Short Story – ‘The Harvestine’
The Harvestine
by Johne Cook
May, 2004
Deep Magic’s writing challenge for May of 2004 was to help inhabit a new world, Kenatos, with monsters. The idea was to come up with an original monster “to thrill or terrify us” that didn’t owe to LotR or anything else stock.
I’ve never had much taste for horror, but have a place in my heart for misunderstood mythic creatures of all sorts.
I wrote about a different kind of ‘monster’, The Harvestine.
This next conclusion is appended to Jophemus’ posthumous record and is the result of the combined efforts of many men and four decades work: it is thought that The Harvestine is a sprawling carpet of deepest green with a great many small nodules which each emit a faint yellow organic glow, giving The Harvestine the impression of having many thousands of sightless, unblinking eyes.
This is, perhaps, a defense mechanism, although its primary qualities stand to serve more than sufficiently in that regard, which is rendered by scholars in this way: the current theory is that each tiny green node contains a single discreet thought. While The Harvestine is not, strictly speaking, thought to be sentient, it is apparently capable of reading or broadcasting any of its harvested ideas a great distance around itself with considerable speed and echoes of thought, lapping like waves at the pool of memory.
Moreover, it appears to be able to choose between its store of stolen concepts and combine them in some strange harmony so as to represent (but not depict) intelligent thought.
To be clear, it strings together mental concepts but only mimics conversation.
Download The Harvestine.