Moss Senses

Sense of Touch

Bryo is a moss-covered planet. A world of milky softness, cool as water, submerged in green.

When Agata steps out of the spaceship, she sinks into moss up to her knees. Moss clings to her legs, full of softness, gifting her a gentle chill. With a fierce push, she rejects this indulgent touch, pulling back like a tiger slipping out of a cage, because she needs to search for the others.

* * *

Sense of Sight

Agata examines the area around the spaceship, then looks to the horizon, to the oceans of moss that scream in green.

She searches for Finola’s red hair or the curve of Viktor’s shoulders, but they are gone, swallowed.

Moss rushes up Agata’s legs. Cowers in the crooks of her fingers.

* * *

Sense of Smell

It smells like rain, although it hasn’t rained. It smells like earth, although she is so far from Earth.

Finola and Viktor made her promise not to leave the spaceship, but it’s been weeks. She can’t abide the sterile environment of the ship, the way it smells like nothing human, just wisps of disinfectant and metal.

She came out here to find them, because the only other option was to abandon them.

* * *

Sense of Taste

The moss tastes fishy and bitter, like an unfortunate salad.

She doesn’t know how it got into her mouth.

It coats her tongue. Slithers down her throat.

She remembers last night’s dream, where she baked a cake and threw away her whisk. The cake was flavored with oranges, too sweet, but she woke up craving that saccharine taste.

* * *

Sense of Hearing

The moss doesn’t use words to speak. What she hears are not words, but impressions. The moss wants to understand her dream. What is a whisk? Why did she throw it away?

“Where are they?” Agata asks, but her mouth is still coated in moss.

* * *

Sense of Fear

If the moss can sense her dream, what else can it sense?

Her heart beats in twin gasps. Her breath is a razor in her throat.

“Don’t be afraid,” says the moss.

* * *

Sense of Belonging

“We know how to love you,” says the moss. “We have made a space for you.”

Is it wrong that a part of Agata wants to believe the moss? To let it envelope her? Isn’t this what all humans want—to belong? She once saw a tiger at the zoo, and she thought, “I am like that tiger. I need a cage to myself. Who else would want my squalid heart?”

She’d craved a sense of belonging with Finola and Viktor. Tried so hard for it. Made breakfast every morning, whisking pancakes. Whisking eggs for scrambles.

“It’s not that they don’t love you,” says the moss. “It’s only that they were missing an important sense.”

* * *

Sense of Proprioception

“Take me to them,” Agata says.

The moss guides her, and she glides over the squelchy terrain of Bryo. Or perhaps the moss moves her. It’s hard to tell what parts of her body are still entirely hers. She senses the position of her arms, her legs. She feels the moss move inside her like bits of clouds she’s swallowed.

* * *

Sense of Duty

As she walks, she rejects thoughts of duty, moral obligation, or what she owes to her crewmates. Instead, she thinks of the etymology class where she learned that an obsolete meaning of “duty” is “debt.”

The moss looks on, inside her head, curious about the duplicitous nature of language.

* * *

Sense of Trust

At the bottom of a hill, she finds her crewmates outlined in green.

Finola and Viktor are more moss than human, but she recognizes their voices.

“The moss is teaching us,” says Finola.

“This won’t hurt,” says Viktor.

* * *

Sense of Compassion

The moss shifts inside her, gifting her with a new sense—it feels as if eyes are opening all over her body and there is so much light.

She sees Finola and Viktor in all their human complexity. Their egos and fragility and astonishing virtues. Their deficits and desires and stratified histories. Their squalid hearts.

Last night, Finola dreamt of oranges, of peeling each one in darkness. Viktor dreamt of a wide sea, which swallowed him, his terror and joy compounded.

Agata knows everything they can remember. Every dream. Every thought.

* * *

Sense of Peace

The moss is here between them, with them. There is a promise of serenity, of total acceptance.

Green creeps over her eyes, into her ears, so cold and crisp, with a salt tang that weeps into her mouth.

Her crewmates wait for her to join them.

Nothing is hidden.

Finola’s inner voice sounds like an orange being peeled; her mind is layered and in it Agata can see every last longing. Viktor’s mind behaves like an ocean, wave after wave beating against the shore, and all his darkness is contrasted by so much light. There is something too beautiful about the way his mind curls around like a spiraled shell.

Everything is open to Agata. Everything they have ever felt. Every sense.

* * *

Sense of Self

Agata doesn’t know if she can accept what the moss is offering. Not everything needs to be whisked together like so many broken eggs.

* * *

Sense of Interoception

‘Will you let me go, if I ask?” says Agata.

Inside her body, she senses a tightening and loosening.

I am a tiger, she thinks. But it is so tempting, to open up her squalid heart, to stay.

* * *

Ⓒ Beth Goder