I had to admit to myself that the smells of the forest invigorated me. After being deprived of clean air for so long my body had adapted to breathing less. Once I was outside and away from the stench I could feel my chest filling up in ways that it hadn't since I had arrived in Vehrehr. Moving felt easier as a result, and tiredness that I hadn't even noticed fled my body. I picked a fruit off of a tree as I passed, biting into it and savoring the fresh flavor. Even the food in Vehrehr was muted, a thing which I had never thought I would care about.

Now, where do I find blue leaf? I asked nobody in particular. I was around a kilometer into the forest by my estimation, surrounded on all sides by trees and other plants. I had been keeping an eye out for any blue plants, but I hadn't seen any on my way so far. It had better actually be blue, I grumbled as I remembered how humans tended to exaggerate the features of things that they named. A stick snapped nearby and my head snapped towards it, but whatever broke it had already fled.

Despite my renewed vigor I kept the thought in the back of my mind to stay alert for bears. The humans feared them with good reason, and I wanted to avoid any contact with them if I could. My single experience with one of the creatures told me all that I needed to know about them: They were too difficult to kill to be worth fighting. As I wandered further west I made sure not to make too much noise, though the forest seemed peaceful enough and I noticed no telltale signs of large predator activity. I mean really, how many of those things could this island support? I wondered, They must be consuming enormous amounts of food.

An hour later I came to a roughly circular clearing some twenty meters across. I hadn't seen a single plant that could have been blue leaf the entire time, a fact which was frustrating me slowly but surely. I climbed a tree at the edge of the clearing and sat down on one of its branches to think. It's a parasitic vine, if I recall correctly, I thought, but I haven't even seen any ivy, let alone something which could have been blue leaf. It's almost strange that there aren't any vines on the trees. A thought occurred to me and I glanced around, then grunted. There aren't even any mosses or lichens, I noted.

Motion into the clearing broke my train of thought and set me on edge. From almost directly across the circle a deer pranced out into the sunlight, craning its neck to check for predators once it stopped. I wasn't sure if it saw me, but it just not have considered me a threat because it bent over and began chewing on the grass beneath it. Wait, what's that red around its mouth? I wondered as I looked closer. The deer's lips and the front of its snout were dyed red when it pulled its head back to check for predators again. Opportunistic carnivorous behavior? I guessed before slowly descending the tree to observe from a different angle.

I didn't even get a quarter of the way into the clearing before the deer's eyes locked onto me. The animal drew in a breath, then tried to decide its course of action while I slowly drew my spear in case it chose poorly. Against my expectations, the deer did not flee or charge, but instead looked toward me and made a groaning roar-like noise from its mouth. My spear pointed towards it, gripped tightly in my hands, and I simply stared back. The deer pounded its foot on the ground and repeated its noise, which I could easily recognize was a challenge.

I can hit it from here with a throw, I thought, but it'll run off with the spear and the noise might attract bears. The deer might not have understood it, but it was playing a very dangerous game of mutually assured destruction with me. I took another step towards the animal and felt something pop beneath my foot. The deer growled again, chuffing and pounding the ground, and I briefly broke eye contact to look down.

My left boot was covered in a deep red liquid that had spilled out of some kind of bulbous protrusion from the ground. Just beside the one I had stepped on, two more protrusions came out of the soil, and more on the sides of those, clearly outlining some kind of ring shape that looked to encircle the clearing. I checked the deer, saw that it was in the same place, then crouched down to take a closer look.

The smell of the liquid was strangely fruity, but with a hint of some other unknown chemical. Wait, are these some kind of fungi? I thought as I prodded the bulb beside the popped one I was standing on. White dust fell out from small thread-like hairs which encircled the bottom of the bulb, coating the ground. Against my better judgment, I dipped my finger into the red liquid and tasted it. Far from my expectation which was to gag, the liquid's flavor was extremely mild with a hint of capsaicin and sugar which did nothing to upset my palette.

The deer lost interest in me and went back to eating while I examined the strange fungi further. Inside the unruptured bulbs, I could see clumps of white floating around. So it makes this to bait animals into eating its spores, I reasoned, then when they excrete them it can start a new colony. I was familiar with the general strategy from other fungi I had encountered, I had just never seen such a strategy implemented with fluid-filled sacs before. It's been a few minutes and I haven't detected any cellular damage, so the liquid probably isn't poison, I thought, judging that my body's own healing systems would be able to eliminate any slow-acting poisons. It certainly doesn't hurt the deer, I thought as I looked over again and saw the animal with its face now covered in red. I stowed my spear since it had clearly lost interest in fighting.

Another hour later I was drinking one of the juice pods, as I had taken to mentally calling them, while trudging through the woods. I still hadn't seen any blue leaf and was beginning to lose hope that I would find any. I should have asked more questions, I chastised myself, there's probably a trick to this that I don't know. As if to prove me wrong, a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye drew my attention and sent me rushing over to its source. I crossed a hundred meters in a handful of seconds, then found myself in front of a sickly-looking tree.

The leaves above me were a withered yellow-brown, and the bark in front of me was peeling off of the trunk of the tree. As if it had been bored through with drills from many directions, hundreds of small holes dotted the outside of the tree and out of each of them grew thin green vines that slithered like snakes along the tree's surface, splitting and splitting, then terminating in a single azure leaf that was shaped like a blade. Barely a third the size of my palm, each leaf extended out perpendicular to the tree's surface like it was daring an insect or herbivore to bite it. From what I could see, not one of the thousands or more on the tree had been touched, let alone eaten.

Excitement rushed through me, then disappointment. I didn't bring a bag! I almost screamed out loud. In a brief moment of frustration, I let out a low growl and gritted my teeth, then calmed down forcefully. I can weave one, it's not a big deal. I've found the blue leaf, that's what matters. Mentally marking the location of the tree, I rushed off to find suitable materials. Thankfully I didn't have to go far before I came across one of the giant leaf plants I had used to make my first clothing, and some tall grass I could turn into cordage.

Four leaves and some dexterous weaving later I had a sizeable bag with a rope for strapping around my torso. Back at the blue leaf tree I hesitantly reached out and plucked a single leaf from the vine it was attached to. I half expected it to knock me out just from physical contact, but I felt nothing in my fingers besides the softness of its flesh. Curiously, I rubbed the leaf hard enough to rupture it between my fingertips, which began to sting immediately from the sensation of rapid-healing. Strong stuff, I noted as I put the leaf into the bag, looking at the blue residue on my fingers with excitement.

As I picked more of the leaves and stored them I began to wonder about the physiology of the plant itself. I tried to rub the fluids from inside the vines in myself to see if it would cause a reaction, but it seemed as inert as normal sap. Something in the leaves was responsible for the production of the poison, that much was clear. That doesn't mean there isn't something else poisonous in it though, I thought. Looking at a now-clear section of the tree, I pulled out my axe and began to dig into the trunk to see where the holes went.

The tree's sorry state was explained once I broke through the inner bark and saw the state of the heartwood. The blue leaf plant had completely inundated it with its own roots, turning the once solid cylinder of tissue into a twisting series of tunnels that it used to attack the tree's entire trunk and sap it of nutrients. Root-like structures from the blue leaf vine burrowed their way into the sapwood from inside the tree, and thicker vines were responsible for the leaves on the outside. Sadly, neither the roots nor the inner vines showed any signs of being poisonous, so I turned my attention back to the leaves on the outside and continued picking.

I picked every single leaf from the tree and stuffed them into my makeshift bag. Five kilos, including water weight, I estimated as I pulled the bag over my shoulder and tightened the rope I had made to affix it to my chest. The sun was still up, though I had perhaps three more hours of daylight. That bag is only half full, I thought, if this is a parasitic vine there must be more trees with it around here. Even just one more and I can fill up my bag. I reached for another one of the juice pods and gently popped it open with my teeth, sucking down the fluid inside carefully so I wouldn't spill it all over myself. I choked and coughed as something hard from inside the pod touched the back of my throat, triggering my gag reflex.

Whatever the hard thing was it tasted foul and bitter, and in an effort to cleanse its taste from my mouth I foolishly reached up and scraped my tongue with my fingernails, then spat onto the ground. The effects were slow enough that I had time to realize what a stupid thing I had just done before I felt the effects. My tongue began to sting, then felt like it was on fire. My salivary glands pumped out so much fluid that I felt like I was drowning suddenly, and just the vestiges of the fluid which flowed down my throat carried enough blue leaf toxin to set my esophagus alight. The pain wasn't from the poison itself, but instead from my body's rapid healing disposing of all the cells the poison had contacted, which had died instantly.

A wave of vertigo hit me, and I knew the toxin had reached my bloodstream. The feeling of being drugged with blue leaf was very distinctive, but the fact that I was still conscious told me I hadn't ingested very much of it. My vision vibrated as my eyes rapidly shot left and right as if in some kind of waking REM sleep. Clumsily, I climbed a nearby tree and laid down across two branches, staring at the sky while I waited out the effects. I had planned to test it anyway, I thought, I guess I'm just doing it sooner than anticipated.