Felix Fern

Once, in the swirling tides at the edge of the half-right sea, a boy was born. He lived in a town like many others, on an island that bobbed and dipped on the current in the usual way of things, and apart from a rather inconvenient dislike of fish he fared well. Over time he grew into a talented sailor and fisherman, and though he preferred to eat only the plants he foraged, he spent his time alone beneath the beating sun hauling creatures from the deep to feed the town. Felix was always ambitious, even as a boy, and the more fish he caught the more he hungered to know about them.

One day, drifting far from his familiar quays on a particularly strong breeze, Felix’s hook snagged on a stronger catch than most. Slowly at first, then with increasing panic the fish began to pull at his line until the boat itself was sent careening across the waves in pursuit of that shimmering dash of gold. He was by this time a rather competent sailor, but it took everything within him to keep the ship afloat as he desperately grasped at the rod, unwilling to lose this extraordinary fish. He fought and fought against the line, eyes clenched so tight that he did not notice as his familiar shore passed him by. Finally, Felix’s rod did snap, exploding in a fury of shattered wood that left his hearing forever worsened, and he raised his sorrowful eyes towards the distant beach to behold a terrible sight. 

Piled up to the sky lay a twisting mass of seaweed, blocking out the sun itself. The weeds were all colors and textures, electric pinks and deep jet blacks, and as Felix stared on in a kind of horrified fixation he watched the mountain begin to stir. Slowly, as if shaking off a century of sleep, the pile untangled bit by bit, until it coiled a mile long across the beach, a monstrous serpent of vines. 

Most would have run at the sight of the mountain, doubly so when they saw the beast that it became, but Felix stood awestruck at the bow of his little boat. Up to this very moment he had always felt himself to be a resourceful kind of person, one ready to jump at the promise of adventure. When the serpent turned its formless face and slunk back into the sea, seemingly annoyed that its hidden napping place had been disturbed, he understood clearly that he had found something worth chasing. 

For the next year he returned ceaselessly, day after day after day to the hidden beach, hunting for any clue of the creature that had once inhabited it. He began to take samples, collecting drawings in a little green notebook that he strapped to his chest with a lash of vines to ensure that he would never go without it. Soon, he began to live the rest of his life through the notebook, meticulously recreating the mundane moments of the day in hopes that even they might bring him closer to the mysteries of the living kelp. They didn’t, and as the weeks passed into months, Felix understood that his place was not among the trees of his small town, but out on the roaring sea. The next day he packed his bag, tightened his notebook a little bit tighter to his chest, and set sail on the same boat he had ridden that fateful day a year and more ago.

Time passed in a whirlwind, as it had the habit of doing on Odd, and Felix grew to know more of the sea’s plants than anyone had ever bothered to wonder about. He tracked trees and shrubs and flowers, hopping from island to island like some kind of maddened grasshopper, but he never forgot the plants of the ocean and they remained his first love.