tendril

But the Laugh Factory incident is but one tendril of Richards’ book, albeit an important one, tying into the dangerous high-wire act of performance in general and stand-up comedy in particular.

A tiny tendril of smoke curled out of it before the candle ignited.

A few painstaking moments later and he has freed his bounty—a small caterpillar perhaps an inch long, caked in earth with a reddish tendril of fungus sprouting from its head.

When the unrest reaches the neighborhood of tyrants, CNN calls it an “insurrection” and demands the full force of the federal government to quash every last tendril of dissent.

There, poking up through the soil, was a tiny green tendril.