One early morning along the quiet forest floor, a little mushroom popped it's head out of the ground. Looking in wonder, he pushed passed the dead leaves and dirt to reach for sunlight below the canopy.

"STOP!" said the forest. "You have been unruly. We have seen you try to grow with discord and disregard, denying the order. And what are you, alien? Identify as plant or animal!"

The little mushroom responded, "But I only did as you did; made a home. Like the rooted trees pillar in our leafy halls, as the moss nestles among the rocks, or how the birds nest in their hollows, why am I so different? I am both you and me."

The forest inhabitants pondered. In this time the mushroom grew and died. It took too long for the trees and the birds and the moss to agree by the time their fellow forest friend had passed.

The trees, too slow to interrupt, cried out to all, "What have we done?!  we may not have thought him as beautiful as the rest of us, but the mushroom was a part of this forest!"

As a parting token, the little fungi grew a network of strands below the trees roots to support them all, feeding and protecting them even in death.

With it's dying breath, it dropped it's spores, to which would grow bountiful among the forest floor, among the trees and the rocks and moss. They had not known it, but the little mushroom was a part of a greater fungi, miles across. It had been there as long as the forest, keeping the trees company since time began, before humans, before us.

Only the trees had the knowledge to understand the little mushroom, but their voices were too quiet, too slow. So the trees let the mushrooms grow in their branches and on their logs to give them a home.