A Jaded Life

Once the people outside became impossible to ignore, we decided to go and meet them. Well, my plan was to let Luna do most of the socialising while I remained behind and kept an eye on things but I wasn’t quite sure if that would work. Sure, thanks to Luna’s rapid maturation and my hated, perpetual baby-face it wasn’t as easy to see that I was supposed to be the adult between us but the locals might notice regardless. The few subtle spells I used to keep my less-pleasant traits concealed increased the chance that I’d be overlooked but even with them, it was far from absolute. At least unless I completely concealed myself, in that case, I would be hidden but it wouldn’t be really polite.

Luckily, the forest was dense enough to block almost all light. At the beginning of my journey on Terra, I might have needed some additional precautions to protect myself from the Sun but by now, I was resilient enough that I could easily withstand a stray ray. And if there were more, I could quickly conjure a patch of Darkness to enshade me, giving me enough time to come up with something more substantial. And yet, despite knowing all that, I noticed that I instinctively stayed near the house, keeping myself in the dim shadow the solid stone was casting.

Studying the people around our house, I quickly realised that the locals weren’t interested in me. No, their interest was firmly fixated on Luna, to a point that was just a tad creepy, especially in the two male teenagers who apparently didn’t realise that Luna was still a child. Sure, a child with a body that had grown almost to the size of a teenager with a sharp mind hiding inside, but still a child. If they thought they could harbour any strange thoughts, I was quite willing to make sure those thoughts left them. Along with all other thoughts, anybody willing to entertain such thoughts about a child wasn’t worth the privilege of thinking in the first place. Or breathing.

But while some of the interest was a little too intense to let me be completely at ease, their overall focus on Luna wasn’t too bad and I quickly realised where it came from. The charge, and the discussion, was clearly led by two dryads, neither of them those we had seen in the night, further reinforcing the idea that there was something strange going on here, and their discussion was firmly focused on Nature Magic. Well, Life Magic in Luna’s case but at their level, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference. Nature Magic would allow them to get a deeper understanding of the interaction between living beings, predator and prey, that sort of thing, while Luna would stay above the usual squabbles of those living the Life her magic was focused on.

Essentially, they were exchanging ideas and tips about plants and their growth, making me wonder why neither of them was using animals or even something like a fungus. Maybe not something like the Withering Fungus we had encountered back home but I could easily imagine harnessing the unstructured growth of a fungus to create nearly any shape desired. Instead, it seemed that these people were focusing on normal, complex plants like trees, shrubs and grass while gently twisting them into shapes that they could work with. I couldn’t help but think that there were easier ways to go about doing things but maybe there was some logic to their actions. Maybe I should ask them later when there wasn’t a large crowd watching them and listening in.

“And who might you be?” one of the locals, a vaguely middle-aged man who had been listening to their discussion, had apparently noticed that I was watching and had decided to investigate. Amusingly, that first contact brought even more attention to me, and with attention came people who wanted to talk with me.

“Her mother, I decided to stay in the background and watch as the munchkin makes new friends,” I replied, my eyes never straying from Luna for too long. The look on the guy’s face was well worth the slightly glib response, it likely came far out of the left field for him.

“You don’t feel like her,” one of the others threw in, making me frown with disdain. Who were they to judge Luna and me?

“And yet, I’m the Mother,” I repeated myself, never noticing the bit of magic that escaped as I made my declaration. What I did notice was that the attention of both dryads suddenly shifted to me with a fair bit of intensity, while Luna stepped over to me, grabbing my hand.

“And I wouldn’t want it to be any different,” Luna added, her eyes almost daring those around us to say anything.

“Indeed,” I simply nodded, before focusing on the dryads, briefly going over the latest bit of their conversation so I could add my own thoughts. Sure, I was no Nature Mage but I had extensively travelled with a dryad using some of their unique skills, I had crushed the dryads of Tegi twice and I even had tried to enslave a pair of dryads. That last bit hadn’t quite worked out but I had a decent understanding of thier abilities, even before drawing on my own Death Magic to compare and contrast.

Their reactions to my obvious knowledge, despite the fact that my aura was about as far from Nature as one could get while remaining alive. That I was partially concealing myself had to make matters even worse, as they might feel the Darkness enshrouding me instead of what was hidden beneath that darkness. To them, it must feel almost as if there was a zombie amongst them, happily discussing the nature of Life, the Universe and all the rest.

Maybe it was a good thing that we had given our solemn promise to harm nobody unless we had to defend ourselves. These people seemed to have been told about that promise, or they naturally had a very passive and pacifist mindset, otherwise, I was fairly certain they would have attacked me. Maybe even Luna, but I doubted that one.

Soon, I managed to redirect the discussion from Nature and Life Magic to their circumstances, trying to figure out how they had ended up with multiple dryads and the people who were slowly transforming from humans to elves. Sadly, when my intent became obvious, the dryads seemed to shut down just a little, as if they were uncertain whether they should answer my questions.

Instead, they began to redirect the discussion but with both sides actively stalling the conversation we didn’t get all that far. Instead, I could feel a slightly strange presence approach us and just a little later, I could see the figure that presence belonged to.

It was almost amusing, once again, I could compare the figure to beings I had met on Mundus and quickly realise who, or rather what, I was dealing with. The most obvious similarity was to Adra and Callista, the two dryads we had met for a little longer, but the bigger similarity was to Callista. Where Adra had a certain lightness and liberty in her aura, this one was a lot more settled and staid. A bound dryad, then, somebody who had already found their tree and exchanged her essence with it, the dryad protecting the tree and the tree sheltering the dryad, a symbiosis that greatly increased a dryad’s power in exchange for her mobility. She could never move far from her tree and once the tree fell, she would have to take some incredibly radical actions to stay alive, to say nothing about preserving her power. In addition to those two, the presence reminded me of something else. It was a little strange when I had felt a similar presence, it had come from a massive sapling, right before we had destroyed it on Aletoma. Later I had learned that it hadn’t been just any old, overgrown tree but that it was a sapling of the World Tree, an attempt by the elves to expand their forest northward. It hadn’t worked but it was quite interesting that this dryad carried a similar aura. Sadly, or maybe luckily, I had only felt the actual World Tree through the Astral River while riding a high coming from Nidhög. otherwise, I might be able to understand more.

“Why, good afternoon. I have a feeling you are a lot more than you seem, could you enlighten a Traveller from far afield?” I asked, gently prodding to see if she was some sort of dryad Traveller who had taken on her legacy and used it in a fairly fascinating way.

“A Traveller you once were, now, you are so much more, oh Mother of Dragons. One day, you will be the one to bring down my tree. I would ask you to make it so that day is far, far in the future,” she replied, her voice strangely resonant in a way that didn’t seem to come from her body but from somewhere deeper within her. And where her voice was mildly odd, her words were completely strange, leaving me blinking in confusion as I tried to make sense of her words. Trying, being the operative word, trying and failing.