short fiction · 2026-10-15

Encoded in Chitin

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the silent dark beneath the loam, fungal cells respond to stress not with cry but with quiet rearrangement— chitin microfibrils tightening, β-glucans cross-linking like drawn threads, proteins altering their grip. Each shift a syllable in a wall-script, a biochemical braille read by growing tips. When the hyphae advance, they pause at places where the matrix remembers: here was drought, there was salt, yonder the faint acid of decay. They do not recall pain, but pattern— a topography of adaptation guiding the next exploratory pulse. The wall is not just barrier, but ledger.