The tallim plant begins, every morning, with a humming vibration at the root; its small yellow flowers overwhelm the banks of the river not far from the monastery garden. When the sun rises, and the humming starts, the animals listen. Oneiric residue from the previous night hovers over the river. Tallim grows here, but also underground, in the crypt, where the mushroom components are more pronounced and the bright yellow is as vivid as the open air. The fruiting bodies, reminiscent of flowers, are bioluminescent. The underground cycle of the plant starts at the end of October, when the River Tallim turns green and the current takes on a low music.
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The dying, it all happens so fast.
The wolf is the first to witness the disappearance of the plant. She feels it under her paws, the soil suddenly cold, hard, as if frozen. She senses the loss of yellow at the tips of her fur before registering it with her eyes, like a wave of grief that follows the riverbank upstream; this is how the world looks now that Anastasia is dead. A new wave runs through her, older than the river. She howls, just once, though it is daylight and there is no moon. She scratches at the frozen ground; some of the beloved yellow color can still be found there. In dead petals, residue of pollens.
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One day, long ago, a monk went to the riverbanks to cry. He was grieving the death of a person of a different caste, someone he had no right to talk to: a gardener. Where his tears fell, a strange yellow flower grew, multiplied. From then on, each year, from May to July, the warm azo yellow of delicate petals followed and wrapped, as in a soft light-fog, the serpentine green of fast waters. Their stems grew so tall, a child of five could entirely disappear, swallowed by flowers. No one dared cut them. A few safe trails led to sandy areas where you could swim. Or just listen to the current and the loud yellow haze. Or sleep, protected by the shade of oaks.
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Just before tallim disappears, Anastasia dies. In May, by the river. The first tallim flowers of the season have just started to bloom. Here and there small patches of azo yellow perforates pools of blue shadow. Only the sound of the current, but as if morning shadows could wrap all the river in cotton, muffle her voice.
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The river holds the memory of the corpse of Anastasia and future secrets; it listens to the disappearance of the plant; the current of the water doesn’t stop, but the disappearance of the flower creates a countercurrent, upstream; a snake, a ribbon of darkness, follows the banks; the river listens and answers we know, then we remember; waters blacken, their music similar to the sound the heart makes after an eardrum has burst; all the water snakes and crayfish and salamanders hide under rocks; the river holds the memory of yellow.
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The disappearance of the plant was not gradual, but violent: one year, in May, the morning sun rose on dried mud on the riverbanks. Grey, silent. The death of the color was so brutal it changed not only the aspect of the river but also the sounds of the current. After the death of Anastasia, the plant life inside and around the monastery weakened and turned light brown, then grey. The medicinal plant garden suffered, as did all those who relied on its medicine. The Grey Drought would last for many years.
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Only the cloud knows the true origin of tallim, of Anastasia; they also know why this must stop proliferating, unchecked. The plant, an oneiric weed that stifles the soil, and prevents anything else to grow, to breathe. The cloud was born of tallim. After the death of Anastasia, they breathe better, there is a relief of tension. The cloud anticipates the disappearance of the loud yellow vibration that stifles the river. Then they will evaporate, and at long last, return to the water. A new cycle will begin, a muted fallow season, that will foretell a long drought. They witness the large wave of darkness that swallows the riverbanks and continues upstream, towards volcanoes. Time passes, measured by the cloud with the only help of the changing light and shadows. The pools of blue-grey darkness disappear. The grass turns green, then grey. Dew shines like oil on the surface of everything. Nothing moves. All the flowers die. A dream of loss; whatever was lost also was forgotten and composted under the tree. Roots grew around the loss. Sleep formed as condensation just above the soil where our loss was buried. The crypt encompasses the loss, provides a cocoon for a future transformation.
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A prayer remains alive in the monastery, even after tallim disappears:
You bloom in softness, in yellow, in dunes
You bloom in clusters
You bloom in sand, in unison
In shade, near clover
You bloom in May, in rain and in hailstorm
In silent frost and cold moon light, you wait
Warmth and multiplicity
Resilience and the smell of sage
We offer you as storyseed
The seeds of Tallim were formed in April 2023, during a writing retreat at Sou’wester Lodge in Seaview, Washington. We traveled to the coast with the intention to collaborate—to write a short story together—but like the yellow flowers blooming wild and abundant at the coast, Tallim refused to be contained. In the months following our retreat, the story grew. We created maps, timelines, sketches. We asked each character questions, gave them time to answer, and practiced staying with the contradictions. There were two main aspects of the collaboration: a desire to play, connected with childhood, and a need to create a space for mourning the disappearance of plants and animals. The collaboration gifted us with an ever-changing territory that is a container for our shared grief in the face of ecocide. We ended up creating the world of Tallim. “Tallim Disappears” is a fragment of that world.
