Background

Sylvie grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati, living a happy life with two parents until 1999. Then the pollen came. Despite attempts to take precautions, her mother fell sick and was taken to the hospital. She never came back home. The order to evacuate came, and her father tried to take nine year old Sylvie to the north, where it was meant to be safer. But the highway was gridlocked. They were forced to go on foot, and then attacked by creatures. Her father handed her off to another family and she never saw him again, only heard his screams. He wasn't even the last she heard die that day. Moving from place to place, she moved between groups in a dizzying and exhausting span of weeks. She was one of few the lucky ones that survived. When the world had calmed and the screaming and chaos came to an end, Sylvie found herself in Clifton Creek, a safe walled town. Children without parents were split up among adults with spare rooms, and Sylvie was placed with Doctora Maria Rodríguez, who had run a rural clinic nearby before the daisies. Maria spoke a mix of slow English and rapid Spanish, which Sylvie quickly learned to keep up with while helping her with simple tasks at the clinic. She also attended a small school in the town, learning science and creative writing. But her true joy was from sneaking out of the town walls to the forest, looking for herbs or using a makeshift sling to try and catch small animals. As she grew older, the town required her for more practical work, so she officially apprenticed to learn under Maria, often working to help a local deaf patient she befriended, and took part in hunting trips for larger prey, learning crossbows and hunting rifles. Clifton Creek had few strangers at it's gates; sometimes refugees or travelling merchants. But the most notable contact they had was with a peculiar group they nicknamed the mushroom missionaries. These friendly but eccentric visitors were led by a woman named Indigo, who claimed that she could grant the power of Saprophyte - to resist the Daisy Epidemic and turn the tide of despair that had overtaken the world. Although initially sceptical, a few ambitious volunteers agreed to try the 'sacred tea' of the missionaries, resulting in a transformative experience. Soon after, a wave of other residents followed suit, and after three months, the town declared themselves part of the Saprophyte Fellowship. Not all the residents agreed though. One of those who objected was Maria, Sylvie's guardian. She warned of the psychiatric risk and possibility of addiction. Despite Maria's warnings, Sylvie was caught up in the schemes of her young friends, who smuggled some of the tea away for themselves while the adults were tripping out. The result was an otherworldly experience for all of them, but for Sylvie the effects were particularly intense - it profoundly changed her view of the world. She heard a voice. It spoke to her. While her friends were satisfied, Sylvie was spurred on by a burning curiosity to hear more ... and try to speak back. She began to smuggle away tea, slipping deeper into its visions in her room each night, until one morning she failed to come out of her room. A distraught Maria found her comatose on her bed, next to a notebook full of scribbled words from her visions. Realising what she had done, Maria confronted Indigo and demanded that she help. She agreed to visit Sylvie to see what she could do, but to Maria's frustration, the visit yielded no useful help - only a missing notepad. After several weeks without any improvement, Maria was losing hope, when a large delegation from the Saprophyte Fellowship arrived in Clifton Creek. Led by a hooded woman revered by the other cult members, they offered help: machines, medicine, care... in Youngstown, the capital of the Saprophyte Fellowship. They had only one condition: Maria couldn't accompany them, as Clifton Creek needed its doctor. Maria agreed, but hated herself for it. Months slid by. Sylvie woke up in Youngstown, confused and disorientated. The hooded woman was there, with Sylvie's notebook in her hands. She called Sylvie a "speaker of the mycelium," a bridge between flesh and fungus. They asked her to inhale the tea again, and she refused. For a time. But the woman was patient and persistent. Over the months she wore down Sylvie's resolve, manipulated, bullied and tormented her, until she finally caved in. The voice returned, and with it, a terrible comfort. But this time she was an unwilling participant, a tool for the cult to use to speak to their god. She tried to run, to press at the edges of her cage. She was given the freedom to roam the town, but always had minders. The firm but gentle hand of a cultist directing her back to her room, or sometimes something more insidious, such as friends who weren’t truly her friends. Eventually, she learned to pretend that she had accepted her situation. She settled into a routine, resumed her education and used the tea when she was asked to. Years passed, but she was always watching for a way out, growing older and wiser, so that she was ready when her opportunity arrived. She met a travelling merchant named Whistle, a man with a cunning smile who was less of a merchant and more someone who could make anything happen, for the right price. She used the presence of her minders to convince him of her value, turning the hooded woman's own tools against her - persuading him that she could be useful, and Whistle agreed. In the dead of night, he smuggled her out of the town in one of his wagons. So she was finally free, travelling west with the caravan for many weeks. But freedom had a cost, and now it loomed ahead of her in the form of the Knox Quarantine Zone. Whistle needed a favor, something he couldn't do himself, not with his reputation as a scoundrel. To repay him, she would have to smuggle something inside the walls of the unfamiliar settlement.