Maurice had never thought himself the brightest child. The gopher’s grades were never that good and it was easy for other kids to run circles around him when playing math games in class. There had been a lot of days when he’d felt like he’d be better off ditching school to go join the circus or something. But he didn’t think he was dumb enough to stand still when a few feet in front of him space unfurled into a brilliant mixture of giant red and yellow petals. He’d always thought he’d turn and run if some weird, impossible thing happened. Or that he’d stand and fight if it sent out branches, their every movement marked by a hideous cracking as they reached out to grapple his limbs. He even hoped he’d do more than scream for a few horrifying seconds when it pulled him down deeply into the center of the flower that had torn itself into the world in front of him.

	He was used to being wrong about things by now, though.

	Much to Maurice’s surprise, the chubby little gopher finds no pits of stomach acid waiting for him, nor is he painfully crushed by the flesh on all sides of him. Instead, it’s the smell of the wilds that greets him. It’s a scent he somehow knows is older than the forests of Earth. Deeper and more of the world, the real world, than any woods he might ever find himself in. A scent with it’s own thoughts and desires attached. All around him leaves and petals and seeds float, carried by hot winds that push him around in spite of the grasping branches that still bind his limbs. Somehow reflecting off and passing through them the wind carries it’s own gentle, dreamy light in a cascade of phantasmagorical colors as aware of everything around them as Maurice was. This place was alive and as he breathes in, he comes to understand that he is now part of it. If only for how the air in the place fueled his brain. 

	The myriad thoughts of the place are weak, listless things. Mere bursts of emotion or ideas too alien or complicated for him to bother with following anywhere. Even his stupid brain could beat them back through sheer stubbornness alone. His awareness of his own situation coming back, he pulled on the branches that held him over a vast chasm that he had no hope of seeing the bottom of through the leaves and petals. The roses that grew from them seemed to carry the sturdier branches, holding them aloft through dull will alone.

	But a presence, stronger than any single thought he could hold makes itself known, pushing up from beneath him. It’s vast as this place, ancient as the truth. Even it’s smallest idea is wider than the chubby ten year old’s whole body. It was like a mountain was being shoved into his ears, but all sound was lost to him so he couldn’t hear his skull splitting. And the moment he feels something collide with his bare paws, it’s gone.

	What pushes against it isn’t the ground he was hoping for having risen up to meet him, but what could easily be confused for a simple vine. It was thin and deceptively moist as it started to squeeze it’s way up his foot. Kicking at it didn’t help, the vine starting to travel up around his ankle, passing easily over the branch that still supported some of his weight. Worse than the feeling of it slowly making it’s way past his ankle was how he could feel the thing beyond it. The big thought guiding it’s snaking motion as it passed over his knee. The appearance of a handful more pushing against the heel of his other foot does nothing to distract him from how the plant makes it way into his thin sports shorts.

	“HEY!” he shouts. They had thoughts, maybe they’d listen, “Your not supposed to touch under other people’s clothes!” 

	They didn’t listen, a handful more appearing from behind the veil of plant-life that surrounded him. Each found it’s way to his body in turn, each tingling with a meaning his head couldn’t grasp. More than a few had the now-dreaded flowers attached to them, in every hue and shade. The roses were often inches away from the tip, where the plant started to thicken up noticeably. Every vine wraps over his body, spreading a thin, watery liquid as they explored him.

	It’s almost inevitable when one finds the gopher’s mouth. And when it does, Maurice is ready for it. He bites down on it, as hard is he can. He might not be smart, but he was determined to not make the same mistake twice. 

	The plant hardly cared, undamaged as it was. It does, however, retreat at the obvious sign of aggression. The act of defiance seeming to gain some reaction, Maurice starts fighting in earnest. He kicks and pulls with a childish desperation. The lower plants pay it no mind, content to start snaking their way into his underpants. The sensation of the warm plant rubbing it’s moist length against his little balls freezes him for just a second, but then redoubles his resistance. Still, it snakes itself between his thigh and balls and the feeling of it starting to push into his crack is cause for alarm. The gophers fuzzy arms try to grasp at the branches holding him, but finds only thorns that push deep into his tiny hands. He let’s go and twists as best he can to avoid the inevitable.

	When a vine does find his hole, it pushes in once before pulling back. Then again, as if to check for the offending teeth that had apparently hurt it’s counterpart, which was now rubbing over his nipples. The third push sees the vine that’s been sending tingles of thought through his leg decide to venture into him. It’s an utterly alien feeling to the ten-year-old gopher, how it slithers backwards through his body. He can feel how his muscles try to squeeze and push it out, but the strange moisture covering it seems to let it slide around inside him of it’s own accord. He can feel it pushing into him, but only a vague awareness that it’s inside of him gives him any idea what it’s doing. 

	When he feels a pressure against his cheek he decides to look backward. A rose on the penetrating vine had gotten itself caught against his briefs. The plant, apparently too afraid to damage the flower, had ceased it’s incursion. It pauses briefly before pulling back.The rest of the rose-covered vines were pulling back as well. He sighs an awkward relief. Something inside of him was still hurting, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with the indignity of them shoving roses up his butt. 

	But then, much to his chagrin. It hits something in him. He didn’t know what, but it felt… vaguely good. A little tingle of physical pleasure to hit his brain, stronger than the thoughts of the vines.  It floods out whatever alien message they were leaving to buzz in his skull.

	Puzzling that out, it’s a few seconds before he realizes that the plants are also acting with confusion. They’re now mostly sitting still. The next foreign thought he picks up with a horror as deep as he could imagine. He understood it for it’s simple, pure nature. That was their goal. 

	The vine still inside him pushes against the spot, gently. It rubs and kneads a strange pleasure out of whatever it had found. The feeling shoots like a wave from his behind to his little dick, which had rapidly grown stiff under the attention. From his dick it seems to cycle up to his head and down to his little paws. The strange moisture from the plants still rub against his soles, a few sliding in between his toes as they flex under the strangely pleasurable assault. 

	As if the one vine weren’t enough, every vine on his body starts to slither it’s way down to the gopher’s chubby behind. They push against his fat cheeks, sinking slightly in while they make their way to his hole. The first vine had been a strange feeling but the vast array that curved over his body, leaving his fur slick in their wake, pushing into him was terrifying. Every thin vine moves at it’s own pace to push against the little spike of pleasure his body had put inside him. They each stretch him more and more, pulling at his tight little ring that refuses to give up the fight against them. The squeeze itself carries it’s own startling sensations, like stretching a muscle that he didn’t even know he needed to. 

	They myriad appendages of the thing he couldn’t begin to comprehend each work him at their own pace as they search inside him. And in the fetid feeling of pleasure they build in his little body, he feels a thought form that is undeniably out of line with his own as he starts to realize exactly what was happening to him. “KING”

	With the culmination of their efforts riding the waves of pleasure through his body, he reaches a culmination of his own. It pushes out as a vast swell of feelings through his whole body. He curls himself in defense against it and feels how the wiggling vines slide out of his body in an orgasm that leaves him nearly blind and deaf to what’s going on around him. It swirls around his body as his dick spasms against his white briefs, a gentle droplet flowing from them unbeknownst to the cub. He’s left panting as a half-dozen smaller waves push him further into a post-orgasmic twilight. 

	In that state, almost unattached to himself, he feels the branches start to move him again. The leaves and petals and pollen of the world stick to his now wet fur as he’s pulled back through the rose that brought him here. They slide over his body, leaving smaller bits of rose in every shade stuck to his chubby body. He can hardly breathe in the space as he’s left winding between worlds.

	When he can breathe again, the rose is nowhere to be found. He looks himself over as he lays on the floor of his dining room next to a plastic cup of spilled milk. The hard, artificial light of the ceiling hurts makes Maurice’s fur glint with moisture sweaty, sure, but that might just be sweat. There weren’t even any leaves stuck to him. His butt does ache though, in a way that just wasn’t like any of the time he’d fallen on his behind in the past. Getting up, he does find a compelling bit of evidence against the previously-growing theory that he should just tell his mom he needed to see a doctor.

	“My name is Rose Bud! I’m your Arbitor!” The little creature would stand barely to chest height with the ten-year-old, were his legs not made of jelly at the moment. It’s face would be almost frog-like in appearance, were it not for the little leaves that gave it an almost scaly appearance. Atop it’s head stood a white rose waiting to bloom, easily as large as a grapefruit. Echoing that were the myriad of smaller roses across the impossible creatures back and long, lizard-like tail, the colors on them shifting slightly but staying mostly white. More distracting was the obvious vine, a much thicker copy of the ones he'd just become extremely familiar with, dangling between his legs rose-free. The strange hybrid of plant and animal smiles with a special wisdom and says, “And you are my King.”