I Am A Carnivorous Plant

So I don’t really have much to report here? I spent four days just doing the same thing. Trapping, eating, growing, photosynthesizing. I never really had to dig again, but I did plenty of dismantling for sure. The dangerous things that came along left just like usual since they couldn’t smell my hoard of corpses past the thick (probably) bitter-almond-smelling poison mist I spew out. All was simple and right in the world. I even caught a coyote once! I was a huge success.

 

That is until it stormed for almost a full day.

 

Was it good that I was getting some water for the first time in almost a week? Yes. That would certainly help in my growth, and to be honest I could feel my roots and foliage beginning to feel a bit dry. To tell the truth, I was a bit worried that I’d have to abandon this nice spot and go back to the death-lake, so this rain was quite a nice surprise. But there was an unfortunate discovery that I made because of this.

 

My gas doesn’t work during the rain!

 

Plus, it seems animals don’t really want to creep around as much when it’s wet, so no one really came by to get trapped in the first place. And since the sun was only visible for a few hours at the end of the day due to all the rain clouds, I didn’t get to photosynthesize much! But I still got hungry? Maybe not as much, but it’s still totally unfair that I couldn’t do anything all day but still had to eat.

 

Anyways I don’t have a lot of meat left.

 

At most I have maybe a snake and a raccoon to sustain me. I should have more with how much I’ve been hunting, but each day my appetite seems to grow larger and larger… I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to keep up with it once I’m an adult. Hopefully by then I’ll be crazy strong so I can hunt bigger things, because otherwise I’m screwed. Even wiping out all the birds and eggs in the forest wouldn’t be enough!

 

Oh right, on the topic of growing up, I have some news!

The results of my four days of hard work are:

 

My top green row of leaves remained unchanged, but the row under that of silver leaves has grown a bit longer and thinner. They’re now so silvery that you’d never think they were once green. And there’s so many more of them compared to the green ones! What’s up with that? Also my pretty petals have continued getting bigger and longer. They’re really starting to cup around me in a cute way, and I’m starting to look more and more like an upside down flower. Would that make my root legs look like weird little stamens? I suppose those can look a bit feet-like, right?

 

Along with my leaves and petals, I can feel that my stem has also gotten a bit longer and a tiny bit bulkier. Of course, my tentacles and roots have done the same. My tentacles have somehow actually managed to double in thickness over the past four days, but they only grew a small bit longer. They were already plenty long, so I wasn’t too broken up about that, but I am happy that they’re bigger and stronger now. I was even able to stab through a weasel’s skull once with the tip of one of them, so I think I’m becoming pretty amazing. And of course my roots have also grown longer and thicker too. Combining all of this, I’ve actually grown quite a bit taller. I think I’m maybe a head taller than I used to be! Perhaps I’m the height of a doorknob on a door now? No, maybe I’m just a tiny bit smaller than that?

 

Oh but you know what hasn’t grown? My mouth! In fact, despite how it started to balloon out before, it actually somehow shrunk! Instead of sticking out of me a bit before like a small cap, now it’s starting to descend into my stem! It’s already made it half a finger’s length down, and it seems like it’s going to keep sliding down! If it keeps this up it’s going to be so hard to eat! Why would it do this?! At the very least my flower didn’t come with it. At first I thought the flower was growing on the edge of my mouth’s lid, but now it seems that it was actually growing on the base of one of my green leaves this whole time, so that’s a relief.

 

Oh and by the way, my flower!

 

My flower finally bloomed! It opened up its pretty white petals with a pink tinge on top, looking like a beautiful 'desire' camellia! Ahhh, camellias were my favorite flower when I was a human! How wonderful! And unlike regular desire camellias, it had a cute little puff of yellow stamens in the center like some of the other varieties that I loved did! It's perfect! Thank you plant body for this lovely gift! I promise to keep my precious little flower safe forever~! I love you~!

 

~~~

 

After a day of minimal photosynthesizing, I felt like I’d sort of wasted my time. During the night I wiggled around the area trying to see if I couldn’t find some easy prey, but I wasn’t very lucky. The best thing I found was a small hedgehog, and I was kind of scared of scratching up my digestive sac, so I only ate the bottom half of it. Seems I’d done a bit too good of a job hunting in this area the past few days. Of course, other animals would slowly wander over now that there was less competition, but there was no guarantee how long I’d have to wait for that, so I wasn’t going to bet on it. Besides, I had really only been capturing things that had been attracted by the meat I left so far; There were still plenty of herbivores around if I was willing to move about searching for them. Maybe I’d give the trap one more good try and then move along to hunting the next day. Anyways, I didn’t really have much more meat left to bait it with after that stupidly long rainy day. A bit of raccoon meat was going to be the best I could bait it with right now.

 

As the sun rose up yet again, I once more set up my trap. I sat there for a few hours without a single taker, and honestly I kind of felt like giving up and going out to find a few meals on my own. I was much faster than before now that my legs were a bit longer, and I’d even learned to use my tendrils to help propel me forward even faster, so I don’t think I would be hurting for speed while I looked around the place. Ah, but I promised to give the trap one last day, so I should stay here. Oh well.

 

At some point I started to fiddle with the cute little flower on top of my head. I somehow knew exactly what it looked like, and it was hard for me to resist wanting to tickle the little puffy patch of yellow stamens in the center of it. As one of my tendrils gently and idly admired it, I thought many a covetous thought.

 

Ah, how gorgeous my flower is.

If I could, I would grow a field of these flowers.

Maybe one day with my magic I could!

Everyone would come running to see such a beautiful flower.

Everyone would want it.

No one would be able to look away.

Come see, everyone! Come and want my lovely camellia flower!

 

Of course, color me surprised when I felt the familiar tingle of magic in my seed. It rushed up through my stem until it reached my digestive sac, and then rushed up even further all the way to my flower at my tippy top! The little bit of yellow I’d been playing with let out a small ‘puff’, and suddenly a shimmering dust seemed to fill the air. I watched as it spread more and more, twisting and twirling on the breeze as it was carried all throughout the nearby forest. As it twinkled and sparkled I could tell that it gave off a sweet, delicious scent. I could totally make a killing if I sold scent sachets of this! If I ever found myself in a human town needing money, maybe I could sell some there.

 

Oh how naive my thinking was.

This was

magic I’d just used.

How could it have ever just been something that smelled nice?

 

So anyways it didn’t take long before a wave of small and medium sized animals came rushing towards me.

 

There were squirrels, rabbits, various kinds of rodents, even some birds. Anything plausibly herbivorous that I hadn’t been able to hunt down since I set up shop here was suddenly rushing towards me! Wave after wave of adorable forest critters lunged at me as soon as they were within range of the sweet scent my flower was putting out. I had to constantly bat at and stab the feral things that approached, creating a small ring of death around me as my 10 tentacles moved nonstop. I was panicking inside from the sudden tsunami of bodies coming at me that I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with for very long. And just as I was sure that my tendrils would no longer be enough to keep up with all of my attackers, my roots picked up the vibrations of heavy thudding rushing my way. Suddenly a boar rounded a nearby tree, rushing at me with full ramming force and a crazed look on its face.

 

Oh my god this boar was going to destroy me!

 

For a second all of my attention went towards the boar, and instinctively I sent every one of my tendrils to try and trip it up. My efforts were starting to slow the boar down, but now the hoard of other furry creatures that had managed to escape death so far were running at me! If I could have screamed then I would have shrieked myself hoarse right about now! In a panic, I turned to my most basic line of defense: My poison! My mouth opened, and my poisonous gas quickly began to spread.

 

Here’s something interesting.

The moment my gas started to spread, my flower stopped tingling.

The pretty sparkly nice scent vanished.

All the animals slowly stopped acting crazy.

Even the ones that were only a finger’s length away from touching my flower stopped!

 

Some of the animals couldn’t stop their momentum, but plenty of others quickly began to flee once they realized the dangerous position they were in. The ones who weren’t fast enough ended up quickly succumbing to my poison! I even managed to trip up the boar well enough that it managed to foam up and die after only a few minutes of breathing my fumes in! Just to be safe I kept my poison running for a while and checked for any incoming vibrations with my roots, and once I was sure the coast was clear I uprooted myself, ending my poisonous gas, and wandered over to look at some of the bigger game that I’d managed to bag.

 

Well, if you ignore my tattered tentacles and the handful of scratches I have all over me, I’d say this was weirdly a huge success, right? I mean, I got a whole freaking boar! Combine that with all these other animals I managed to kill, and I’ll be eating like royalty for a good amount of days without having to lift a finger! I’m gonna need to use a little bit of magic to repair myself, but I barely got hurt (except for my tentacles but hey let’s look past that, okay?)! I was thinking I’d have to move along, but now I somehow managed to get far more food than I can handle!

 

Thank you flower!

I don’t care if that was dangerous for a moment, you did something truly amazing for me!

If I could kiss you I would!

Long live my camellia flower!

Long live magic!

Hoorah!