Plants and Poisons

by **Adriana Sparrow** on February 3rd, 2019, 4:13 am

Winter 32, 518 AV

Adriana learned from her father that the only way out of the city was through knowledge. Today and for the foreseeable future Sparrow simply survived. She scavenged and stole and her only daily goal was for her and her brother to live to see the next day. Her long term goal, though, was to escape. To one day grab her brother and leave the wretched city that destroyed them, and find light somewhere else. She knew that the only way to do that was to learn, anything and everything that could be useful in the outside world. Something that could push her to success and usefulness in the public eye.

The Library, a somewhat unknown place for most of the city, was known well by Adriana. Her father, Wes, taught her to read when she was a child, and the pair came here for her lessons, as the family was too poor to own any actual books themselves. Slowly, over the years, she gained the skill of reading, something that put her ahead of her fellow citizens. She always wanted to teach Bae to read, but she was too afraid to bring him out in public to the library. For now she would just have to learn herself, and teach him later.

It was just after the sunrise that Sparrow slipped into The Library. The natural light of the bright sun pierced through the library's windows, giving more than enough light to read in. She never knew what to read, and currently she was between books and so she roamed the aisles, looking for something interesting.

The Library was not very well organized, but that was alright, she didn't know what she was looking for anyway. She simply walked down each row, trailing her fingers on the spines of each book that stood tightly next to another on the shelves. Sometimes her eyes would choose a tome, from the interesting title, or the aged colors of the spine, or her fingers would choose when they came across a unique texture as they passed over.

She couldn't spend too long here. She still had duties. The siblings needed food and water and foraging for these was time consuming. Plus she could not leave her little brother alone all day. He would be lonely, more likely to wander from their safe place.

But she needed some time to get away. To forget her hardships for a bell or two and learn about the world outside of this hell.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

by **Adriana Sparrow** on February 3rd, 2019, 4:33 am

Common Corruptions. The title caught her eye. It was catchy, the two words put together. She was expecting it to be something religious. A priest raging about the simple sins that people enacted. Or even about sickness. A doctor once told her that her mother had succumb to 'corruption'. She was never completely sure what that meant, but her mother was sick with panic, and she assumed it had to do with that. Maybe with this book she could learn why her mother fell, and how to stop it from happening to her -- or Bae.

But when she opened the old book, the cover a deep, dark, leather, wrinkled and still, to pages that stunk of mothballs and dust, she learned it was not about sins or panic, but about poisons.

Poison was not something Adriana really ever thought about. She figured poison was rare and hard to find or make, and that only the rich and powerful - the otherwise untouchable - were ever killed by poison. Yet, it still interested her, for some reason. She couldn't say if she thought the knowledge would someday be useful to her, she did not find sadistic happiness in the thought of killing another, but the idea of poison was interesting to her.

She sat on the floor of the aisle, in front of where she took the book. She did not want to leave and lose the books placing. She began to read, the beginning, she was completely new to this knowledge.

She learned quickly that 'corruption' is another word for 'poison' as poison generally moves through the victim "corrupting the organs and vital systems, destroying the body from the inside out." The thought itself was enough to instill fear. Besides her mother, who did not seem to suffer physically, Adriana had not seen much death. She witnessed a few hangings in the Castle Commons, but even those appeared rather quick and painless. This book made poisons sound long, and terrible.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

by **Adriana Sparrow** on February 3rd, 2019, 4:52 am

Adriana continued to read through. After the introduction she came across a list. A bunch of different words down a vertical line, and above, separated by a line, "Poison Family - Poisons similar to others based on organic origin". Puzzled she read through the list, but most of the words seemed not to be related to each other, while others she didn't know the definition of at all. She could not figure out how 'Roots' could relate to 'Ooze' or what in the world an 'Araneida' was.

Next to each word was a page number, and the first word she recognized was 'Fungus'. She knew that meant mushrooms and mold. It was a common occurrence to find such gross things in Sunberth, the city that was constantly rotting, especially for someone who roots through trash all day. Could fungus really have some use in the topic of poisons?

She quickly flipped to the designated page, where, at the top, 'FUNGUS' was proudly stated in large lettering. "A form of natural corruption, mushroom, mildew, mold, etc. are the basis for Fungus family poisons." Thinking back, Adriana did not actually realize that poisons came from natural things like plants. Though as she thought more, it made sense. She knew a spiders bite could be dangerous. That despite their size, they had something in them that they gave to the bitten victim that would then cause them to be ill. Now, she would bet everything she had that that something was a poison. She wondered what poison family spiders belonged to.

Not dwelling too long on that though, Adriana got back to Fungus. It was exciting to think that she could find a use, and such a deadly use, from something she came into contact every day. But then, fear struck her. She did indeed come into contact with rot every day. Was she in danger? She read on, somewhat frantically, to find out.

"Poisons fungus is generally only dangerous if entered into the bloodstream." Bloodstream, she thought. That meant if it touched blood? "Such as entrance through a wound, or ingested. Although some fungus can be dangerous if spores are inhaled" The book continued. Obviously Adriana attempted to avoid eating mold.. and she wasn't sure if she touched it with scratched up hands. But nothing bad had happened to her yet... How much would she have to eat to get sick? And what did the word 'spores' mean?

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

by **Adriana Sparrow** on February 3rd, 2019, 5:47 am

She continued to read through the Fungus page. She was still curious about its poisonous properties, but she was almost more concerned about her and her brothers health. This book made her worried that mold and mildew were more of a danger than she ever thought. Most of the deaths she knew of were old age, or executions or murders. But death by mushroom? It seemed uncommon, yet here his book was describing death.

"Fungi more often than not grow in areas that are exposed to damp situations for prolonged periods of time." Adriana thought back to the times she had noticed mold and mushrooms. She did not really see mushrooms within the city much. A couple in areas where dirt was present, and they usually seemed to be shaded in some way or another. But all the mold she saw was always on food in the trash. It always annoyed her because she could have eaten that food, but the mold got to it first.

Reading further she saw a bold word a bit further down. 'Cladosporium', it seemed to be the beginning of a new section. She sounded the word out, it was nothing she had ever seen before. Within it was that other word she wasn't sure of, 'spore'. Obviously it had something to do with fungi, but she wasn't sure what yet.

"...found most often on decaying plants as well as damp woods, soil patches and other wet areas. A very common mold that can be almost anywhere." Adriana wondered if this as the kind of mold she was used to. She often found fruits or vegetables that had mold on them, and those counted as dead plants right? Or was the book talking more about like fallen trees? She never really noticed a difference in the mold she came across. Perhaps she would have to pay more attention. Here the book notes that this kind of mold can appear "green, brown, grey or black." That seemed like quite the spectrum. How was one supposed to identify this kind of mold?

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

by **Adriana Sparrow** on February 3rd, 2019, 6:20 am

It appeared that this book only went through this one kind of mold for the Fungus section. She figured there were hundreds of types of mold and mushrooms and mildew and there was not way one book could contain all these. Plus it seemed this book was generally for beginners in the poison subject, and Cladosporium was a very common mold, hence the 'Common Corruptions' name.

This book had talked about where to find this mold and what it looked like, and now it went on to why it was dangerous. "Some types of Cladosporium are not dangerous at all." That sure was helpful, she thought dimly. "While others are only mildly poisonous." Mildly? What was she supposed to do with mildy? At leas ton the bright side it meant she and her brother probably wouldn't die from exposure to it. "Commonly Cladosporium produces airborn spores that are inhaled over a long period of time to increase breathing and lung issues." Ah, she was starting to figure out what a 'spore' was. It seemed, from this sentence, that a spore was something mold gave off that floated in the air, and therefore could be breathed in. She wondered, briefly, is one could see the spore floating in the air, like a dandelion seed, but she quickly dismissed that. Surely if one could see the spore they would now to avoid breathing it. Spores must be too small to see with the human eye.

From the text, though, Cladosporium did not seem very dangerous. Why would it be of use to people who would want to poison someone else? Clearly there were some negative effects, breathing was nice and struggling to breathe would be uncomfortable. The book mentioned 'athsma', but Adriana wasn't quite sure what that meant. But the writing made it seem like those effected would live the rest of their lives, however uncomfortably, even if they stayed near the mold. She figured poisoning someone with this would not get the poisoner very far.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.

by **Adriana Sparrow** on February 3rd, 2019, 6:48 am

The section on Fungus was coming to an end. Adriana could see in her peripheral vision that the words and paragraphs stopped farther down the page, where it then went blank, signaling a new section to start on the next page. She red through the rest rather quickly. She could tell, as well, that the lighting in the library had changed just a bit, hinting that time had passed, and therefore the sun had moved in its direction. Adriana would need to get on with her day sooner rather than later. There was still much to be done.

Despite her quick read of the rest of the section, Adriana had to re-read it. It turned out to be the most important part of the learning about the poison of fungus. The last bit detailed how to make the poison. "...concentrated doses prove more potent than natural occurrences." Ah, so she would likely have to gather much of this mold, and put it all together. That made more sense. But what then? Would the victim have to breathe the concentrated mold? Would they eat it?

"Allowing Cladosporium to manifest inside a controlled area, such as a bottle or tube, forces the fungi to release spores into a controlled environment, capturing the most poisonous part of the mold." Interesting. She wondered if the mold itself was dangerous as well, even less so. Perhaps if one ate the mold would they get sick? Was that due to spores still within the mold, or the fungi itself? She would guess that any mold, if eaten in a large enough quantity, would have a negative effect. That was why she never fed a mold infested food to her or her brother. They could not afford to be sick.

"Collecting spores and concentrating them into a powder is the most effective option. Forcing the victim to breathe this concentration will have the most desired effect. The victim will experience hardships with breathing, and could be more prone to lung based sickness such as pneumonia." So the poison was more of a gateway to something more dangerous, then. She could see the use in that. A simple poison to invite a more deadly disease.

Adriana finished the last few sentences before closing the book with a sigh. this was certainly interesting and she had learned many things. But she wondered how useful this would really be in her life. Either way she vowed to come back to the book another day. She wanted to learn about another Poison Family.

With that she placed the book back on the shelf it called home, made a mental note of the location so she could return to it later, and scurried out of the library, onto her next task of surviving.

Code credit to Antipodes for original base code.