I stayed. That choice, more than the strange red mass itself, changed the entire morning.
Moving closer felt like walking into a horror scene,
yet each step pushed back the shadows my imagination had thrown onto the unknown.
When the search results finally named it as a bizarre but harmless fungus,
the terror drained away and was replaced by an almost embarrassed relief.
What moments earlier seemed like a threat turned into a curious reminder that nature doesn’t owe us familiarity.
Standing there, hose still in hand, I understood how quickly the mind crafts monsters out of mysteries.
Fear had filled the gaps where knowledge was missing.
By the time I finished watering, that grotesque little fungus had become a quiet teacher:
sometimes the scariest shapes in our lives are simply questions we haven’t dared to examine up close.
