Mushrooms Apparently

the one who grew sideways

It lived halfway up the tree like it had missed an exit and decided to make that everyone else’s problem.

The other mushrooms down below called it dramatic.

“You know the ground exists, right?” they shouted.

The little mushroom ignored them. It had chosen bark. Bark was quieter. Bark didn’t ask where you were headed. Bark simply held on and let the moss do the decorating.

Every morning, fog slipped past like a thought that hadn’t finished forming. The mushroom liked that. It liked living where things blurred a little at the edges. It made certainty seem rude.

Sometimes a human would stop and lean in close, surprised to find something so small growing from such a steep place.

The mushroom never waved.
Never posed.
But privately, it enjoyed being discovered.

Not all who cling there are lost.

Some are simply refusing the ordinary route.

Nekonoir

Author’s Note: This one didn’t fall wrong. It chose wrong on purpose. There’s a quiet rebellion in growing where you’re not supposed to, in ignoring the easy gravity of “down” and answering instead to something stranger, more private. The sideways ones rarely explain themselves. They just… appear, halfway up a story no one else thought to climb.

I wrote this for the versions of us that stop mid-path and think, no, not here… and then stay anyway. Not out of confusion, but conviction.

The world loves a clean direction. Up. Forward. Progress with a neat little arrow.
But some lives turn slightly, just enough to confuse the map, and become something harder to categorize, and therefore harder to dismiss.

Also, I don’t trust anything that insists the ground is the only place to grow.