Lung Moss

What it looks like, and what it does

A black tunnel lined with velvet green moss lit only by a headlamp. The moss visibly swelling and sinking. A timber bench. A miner's cap on a nail. The air faintly sweet.

Slow. Breathes in a rhythm that matches the nearest sleeper. Thickens at the places where people sit.

What is known

Discovered in the Dunmore workings in 1884, when the lamps burned brighter near it. The miners called it Mother's Breath.

It grows only where people have worked for years. It has been known to thicken around a collapsed gallery within days, to push air to those trapped. It sickens when the pit is abandoned.

What it can do

• Exhales clean air in dead workings
• Grows toward people who need it

Where it stops

• Cannot grow in sunlight
• Dies when no one comes for a year

An encounter

Rees took a flask and sat on the bench at the end of the last shift. The moss sighed. He found himself breathing with it, and for the first time in forty years his chest did not hurt. He comes down every month and sits, and says nothing, and it thickens round him.

Hywel Rees, last miner, Dunmore workings, Level 4, The last working shift

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Air-quality readings near the moss show a 4 per cent oxygen excess over background, consistently.
• incomplete: Two galleries thickened before collapsing. No one was in either.
• rumor: That it can tell a miner from a visitor by his breathing.

Still unresolved

In two galleries it thickened with no one trapped. Both galleries collapsed within the year.

Where it has been recorded

• The Dunmore Workings (confirmed) — Recorded by Hywel Rees, last miner.

Connected entities

• The Respiring Fern — Both breathe for people. The Fern lends a rhythm and takes the patient with it. The Moss gives air and takes nothing.