The Hanging Lights
I first mistook them for lanterns hung by some wanderer ahead of me. Pale glows swaying in the mist, marking a path where no path should be. Foolish, I know — there is no such courtesy in the Valemire. But the shimmer was gentle, bluish, promising something human.
Instead, I found the trees themselves were keeping watch. From their branches dangled dozens of gourd-like sacs, each strung by a cord no thicker than fishing line. They pulsed faintly with their own light, breathing in unison though the air was still. I stood listening to their quiet hum, and felt very small.
Their Form
The Hanging Lights are fungal sacs suspended from the limbs of swamp trees. Each is no larger than a man’s fist, pale and translucent, with veins of faint blue light threading through its skin. They sway as though stirred by wind, even in stillness, as if the glow itself is weight enough to move them.
Within, a thin fluid shifts and gleams. When prey brushes against the sac, it collapses at once, folding tight like a clenched fist. The glow flares briefly, then steadies. The body is digested slowly until nothing remains but light, which the sac weeps into the host tree through a thin rivulet. The tree, for its part, thrives.
Behavior and Diet
These are predators without pursuit. They wait in silence, patient as thought. Insects are their common prey, though squirrels and small birds are often taken. The digestion is quiet, without struggle or sound, flesh and bone unmade until only luminescence remains.
Each tree that hosts them seems enriched, as though in pact with its tenants. The sacs are not parasites in the ruinous sense; they are collaborators, feeding light into root and bark.
Uses Among Folk
The Valmiri know better than to cut a living sac. To do so is to be sprayed with an acrid fluid that scalds skin and blackens the lungs. Instead, they harvest only the husks — collapsed sacs that have already eaten their fill. These husks retain their glow for months, and in some villages they serve as the only lamps.
Homes are lit not by oil, but by emptied stomachs. The glow is steady, soft, and unbothered by damp — a priceless quality in the Mire.
Some swear the husks are more than tools. They claim the light dims at danger’s approach, or brightens before a storm. Hunters tell of husks flaring like torches just before attack, saving their lives. Whether true or not, the lamps are kept as companions as much as furnishings.
Oddities
- Some husks emit faint wingbeats in the night, as though recalling what they consumed.
- Certain lights flare only when someone speaks a name aloud.
- A husk left in a graveyard was said to pulse in rhythm with the earth below.
Reflection
I find them unsettling. Their beauty is patient, their glow a soft deceit. And yet, I carry one. Not as lamp, but as reminder. In them I see the Mire’s economy: life traded for light, hunger turned to beauty.
Perhaps that is their lesson. Every lamp burns something. Every comfort has been consumed. To walk in brightness is to accept the shadow it cost.
