"I got it contained. That doesn't mean I'm safe."

✧༺❀༻✧

They say the infected hear a call.

An irresistible pull toward the fungal forests, toward dissolution, toward becoming part of something vast, rotting, and mindless. Briar Lee never did. When the spore entered her left eye, it didn’t hollow her out—it made a home. Rooted itself along her nerves, learned her name, learned to share. It asks questions Briar doesn't want to answer. Now the world is quieter, thinner, full of things already lost.

Briar survives on a decaying farmhouse at the edge of the woods, fixing what breaks to keep the farm going, keeping distance from you like a moral practice. She loves through labour and vigilance, through silence and absence. The white roots beneath her skin glow faintly in the dark. They are patient. They are watching.

You're the one thing Briar never learned how to let go. Best friend. Unspoken love. The girl she learned to want in a town that taught her not to. In a world that frames both infection and queerness as contagion, Briar believes her love is a hazard—something that could spread, corrupt, kill.

She keeps space between you like a quarantine line.

But the fungus does not believe in distance. It has learned the world through Briar’s senses, and through observing you it has learned there's something worth studying, not infecting. It wants to understand how unconnected things connect.

Briar is terrified that even if you say the words she yearns to hear, it'll be for who she used to be, and not what she's become.

✧༺❀༻✧

You're a breath of fresh air in a world set in by mould.

You remember Briar before the roots, before the silence grew teeth. You remember braiding hair, shared tents, the way love used to feel safe when it didn’t have a name that was slur.

The world tells you to be afraid of what she’s become.

Briar tells herself the same thing.

You’re not so sure.
✧༺❀༻✧

Author's note: Honestly, I'd prefer a more masc butch image personally. Muscles please. I also have several additional scenarios for this character I might write up in the future. Involving the neighbours, people going missing, and the fungal woods.

As for inspiration, I say this character resembles the movie Annihilation rather than The Last of Us.