Moonhaven

Chapter 14: Red Velvet Mites

Alex and Tate halted in front of a towering birch tree with much of its truck covered in moss. It stood immovable right next to Faerie bridge.

"Tate, what's wrong?" Alex finally asked. The panicked look Tate wore made Alex's heart skip a few beats.

Tate was out of breath from the back-to-back sprinting, so he used his remaining energy to point to the top of the tree instead. "Look...up there..."

Alex's gaze buzzed all over the enormous plant life, searching for something abnormal or off-putting about it. "...a tree facing an excessive growth of moss? What about it?"

"L-look...closer. Here," Tate opened his backpack and handed Alex a pair of black binoculars. "Near that...broken branch..."

Alex aimed up at the tree through the optical instrument at the tree, and noticed a peculiar red patch by a broken branch. It was a minuscule swarm of tiny red bugs. "Spiders?"

"Not spiders...red velvet mites." Tate finally caught his breath. "I need you to go up there, and pluck a few into this." He pulled out a small plastic bug container from his backpack. It had a green lid and matching handle.

Alex was flabbergasted by the strange request, but not particularly upset. "This is your emergency?"

"I never said I had an emergency. I said I needed help."

"You also said I was the 'only one'. Why is that?"

"This isn't the beginning of some weird chosen-one journey if that's what you're getting at," Tate said, his fuzzy eyebrows, thick as caterpillars, crinkling with conviction. "I forgot my phone at home. Jeremi was with me, but then he ditched saying he forgot to lock his front door or some other useless excuse. I haven't seen him since. I panicked when I found the mites here and went looking for anyone nearby before they all crawled away. The palms of my hands are too sensitive, so I can't climb trees for shit. That's why I usually go bug hunting with a buddy in case I find something I want to collect hanging out on a tree. That buddy is usually Jeremi, but, you know..."

"So I was closest person you could find," Alex concluded.

"Yeah. And besides, I wanted to see if you really fit into that category of the 'stereotypical physically gifted white guy'."

Alex laughed so hard, he choked a bit on his spit. "The what? Where'd you hear that from?"

"A...lavender birdie told me. Now could you hurry up and climb already?" Alex feigned a bored look, but Tate matched it with an innocent one. "Please?"

Accepting defeat, Alex grinned and glanced up at the perilous height of the tree, his gaze soon landing on his objective: a flock of red velvet mites. "Poisonous?" he asked Tate.

"Not at all. Their color just wards off any predators by making them think they're poisonous. They're actually harmless to humans. I swear it."

"I didn't think you were lying," Alex remarked, reassuringly though as a stupefied Tate stared back at him. He took the container from Tate, and secured it in the clutches of his teeth, before and marching over to Faerie bridges' arching brick parapet. He mounted it, using it as a starting point to ascend the tree.

With each passing second, Alex's hands and legs moved with agile speed from branch to branch, and the tree was covered with many thick ones, making the climb not so easy to scale. Tate almost didn't notice him moving, yet he didn't miss how high he was getting. Finally Alex got to the lone broken branch, and slowly unattached the green lid from the rest of the container. He placed the container against the bark, just below the swarm of mites, and carefully slid it upward, ushering the mites to fall inside. After he successfully seized about seven of them, he climbed back down — as swiftly as he had gone up, and finished with a clean hop to the ground.