Coloso plunged his root-legs deep into the mud at the narrowest part of the gorge. He braced his thick stem against the current. Then he tilted his enormous cap forward, forming a perfect, glowing shield.
The old rabbit, the one whose burrow he had accidentally smashed, hopped forward. "Coloso Champi Coloso," she said, loud and clear. "You are not too strong. You are strong enough ." coloso champi coloso
From that day on, no one whispered his name. They sang it. And every evening, when Coloso’s gills pulsed their soft, sleepy light, the animals of the valley would gather beneath his cap. They didn't hide from his glow. They read stories by it, told jokes, and fell asleep to the gentle plomp, plomp, plomp of his heartbeat. Coloso plunged his root-legs deep into the mud
The other animals called him “Coloso” for short, but they whispered it with a mix of awe and a little bit of giggling. You see, Coloso Champi Coloso was a giant mushroom. Not a mushroom in the way that a toadstool is a mushroom—small and easily kicked over. No, Coloso was a magnificent, ten-foot-tall, creamy-golden fungus with a cap as wide as a cartwheel and a stem thick as an ancient oak. The old rabbit, the one whose burrow he
The animals panicked. The rabbits’ burrow was filling with water. The raccoons clung to a thin willow branch. The otters, strong swimmers but exhausted, were being swept downstream. The valley was being erased.
That night, a terrible storm rolled over the valley. Rain fell in silver sheets, and wind howled like a hungry wolf. But the worst was yet to come. A flash flood surged down from the mountains, turning the gentle stream into a roaring, brown torrent.