{"id":820218,"date":"2025-12-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/?p=820218"},"modified":"2025-11-10T11:13:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:13:44","slug":"all-that-means-or-mourns-ruthanna-emrys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/all-that-means-or-mourns-ruthanna-emrys\/","title":{"rendered":"All That Means or Mourns"},"content":{"rendered":"<post-hero class=\"wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical\">\n  <div class=\"container container-desktop\">\n    <div class=\"flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container\">\n      <div class=\"post-hero-content\">\n                  <div class=\"post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase\">\n                                                        <span class=\"mr-3\">\n                                      <i class=\"inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue\"><\/i>\n                  \n                  <a href=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/fictions\/original-fiction\/\" class=\"inline-block link-no-animation\" aria-label=\"Link to term or tag Original Fiction 0\">\n                    Original Fiction\n                  <\/a>\n                <\/span>\n                                                                                    <span class=\"mr-3\">\n                                      <i class=\"inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue\"><\/i>\n                  \n                  <a href=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/tag\/post-apocalyptic\/\" class=\"inline-block link-no-animation\" aria-label=\"Link to term or tag post-apocalyptic 1\">\n                    post-apocalyptic\n                  <\/a>\n                <\/span>\n                                                  <\/div>\n                <h2 class=\"post-hero-title text-h1\">All That Means or Mourns<\/h2>\n                  <div class=\"prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero\">Transformed by a broad-spread fungal infection that connects humans with nature, one woman feels closer to the world than ever, but further from the people she loves the most\u2026<\/div>\n                <div class=\"post-hero-wrapper\">\n                      <div class=\"post-hero-inner tablet:order-2\">\n                              <p class=\"post-hero-illustrators text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&#038;_a]:link-hover\">Illustrated by Jacqueline Tam<\/p>\n                                                              <span class=\"post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block\">|<\/span>\n                                <p class=\"post-hero-editors inline-flex items-center text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&#038;_a]:link-hover [&#038;_a]:ml-[3px]\">Edited by <a href=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/author\/carl-engle-laird\/\" title=\"Posts by Carl Engle-Laird\" class=\"author url fn\" rel=\"author\">Carl Engle-Laird<\/a><\/p>\n                          <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"post-hero-inner\">\n            <p class=\"post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&#038;_a]:link-hover\">By <a href=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/author\/ruthanna-emrys\/\" title=\"Posts by Ruthanna Emrys\" class=\"author url fn\" rel=\"author\">Ruthanna Emrys<\/a><\/p>\n            <span class=\"post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block\">|<\/span>\n            <p class=\"text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv\">\n                              Published on December 3, 2025\n                          <\/p>\n          <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n                <div class=\"quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden\">\n  <div class=\"flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6\">\n    \n    <a href=\"#comments\" class=\"flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]\">\n      <svg class=\"w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover\" viewBox=\"0 0 18 18\" 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class=\"wp-block-more-from-category\">\n    <div>\n    \n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Transformed by a broad-spread fungal infection that connects humans with nature, one woman feels closer to the world than ever, but further from the people she loves the most\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">Short story | 3,565 words<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In the foyer, I shed the hospice\u2019s cleansuit. The medically-licensed plastic sticks to my skin; the vent draft chills where I peel it away. I want to tear it off in handfuls. But I pull slowly, excruciatingly aware of every blocked pore, and finally stow it in the UV box contaminated but whole. Another visitor will need it soon, to dull their senses and reassure the dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Outside, Florida\u2019s humidity is a living slap. I\u2019m drenched in sweat despite my neck fan. My eyes sting; gut microbes churn with anticipatory grief. At least I\u2019m no longer isolated. Sporulated whispers surround me. Even the parking lot holds life: gnats and tenacious anoles, bacteria in the soil beneath the permeable pavement, cracks pressed wide by choirs of lichen. My mycelial network yearns toward its kin, but the <a>Animalia Serenitas Center <\/a>would not approve if I sank to their killed-myco brick graytop to meditate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rental car automatically unplugs as I approach. No trains or tramlines here, in the sinking lands stolen from the Everglades. The driving assistant has regressed to default settings, and I have to readjust it\u2014again\u2014to my rare driver reflexes. I try to appreciate the trivial distraction, but it only feeds my pain. Mom\u2019s dying grows tendrils into everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I need my fellow hyphae. At home I would bike to the cranberry bog or the maple swamp or the dunes, immerse myself in friends and neighbors. But Naples is an antifungal enclave where most people only step outside in sterile cleansuits. <a>Corkscrew Sanctuary <\/a>is the nearest option. The winding boardwalks, the miles of mangrove and cypress and sawgrass, the alligators and herons let everything in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the entrance, a screen lists birds sighted this week. When I was little, the board would be full by Friday, notes crowding into the margins. It\u2019s sparser now. Watchers still spot the white ibis, the great blue heron, the peregrine, and the bald eagle, but the wood storks have been gone since the second-to-last avian flu, and other species have fallen to heat or storms. Or salt water, rising through porous ground to claim the grassy river. The swamp lets everything in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The sun beats onto the tall grass and I\u2019m forced to open my parasol, blocking the cloudless blue-gray sky. But there\u2019s relief in the shade of the cypress trees. Even the mosquitos, fellow psilocordyceps hosts, take only a token blood offering. Their sting\u2019s been bred out; I offer them a taste of megafaunal complexity and receive in turn an instant of blur-fast wings, ganglial hunger, and the purity of their swift satiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The boardwalk winds through shingled bark and cypress knees, slow water thick with fallen leaves, the sudden chitter of a cormorant, baby alligators sunning on logs. No turtles for years now. Mom loved this place, used to take hours identifying species while I raced impatiently ahead. Even before the cancer, she lost that; the hike was too hard in a cleansuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t see any other humans until I reach the hyphae nest. We\u2019ve taken over one of the old pit-stop gazebos, added hammocks and live-myco cushions to make comfortable laybacks, wound vines and branches through to ease connection. Two people sprawl with closed eyes and peaceful smiles; one is up and stretching. She bends her knee and lunges, back leg taut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWelcome!\u201d she calls, unworried about waking the others. It\u2019s just another greeting, natural as the cormorant\u2019s. I fall into her offered hug, already sobbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her body is more familiar than mosquito or moss, easy to interpret. Heartbeats and lungs sync up. Nerves fire like city lights. Her digestive system\u2019s busier than mine. Fibroids snake through her uterus and something\u2019s off in her lower back, a practiced drone of pain. Nothing unusual in her brain. I pay attention to brains, lately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMy mother has glioblastoma,\u201d I tell her. \u201cShe\u2019s antifungal; I can\u2019t make it feel real. I\u2019m not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She holds me tighter. \u201cI came out here with my brother every week while his lungs were breaking down. We <em>could<\/em> share everything. It\u2019s never enough.\u201d She leads me to a hammock, wraps me in vines. I close my eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mycelia transmit more slowly than neurons, and over longer distances. The world enters in patches. Strangler figs drink in sun and water and carbon dioxide, basking and growing and sending out lazy chemical signals. They drape over ink-scratch branches of cypress and curl against ragged bark. Branches stretch up from the trunk, trunks from knees that drink deep of the shallow water. Mushrooms grow into the roots, digest fallen logs, extend microscopic tendrils through mud and heron. The swamp flows slowly, shaped by every tree and fish and leaf and pebble, feasting on rot and breathing out abundance. I stretch my senses, loving and becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the whole rich system fills in, so do the lesions: acidity that singes gills, salinity that leaves larvae scrawny and weak, hungers where no hunger should last. Flickers of incomprehension, wordless mourning for prey long gone. Through it all winds the same psilocordyceps that inhabits me, that grows through almost everything now. Infection, bond, witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The human brain can only imagine itself a swamp for so long, even with practice. We have always been torn between wholeness and the quick, anxious passions that separate us. My hearing is first to retreat into my body: The other hyphae are awake and arguing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt has to have been deliberate. Random mutation would give you itchier athlete\u2019s foot, not make you one with the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not saying it was random mutation. I\u2019m saying the <em>release<\/em> was accidental. Someone meant to use it in a lab, for medical imaging or surveillance or some shit. If there was meaning in it getting out, it wasn\u2019t <em>human<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAre you talking about divine intervention?\u201d This voice belongs to the woman who welcomed me. \u201cOr are you saying the mushroom escaped on purpose?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a familiar discussion, endlessly interesting to some, endlessly dull to others. I go back and forth. Should it matter if the greatest gift of the twenty-first century was truly a gift? Nothing, god or human, has ever demanded our gratitude. But we would have questions, if we knew some cause beyond chance, and perhaps the unwanted offering of our gratitude anyway. Why not be grateful? Few things are better than they used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPurpose is a human thing,\u201d says the second voice. When I open my eyes, the two earlier sleepers are sprawled together on the bench, one nested in the other\u2019s arms. In the mycelial network they feel like a single organism, skin comforting skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPurpose is a human illusion,\u201d I offer, letting the conversation draw me into a different sort of connection. \u201cWe\u2019re not as good at choosing actions, and their consequences, as we like to think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSo accidents are a human thing, too. Everything else just <em>is<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The argument continues: The question of how we, who now share senses with all of nature, can claim that nothing else has goals or choices or screwups. The question of whether there\u2019s some higher purpose to those screwups, whether we\u2019re ants unaware of the anthill. The question of what sort of purpose would allow the sheer <em>levels<\/em> of screwup that humans have managed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This connection I can hold even less easily than the swamp: I let it fade again into a background drift of primate calls. The idea of purpose, and the thought that there is none, are both too painful. We can\u2019t be all that means things, or all that mourns. There are flocks of feral macaws in the trees. We can\u2019t translate them, but surely like us they circle the same questions over and over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like us, wherever they came from originally, they\u2019re bound now to something dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I spend the next morning sorting papers at the house. Staying there means I don\u2019t have to worry about hotel quarantine policies, but it also surrounds me with work of dubious utility and endless urgency. Dad had just moved into the antifungal apartments, and Mom was trying to sort everything out so she could sell the place and join him, when she got sick. Everything is half started or half done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I might be able to sell the house to an antifungal, but not for much. Everyone knows Miami is in its last years. Salt infests groundwater and eats holes in the land above, and soon the antifungals will find another place where sinking land is cheap. I could abandon the place. After she dies. When she can\u2019t know that I gave up on what she left behind. Or I could talk to her friends who side-eye me for being hyphae, ask them for help finding someone who needs the space and can take over the mortgage, someone who will glare at me for the gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So many places are salvageable, even on the coasts. Places where the bedrock is less porous, where long years of local organization and semifunctional state governments have funded seawalls, pumps, purification plants. There the hyphae do more than witness: We diagnose and treat and help the world adapt, find points where the right push can save a sliver of world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I picked up signals once from a frog that we\u2019d thought extinct. I recorded their calls and the pattern of their heartbeats, shared my data with other searchers, and we found enough to bring a breeding population together. We worked with the psilocordyceps to protect them from simpler and more deadly fungal infections. There\u2019s a type of frog now in northern Maine that wouldn\u2019t be there if I hadn\u2019t paid attention and chosen to do something about what I found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s nothing I can do for Mom. There\u2019s nothing I can do for the Everglades. My love is useless here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In the hospice cafeteria I sit with Dad. I can\u2019t eat through the cleansuit and would quail at food I couldn\u2019t sense\u2014even aside from the fungicides, there might be anything in it. I haven\u2019t shared a meal with my parents for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would\u2019ve said we were close. We called every week, told each other about concerts and meals and broken appliances and broken weather, about birds spotted and books read and friends visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question, unasked for two years, sits in the back of my throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He prods at his sandwich: fresh-baked sourdough piled with eggplant and roasted tomato. He takes a slow, forced bite. His eyes are distant. It would be cruel to ask him, now, why they pulled away from the world they taught me to love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember the debate in the hyphae nest, the pain of unanswerable questions eased by shared sensation. I touch Dad\u2019s arm with my suited hand, knowing he\u2019ll flinch, offering and taking comfort anyway. At least he doesn\u2019t pull away, just lets his head fall with the weight of everything we\u2019re carrying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe nurse says it could be any day now,\u201d he says finally. \u201cBut it could be a week or more. She\u2019s got a strong heart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cShe was always about . . .\u201d I wave my hand vaguely, indicating years of hikes and high-fiber foods. \u201cDo you remember the carob chip cookies?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately. And that one stand at the farmers market that I swear put dirt in their muffins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGod, she loved that place, I have no idea why. She thinks they\u2019re delicious.\u201d I hesitate over tenses. She\u2019s not quite past, not yet, but she\u2019ll never again buy a dozen gravelly muffins for a potluck. Or else <em>she<\/em> is past, only her unconscious body withholding permission to acknowledge the loss. But the talking, at least\u2014about her, not about us\u2014creates some sort of backup, an echo of <em>her<\/em>ness in our shared memories. \u201cI wish healthy food were as nice as healthy exercise\u2014she could always find the best walks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Dad lifts his head, a fraction, and talks about the research she did when I was a baby, ten different apps to find one that could consistently recommend stroller-friendly hikes, and the places they got stuck, laughing and lifting, when the first tries failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In the corner beside the spare room couch I find the archaeology of Mom\u2019s knitting: half-finished hats with crumpled patterns on top, simple pairs of slippers in all her family\u2019s sizes, then the little spring-green afghan that I snuggled when I was five, and finally the lowest layer revealing some forgotten decade of leisure: an exuberance of lace shawls dewed with sparkling beads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It should be the hats that hurt most, with their evidence that her organized mind was breaking down before anyone noticed, pushing against the start of the project again and again, as if this time she would find her way past the barrier. When I came to visit two months ago she was doing that with simple things: shuffling her feet forward and back, forward and back, lifting her walker and putting it down, explaining to us that \u201cI just need to . . . first . . .\u201d before trailing off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or it should be the afghan that makes me cry with safe-childhood nostalgia, as though childhood ever feels safe to anyone but grown-ups. Maybe the shawls should make me pine for the selfhoods she set aside in the press of work and childrearing. But it\u2019s the slippers, of which I have a dozen pairs at home in Massachusetts, one from each Chanukah since my feet reached their adult size minus those worn out by late-night fridge raids. No one will ever take care of me in that precise way again, and I\u2019m not ready. I curl over the pile, burying my tear-streaked face in yarn. Sometimes it comes like an avalanche: no one to sing \u201cOld Devil Moon\u201d as an off-key lullaby, no one extolling a specific breed of yeast over the rhythm of homemade bread dough, no emailed list of local trails every time she knows I\u2019m traveling. And someday\u2014it feels as real now as losing Mom\u2014someday Dad will die and I\u2019ll lose his ability to identify even the rarest out-of-place birds, his perfect foraged salads, his ability to turn everyday frustrations into giggle-worthy gossip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And no matter how many hard conversations I try to have or avoid, there will be things I regret never asking and things I regret saying at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I sleep with the afghan that night. It\u2019s not safe, but it\u2019s simple. My mycelia reach out through the fabric, along the bed and the walls, looking for something to touch. They find a spider weaving above a dusty shelf, and my dreams are full of vibrating silk and mosquitos winking out like candle stubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The hospice calls at four am: any minute now. I struggle awake with cold tea and pull the car jerkily out of the driveway before I remember again to reset it. Breathe in the calm of sleeping birds in the parking lot, gulp morning mist, take too long to get the cleansuit on with shaking hands. What if I\u2019ve missed it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dad is by the bed; I join him in the comfortable chairs. Mom\u2019s favorite klezmer plays quietly from hidden speakers, anomalously cheerful. Her breathing is abrupt: inhaling into a frightening gurgle, snorting out, long pause, repeat. Every pause might be the one. We sit watching, waiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDo you want some time alone with her?\u201d asks Dad. \u201cI\u2019ve already said everything I need to.\u201d I nod, and then it\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhy won\u2019t you let me be with you?\u201d I whisper. But hearing is the last thing to go, and asking her is even crueler than asking Dad. \u201cI love you. I have a good life, I\u2019m doing good work. I\u2019ll be okay, and I\u2019ll keep going, and I\u2019ll remember you every time I go for a hike.\u201d I go on like that, saying the little reassuring things that I guess I\u2019d want to know, if I were dying and had a grown child. I feel bad, because I do want kids and I don\u2019t have them yet, and they\u2019ll never get to meet her. I don\u2019t say that, and I don\u2019t thank her for not nudging me about grandchildren. Nothing aloud, except for the things I can promise will continue past her horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I run out of things to say, and she\u2019s still breathing: gurgle, snort, pause, repeat. Time feels impossible: We\u2019ll be in this limbo of waiting forever. Dad isn\u2019t back. I could slip off part of my suit, brush her face, let the hyphae give us a last moment of connection. Isolated in her body, maybe she would appreciate it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hover. But it\u2019s a childish urge: to do the forbidden thing, to get castigated with crumbs still on your tongue. The remnants of Mom\u2019s choices depend on our cooperation. Then there would be Dad\u2019s choices lost, and the other patients\u2019 and their families\u2019; my hand drops, clenched with responsible misery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dad returns. \u201cThe nurse says that sometimes people wait until they\u2019re alone. That they don\u2019t want their family to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI guess that makes sense.\u201d It makes sense as something they tell you to give meaning to the meaningless, or to help you feel okay about not being in the room, waiting forever. Somehow, someone who hasn\u2019t been able to move her foot consistently for two months will claim this last bit of control over her movement from being to not-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s dusk when I return to Corkscrew: almost cool, almost comfortable. Sawgrass chirrs. A heron rasps, and an owl sends up its banshee cry from amid the mangroves. I stretch for memories of what it sounded like when I was younger, here with Mom and Dad: What\u2019s been lost? I must have neglected so many details. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hoped for human company, but the hyphae nest is empty. The park closes in half an hour. In Massachusetts it wouldn\u2019t matter: There would be as many witnesses to the nocturnal ecology as to the daylit one, defenders and scholars of peep frogs. Maybe the disapproving neighbors discourage it, or maybe no one wants to sit vigil in the dark, waiting for salt water to slowly drown the fresh.&nbsp; Loons call, and early nightbirds, and I hear the low rumble of an alligator chiding her babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We never know, for all that we share our senses, what else in this world feels grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I lie there for a long time, trying to lose myself in awareness of other creatures. The precipice will come soon, and I\u2019m not ready. I can\u2019t get away from telling myself stories about how I\u2019ll feel tomorrow. The opposite of anticipation: <em>Now my phone will vibrate, and I\u2019ll know. It\u2019ll happen now. Now. Now.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I imagine talking with my mother, something I haven\u2019t been able to do for four months. <em>Why come here? Why did you choose to separate us this way?<\/em> But no, if I had one more chance to talk with her, I\u2019d pick another conversation. Something trivial, gentle. <em>I\u2019m thinking about getting a new cat. A tabby, like the one we had when I was little.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then, that circles back to the same thing. The relationship I would have with a cat now is different from toddling after shape and fur, never understanding the fear that leads to a scratch or the way a purr feels from inside. Those things I couldn\u2019t talk about, or must, would form a barrier either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At first it was common: So many people who weren\u2019t infected immediately found ways to hold it off. We\u2019d rather wait, they said. We want to know more about what we\u2019re getting into. See if there are any long-term effects. Then the hyphae didn\u2019t get sick, and we saved frogs and put intimate sensations into scientific papers. People got curious, or comfortable, or bored, or just tired of barriers. The holdouts grew fewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Why you?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steps echo, hollow percussion on the boardwalk. I lift my head even as I realize that this isn\u2019t the company I sought, let alone imagined. The cleansuit outlines a blank space in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The swamp is all shadows now, glints of salmon and indigo through the trees. It takes me a minute to recognize Dad: his stride slowed by hesitation, squinting even now to track one of the bird calls, familiar striped shirt compressed under the suit. Mom always rolled her eyes at those shirts, but he bought them five at a time. Hard enough to find one thing that fits, he\u2019d said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d slips out, rude and foolish. But I didn\u2019t tell him where I\u2019d be. It\u2019s been years since we walked here together. My stomach drops, and my voice. \u201cIs she\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He shakes his head. \u201cI guessed you\u2019d be here. It\u2019s where\u2014\u201d He waves at the nest. \u201cI guessed.\u201d He sits on one of the laybacks, awkwardly, brushing aside dangling leaves. This place isn\u2019t made for avoiding touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ll only have so many conversations with him; that feels real now in a way it never did until this year. This one isn\u2019t the last. But it\u2019s the one for today, the one we\u2019ll remember having in the suspended hour before Mom is gone and only matter remains. Here on my side of the thinnest barrier, alone with a dying world, I try to decide what to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cAll that Means or Mourns\u201d copyright \u00a9 2025 by Ruthanna Emrys<br>Art copyright \u00a9 2025 by Jacqueline Tam<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n<section class=\"wp-block-shop-the-book shop-the-book\">\n  <h2 class=\"shop-the-book-headline\">Buy the Book<\/h2>\n  <div class=\"shop-the-book-content\">\n        <figure class=\"shop-the-book-image-desktop image-cover\">\n      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"507\" src=\"https:\/\/reactormag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/All-That-Means-Or-Mourns_Cover_300ppx.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"An illustration of a woman swimming through long green organic tendrils containing the shapes of birds and other 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Mourns<\/h3>\n                              <p class=\"shop-the-book-author\">Ruthanna Emrys<\/p>\n                  <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n            <button type=\"button\" class=\"inline-block px-8 py-4 text-center btn tablet:py-3 text-h6 bg-red text-white shop-the-book-button\"  id=buy_book data-trigger=\"modal\" data-target=\"#modal-1767798345\" aria-open=\"false\"\n         aria-label=\"Buy Book\">\n        <span class=\"inline-flex items-center button-label btn-label\">\n            Buy Book\n                    <\/span>\n    <\/button>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <div id=\"modal-1767798345\" class=\"shop-the-book-modal\">\n    <div class=\"shop-the-book-modal-inner\">\n      <button class=\"js-modal-close absolute top-5 right-5 z-10\" type=\"button\" aria-label=\"icon-close\">\n        <svg class=\"w-[19px] h-[19px]\" width=\"18\" height=\"19\" viewBox=\"0 0 18 19\" fill=\"none\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-label=\"close\" role=\"img\" 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href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B0FZDPS2H9?tag=tordotcomgeneral-20\" data-book-title=\"All That Means or Mourns\" data-book-store=\"Amazon\"><span class=\"inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv\">Amazon<\/span><\/a><\/li><li><a class=\"btn\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.anrdoezrs.net\/links\/7992675\/type\/dlg\/sid\/tordotcomgeneral\/https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/s\/9781250411761\" data-book-title=\"All That Means or Mourns\" data-book-store=\"Barnes and Noble\"><span class=\"inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv\">Barnes and Noble<\/span><\/a><\/li><li><a class=\"btn\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/book\/isbn9781250411761\" data-book-title=\"All That Means or Mourns\" data-book-store=\"iBooks\"><span class=\"inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv\">iBooks<\/span><\/a><\/li><li><a class=\"btn\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9781250411761\" data-book-title=\"All That Means or Mourns\" data-book-store=\"IndieBound\"><span class=\"inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv\">IndieBound<\/span><\/a><\/li><li><a class=\"btn\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.target.com\/s?searchTerm=9781250411761\" data-book-title=\"All That Means or Mourns\" data-book-store=\"Target\"><span class=\"inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv\">Target<\/span><\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/div>\n  <\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Transformed by a broad-spread fungal infection that connects humans with nature, one woman feels closer to the world than ever, but further from the people she loves the most\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1868179,"featured_media":830112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,29],"tags":[22788,386229,400780,310963,3656,396749,22110,1561,240041],"fiction":[395434],"series":[],"article":[],"topics-and-interest":[],"genre":[],"store":[],"coauthors":[460],"class_list":["post-820218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-original-fiction","tag-carl-engle-laird","tag-eco-fantasy","tag-jacqueline-tam","tag-original-fiction","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-reactor-original-fiction","tag-ruthanna-emrys","tag-short-fiction","tag-short-story","fiction-original-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>All That Means or Mourns - Reactor<\/title>\n<meta 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