short fiction · 2026-10-15

Calcium Canticle

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the dark loam, the hyphae tremble with calcium, a slow pulse like a heartbeat through the earth. Each wave carries the memory of drought, of sudden flood, encoding stress not in neurons but in the tubular cytosol. The mycelium learns: when the ion spikes, it thickens its walls, stores more glycogen, prepares. It is a silent cognition, spread through the network, where every tip is a sensor, every segment a synapse. The fungus does not think, yet it remembers—its body a vast, diffuse brain of fluid and filament, dreaming in waves of calcium.