Chiropractic Waterfall of Persephone IV

Sonic finishes a long work shift using his keen hearing (and several robotic assistants) to find and repair any hissing leaks in a section of the pressure hull of the Wyldspace warp ship. He slings his test equipment over his shoulder and walks down the hall, smiling at a couple of neighbors and shipmates as they pass, walking the other way. He walks stiffly and with a slight limp, worn out.
In the hallway close to his apartment, he meets his friends, the alien couple, (from Wyldspace Comic Episode 2, Planet of War), Eeisha and Yyorro. Eeisha is dressed in a colorful one-piece swimsuit and her hair is concealed under a rubber bathing cap. She and Sonic greet each other with a hug, then Eeisha waves for Sonic to come with them. Sonic crouches down to match Yyorro's ape-like stance and greets him with a hand on the shoulder, which Yyorro returns happily. Yyorro signals to Sonic a swimming motion, holding your breath and diving, and points downward. Sonic nods approval to him and to her.
Minutes later, a Stinger space shuttle flies over the fungal forests of Persephone IV. Eeisha pilots the craft while Yyorro and Sonic gaze at the verdant life below. The shuttle descends into a clearing in the alien forest, a grassy pasture next to a small lake fed by a waterfall many stories high.
The three step out and pause to take in the view with a barely audible, "Ooooooooooh!" One large rock points out from the cliff face causing a single spout of water to leap out from the remainder of the waterfall and land like a single fountain stream into the center of the otherwise calm lake. They breathe in the fresh air heavily scented by the small jasmine-like flowers that grow wild in the field, each one flower rising from a clamshell-like pod on the ground.
Sonic holds a hand out, signaling the other two to pause. He adjusts dials on his excessively large headphone monitor headset. Weird tones let Sonic imagine the depth of the ground under the H₂O water and a smattering of small fish-like creatures in the deeper end. He slowly passes his hands from one side of the lake to the other, indicating to the alien couple that the water is deep close to the waterfall but gets shallower in the middle of the lake and remains flat and shallow most of the remainder toward the outlet creek. He moves his fingers in a way that could be interpreted as a swimming fish, then holds a thumb and forefinger close together to indicate, "small", and points to the deeper end.
Eeisha checks her bathing cap, checks the straps of her slim alien jet boots, then hops into the water feet-first, slowing her fall with a hiss of air from her boots.
Yyorro removes his white fundoshi, (the common uniform of most of the men serving on the Wyldspace), and happily leaps forward from his all-fours stance and belly-flops into the water right next to Eeisha with a tremendous splash.
Finally, Sonic joins them after carefully setting down his headset on the short leafy grass and removing his plaid fundoshi, which bears the color pattern of the kilt he often wears, by leaping high and curling up into a cannonball pose causing an even higher splash than Yyorro's.
They playfully swim toward the center of the lake where the one fountain lands with its rhythmic slap-slap into the water. Yyorro swims under the fountain and smiles at the slap-slap he receives on the back. He sings out one loud note which the water's rhythm turns into a yodel of, "Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah!"
After he has had enough, Sonic takes a turn. He stands upright in the shallow lake letting the water falling from high above beat on his lower back first. The slap-slap knocked the tension out of his hips in a moment, letting him adjust his stance more evenly on the sandy bottom. He slowly leaned further back and felt his back bones realign straight under the pounding water. Slap-Slap. Then higher up.
Higher, shoulders, muscles, pounding, driving, loosen, now relaxing, standing, pounding, chakras, open, glowing, neck is stretching, backbone standing feeling living, all the tension now receding, pounding down upon his crown, the skull, the mind, bright white and violet light, and all is all, and all is calm, slap-slap, slap-slap, slap-slap.
Sonic imagined an old woman rocking a baby in a wooden rocking chair slowly at a quarter of the beat of the pounding water from the sky above. Some image from somewhere peaceful.
His feet slowly walked him forward out of the fountain, and toward his two friends lying in the sun, drying on the bank ahead of him. His limp was gone and his mind felt refreshed like starting to awaken from a long sleep. He picked a spot for himself and saw the same low grass with its little round leaves and the clamshell flowers dotting here and there.
He turned and saw on the opposite bank with the shuttle he had left his headset and clothes and all his cares. He laid flat out spread eagle like a starfish on the ground and looked up at the sky, feeling the soft breeze and smelling the jasmine flowers, and just letting his heart beat and his body heal and his thoughts roam to and fro with no concerns.
Up above the fungus trees, another Stinger zipped across the landscape and slowed to a gentle glide over the lake with the peculiar fountain. Two ladies from the Wyldspace waved down at Sonic, Eeisha, and Yyorro, circling twice until the three noticed and waved back up at them. After taking some appreciative photos and video of this lake, the first discovered tourist destination on the planet, they continued their exploratory flight further across the horizon.
Sonic laid back again with his eyes closed, listening to the retreating shuttle, the soft breeze in the trees, the lapping waves, the slap-slapping of the endless fountain, and a wet sliding sound, with the occasional crunch of dead leaves underfoot, perhaps two, no, three, three things moving toward them from inside the thick fungal vegetation heading toward the lakeside and the three of them.

Sonic rolled over, slapped Yyorro's foot, and pointed to the approaching noises. Yyorro and Eeisha leaped up.
The creatures waddling out of the underbrush were three roughly cone shaped fungal bodies with tentacles at their pointed top and jagged bottom. They each opened one flower on their bodies with symmetric tongues for petals and sharp teeth all around.
Eeisha shot up with a hiss from the nozzle heels of her jet boots to perch onto a rough knothole in the side of one of the largest fungal trees next to the clearing, well beyond the reach of the tentacles. Yyorro scampered up the rough corky bark of the same tree with all four limbs to meet her.
Sonic found himself with only the choice to swim for his life back to the shuttle, unless there was another way. He picked a flower from the ground with the longest stem nearby and offered it to the cone creature on the left.
The creature slowed its motion as it approached. It turned and twisted its flower of a mouth toward the hand with the offered flower. It wrapped a tentacle around the hand and arm and pulled it toward its gaping mouth.
Sonic looked up in alarm at the others. He signaled with his free hand a gesture like knocking on a door. The fungal creature on the right wrapped a tentacle around Sonic's free hand and another around his knee. He tried to pull free but wasn't as strong as these creatures.
The middle one waddled up, picked three flowers from the ground with three tentacles, and rubbed the petals on Sonic's chest and shoulders. Sonic hesitated, not knowing what to expect next after that somewhat soothing gesture. Then it picked three of the clamshell pod from the bases of the odd flowers, crumpled the shells into a powder, and began to sprinkle the powder on Sonic's head and shoulders, then rubbed it into the skin.
Suddenly Sonic saw an image of himself chest deep in a large stew pot on a campfire with the creature wearing a large white chef's hat seasoning Sonic's head with a long wooden pepper grinder.
Sonic snapped back to reality. He shot a look at Yyorro and Eeisha and violently nodded his head like banging it into a wall. Yyorro tried beating one fist into the tree trunk. Sonic nodded in frightened agreement as if he new how the tree would react to this irritation.
But he did not get to see. The middle creature wrapped two tentacles around Sonic's throat and pulled his head down to its toothy flower petal mouth. Sonic wriggled and fought but couldn't pull himself free. As his head entered the fanged maw he saw three yellow stamens inside hanging like tonsils, reminding him of his earlier adventure with the bee people. He stopped struggling and lunged his head forward before the fanged mouth chewed on his head and bit one of the yellow stamens between his own teeth.
The creature let out a windy howl and pushed Sonic away.
He and the three creatures had only another instant of sunshine before they were darkened by the shadow of Eeisha's tree bending its thick trunk and lowering the dark red flower that capped its top down on top of them. That massive flower bud opened its petals with its massive fangs and grabbed up the four of them. Sonic already knew how the bee people survived this deadly flytrap. Sonic leaped onto one of the thick yellow stamens in the tree's flowerhead and pulled with all his might. The gargantuan petals swallowed the four bodies into its throat, but Sonic clung to that one appendage for his life. After a moment of gagging, the monstrous flowerhead spit him out on the ground and rose back up to its full height in the sky with a satisfying meal.
Eeisha and Yyorro helped Sonic stand. He was covered in syrupy nectar and yellow pollen and several light thin cuts from the teeth, but able to tell the tale.
He took a finger of nectar and tasted it. Yes, it was just like he remembered. He offered a taste to the other two, and they found it almost honey sweet. Sonic gestured for a cup, but they had none. Eeisha removed her bathing cap and used it to collect a sample of the nectar to take back with them.
The swim back to the shuttle washed off the rest, leaving just the painful scratches as their only other souvenir from the incident. But before they gathered their belongings to leave, Sonic took a moment to close his eyes and listen to the pounding fountain slap-slapping the water. He could forget the scratches and find that peaceful moment still in his memory.

This story is Rated PG-N for vaguely described nudity.

(No carnivorous fungus monsters were harmed in the making of this story.)

Type

Waterfall