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I quickly turned away; exhaling and closing my eyes tightly until they began to water. Then I started to blink rapidly to try to wash the pollen out. My eyes started to burn. I didn’t have anything to wipe my face with, so I had to somehow get to the river to wash it off completely.
I could feel some of it in my mouth and in the back of my throat and I coughed to try to clear in out.
This must have been the plant’s defence mechanism against hungry herbivores, and it turned out to be much more effective than I first thought. It didn’t just hurt my eyes, I started to feel disoriented. I turned frantically toward the sound of the water and started to walk slowly in that direction, with my hands stretched out in front of me. I was still blinking and found it increasingly difficult to kee
