I Am A Carnivorous Plant

The little flashback movie I was watching started out by showing me mom and Lefrell’s backstories I guess. Just like mom had said, Lefrell was a half elf (although his other half was actually human this time), and just like Till, he wasn’t very appreciated by the full blood elves at all, to the point that he was basically bullied out of his town. He wandered through the forest looking for a new place to call home, and eventually stumbled upon a beautiful little village full of humans who had pledged themselves to the Spirit of the Forest. The humans accepted him super easily since he also worshiped the same Spirit or whatever, and he found a place in their community almost instantly. He was especially looked up to too, because he had quite the big pool of magic from his elven side, and was able to more than triple the growth time of their crops, and easily protect them from whatever predators wandered nearby. So yeah, he became quite the local hero I guess.

 

And then a little bit later my mom, Cythia, was born.

 

I could immediately see in these cute little flashback scenes that mom was a lot like me. The way she reacted to things and talked and learned stuff super fast and all of it; I was sure she must have been born with memories, just like me! But that wasn’t all she was born with~!

 

Mom, unlike most humans, had a wayyy larger than average pool of magic inside of her!

Hey, the perks of being reborn, am I right?

I’m sure mom must have thought she was the chosen one or something.

I know I would have~!

 

There were some people in the flashback who said that mom’s magic pool was so great, that it was even bigger than what an elf had. Lefrell heard about this obviously, since the community wasn’t really all that big, and being a half elf, he wondered if maybe this child he was hearing about was possibly a mixed breed like him, you know? Or maybe some kind of secret daughter that he didn't remember fathering or something. But he was mega disappointed when he learned that mom was a 100% organic human. Still, since he was the only one with a comparable magic pool to her, he was the one chosen to teach her how to use it, and the two of them ended up bonding that way. Mom spent even more time around Lefrell than she did with her new parents, to the point where they barely saw each other. Makes me wonder if she ever even really thought of them as her 'parents' at all, you know? Especially if she still had memories of the previous ones…

 

Then there was a flash forward! Mom was eleven years old now, and had gotten a bunch of recognition from everyone in the village for how strong and smart she was. She used a bunch of the stuff she knew from her past life memories to improve everybody’s day to day lives, and she’d even managed to fight off hordes of, goblins, orcs, and even the occasional bear, so she was basically everyone’s little savior. Lefrell was always right by her side, acting as her sidekick or teacher or whatever, so he got plenty of the run-off glory too. They were basically like the #1 unstoppable team in the village.

 

And then the animal people came.

 

By now the war against the Fire and Wind Spirits had already started up, but being just humans and being located decently far into the Forest Spirit’s territory, they’d barely heard anything about it. The group of around twenty animal people that they’d met were kind and friendly, and had a few injured people with them, so the villagers accepted them right away, following their age old tradition of helping anyone who came to them in need. But when the animal people said that they’d been kicked out from their home in the Wind Spirit’s territory and had no place to stay, and decided to join them in their small community and help them fix it up, the villagers were a bit apprehensive about it, since the animal people who were going to join them were the followers of a different Spirit. In the end, though, feeling pity for their sob stories or whatever, and feeling like it would be wrong to just toss them out on the street, the villagers decided to let them stay for a couple years until they were steady enough on their feet to go create their own village or something. And of course, the animal people totally went along with it, saying that they would gladly go when they were no longer wanted, and would spend their time in the village proving their worth and being as helpful as possible.

 

But this, as we know now, was a total freaking liiiiie!!!

 

I say that, but it wasn’t actually really a lie; I mean they basically did keep their word, in a way. After about two years of working together in the village and them helping out a bunch, the animal people really did move away and start a new village nearby, and the two villages remained quite friendly and would trade pretty often with each other… But it only took one year before the human village started realizing that the animal village was outgrowing them. The twenty animal guys who’d originally started the neighboring village had somehow grown quadruple-fold over the next few months, and the area they claimed as their own quickly expanded outwards. They kept a respectable distance away from mom’s village, of course, but as the scores of animal people kept flooding in, their village (really, I might as well say town by now) started encroaching on some of the other human villages that were scattered about the place as well.

 

Man, I never would have guessed it, but apparently this place used to be reeeeally full of humans and their little towns and villages!

 

…Well, I guess these humans we’ve been seeing in some of the Wind territory towns had to come from somewhere, right? Unless the animal people brought along their human friends with them when they invaded, the only other explanation is that they absorbed a bunch of them from their natural village habitats along the way while they conquered the Forest Spirit’s land.

 

But yeah, you can see where this is going; Eventually when the new town had taken everything else around them, mom’s home was obviously going to be next. The people in mom’s village could see it coming just as easily as you and I can see it, although maybe they noticed it a bit too late. And with the likelihood of being raided and forced from their way of life into an unknown future staring down at them, they decided to push mom and Lefrell forward as ‘negotiators’, because of course they freaking would.

 

Just the perks of being the strong ones, I guess.

I’m just happy they didn’t make my almost fifteen year old mom go alone, although knowing how all of this ends, it’s only really a lesser comfort.

 

Even though it was obvious to every side what was going to happen, the animal people were quite courteous to mom and her plus one, and they actually took her and Lefrell in without a single problem to negotiate about how things would go. Mom, having grown up in this life with plenty of people around her that she had to constantly talk to, impress, and at this point even quasi-lead, was wayyy better at this crap than I think I could ever be. But still, there’s only really so much you can say past ‘Please don’t kill or enslave us, we were kind to you once!’ in this sort of situation, isn’t there? Mom and Lefrell at least made it sound a bit better and less desperate than that, though, so they totally won a bunch of respect points from me there.

 

It was kinda as useless as you’d expect it to be though, because the response they got was basically ‘The fact that we didn’t raid you first was our thanks for your kindness’.

So yeah, that avenue definitely wasn’t going to work.

 

Mom, getting frustrated as the talks went on and becoming more and more aware that there wasn’t going to be anything she could do, angrily asked the animal person’s chief, the one that she’d once lived together in the same village with for two years, why he was doing this. And surprisingly, even though he didn’t have to, the town’s chief answered back with complete honesty and sincerity.

 

“You don’t seem to understand, Cythia... We’re not doing this because we’re war crazed maniacs, or because we like conquering places or people. We aren’t doing this to hurt anyone, but to save ourselves. The lands of the Wind territory are vast, but they’re infertile and arid. You might not know, but most of the Wind territory is actually covered with constantly shifting, inhospitable desert. The Wind Spirit may have been the one to create us, but most of us sadly aren’t a good match for that kind of environment. The livable, farmable areas are quickly getting filled up, and if we want a future for our people and our children to survive in, then we have no choice but to expand outward and find new places to live.”

 

He went on to explain that even though they’d had to fight and take over some of the neighboring villages, they’d given the humans they’d conquered fair homes and honest jobs in their towns, and no one had been mistreated or enslaved. And because mom’s village had been so kind as to give them a place to stay and get their bearings, the town chief wished to extend an offer of kindness towards them that they hadn't given to all the others.

 

So long as they came willingly, the town would open their doors and absorb them peacefully into their community, without any need to fight.

 

Mom, being the fighter that she and I both are, of course tried to object and say that they would fight for their right to keep their lands, but Lefrell quickly quieted her down and promised that they’d send their reply to the chief’s offer soon, and hurried the two of them out of the room and back to the village. Obviously mom got mad at him for what he’d done, but when she saw the grave look on his face like they’d almost fallen into a spike filled pit or something, mom shut up and listened to what he had to say.

 

“The war for the territories is coming closer and closer to us, Cythia. Why do you think they set up here, of all the possible places?!”

 

Mom just looked at him confused for a while, and seemed to stop herself from saying something stupid and childish back (like I totally would have), so Lefrell just sighed and continued what he’d been saying.

 

“They’re here because they were the scouting party! It won’t be too much longer before the Spirit of the Wind’s Avatar comes this way and claims this part of the territory for them! Even if the two of us have very strong magic, it would still be impossible to fight against the might of all the wild folk they have in that town of theirs… And it's absolutely pointless to think we would have any hope against the Avatar! There is no fighting this! We can’t! We won’t! We’re doomed!”

 

“…Then what would you have us do?! Just run away and hide somewhere and lose this land that our village has lived on for centuries?!”

 

“No, of course not, that’d be absolutely foolish… They’d just chase us down eventually. It’s only a matter of time! No-”

 

Lefrell leaned closer to mom and grabbed her hard by her shoulders, like he was going to shake her.

 

“We do what they said and take their stupid deal and live how they want us to live. It’s the only choice left to us that keeps the people that you love alive longer, Cythia.”

 

Mom may have had memories from her past life, but in this life she was only just barely fifteen. Nothing would have ever prepared her for such a crazy complicated choice. So she did what anyone would have done: She listened to the words of her mentor.

 

Was it right? Well, who can tell? Maybe I would have done things differently, but I’m also a mega powerful plant completely made for this exact kind of thing, and mom was just born as a simple but slightly more magically gifted human denizen of the forest. If I were in her shoes, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to make any different choices. But there’s still more to the story, and still more to watch. Maybe I should save whatever judgments I have on all of this for after I've seen it.

 

The scene playing on the screen skipped forward once again, and mom in all of her beautiful, fully grown glory was standing there next to Lefrell, looking across her people as they gathered before her inside of a slummy-looking section of the town.

 

Only this time, mom doesn’t look very happy.

And the people she led looked very much worse for wear.