.
"Your body is lovely," he said, startling me so badly that
I toppled over, landing in a bush with prickly leaves.
His tone changed to concern. "Come here, Valerie, and I will tend
to your wounds."
As if in a hypnotic trance, I pulled myself up and obeyed him.
From where he got his information on human romance, I did not know. He
would say that he pulled it from my own mind. In which case, I must marvel
at the richness of my imagination and what memory there is, for I have
not been especially promiscuous. So where did he get it then? The poetic
compliments, the come-hither look in his dark, dark eyes? The way he made
me feel: that melting, sinking below my waist as if I was going to swoon,
the heat that flowed over my chest and up the sides of my face. How did
he know how to do that?
It was only a matter of time; I was human after all. A lonely woman who
had not been held by a man since... since when? Two years? No, it was
four. I could hardly believe it. And loved? When was I last loved? No
question there. Not since my long time lover, Vince. It was after his
death that I began to seek off-Earth jobs.
I stood in the forest of Edenal and considered my life. People lived
to 147 or more. I was 47. I saw ninety years stretching ahead of me, possibly
without love, most of it without the touch of a man. I turned and looked
through the leaves and into the "eyes" of Phylba. And without
a word, I went to him and let him do as he wanted.
Edenal, the month of May
Making love with a plant, this plant, was not much different than doing
so with a human. He knew what I liked and expected, had all the necessary
parts and did what any human male would do. The branch to which he was
attached was quite flexible and allowed him to lie down, sit, roll over
or spring into the air. He was sinewy and physically powerful but always
careful not to injure me. Being formed from my subconscious, he fulfilled
my every desire, even ones I had never dared act upon, those too embarrassing
to disclose to a human lover.
"I want you all time there is," he said, beckoning for me to
rejoin him. We lay on a bed woven from ganna vines and softened with vernot
leaves. Somehow, when we were together, nothing bothered us, not the blood
sucking insects, not the slithering creatures, not even the sweet fal-fals.
I asked Phylba why not.
"It is my odor," he explained. "I control chemicals in
my body that I emanate. When I want attract, I emit certain ones, when
I want repel I choose others. You cannot detect them, they are not meant
for you."
And then his hand stretched into a long vine that slithered up and down
and all around me, giving me pleasure in ways I had never imagined, not
even in my subconscious.
