Philiastra stomped her foot. “Ooh, that amazon trollop! I’ll get her back for this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She gave you a dead and mutilated piece of wood to carry around.”
“She gave it to me to help me learn new techniques.”
“No, she gave it to you to insult me. She knew exactly what she was doing.”
“You’re taking this awfully personally.”
As he walked off, she paused, staring at him in disbelief.
“You think I’m overreacting, don’t you?” she asked, running up alongside him.
He looked out at the ocean as they walked. “Long hard lessons have taught me never to accuse a female of overreacting.”
“But you do think I’m overreacting.”
“Absolutely.”
“I thought your wisdom told you never to say that!”
“I’m bad at taking advice, okay?”
“But it’s your advice.”
“Yeah, I need to work on that.”
She stomped her foot. “Doing this was your idea in the first place. Why did you even bring it up if all you wanted to do was feel up that amazon?”
They made their way to the lido deck, where many of the priestesses were sunbathing and practicing their fertility dances. Noticing Philiastra fuming as they walked by, more than a few of them tittered and whispered to one another.
“Now, you need to set your water clock for tonight,” Philiastra scolded. “There will be a lunar eclipse at three in the morning. The first eclipse is a very important time for a young tree.”
“Fine, fine.”
Climbing up to the observation tower, they came across a small greenhouse Storgen had built. He opened it up, revealing a planting pot with a tender little sapling inside.
Philiastra checked her sun clock in irritation. “The watering has to take place at the same time each day. Without a regular routine, the trees get anxiety and their leaves shrivel. Do you want their leaves to shrivel?”
“No, I don’t want that.”
Storgen took the watering pail he had made from an old can and gently sprinkled droplets onto the delicate little plant. “Ready for your exercises, little guy?”
Philiastra rolled up her sleeve and touched her arm bracelet, the magical device erupting in cool blue flame.
Storgen stood next to the tree and joined in, placing his hands on his hips. “All right, here we go. And left, and right…”
Storgen began to stretch back and forth. As Philiastra stretched out her hand, the little sapling followed along, bending back and forth, stretching out its leaves and twigs.
“All right, now double time! And left, and right…”
Philiastra grimaced, having difficulty keeping up with the faster pace.
“You’re falling behind, ladies.”
Sweat began to bead on her forehead. “Give me a break, this is really hard.”
“Come on, back on Dasikí Chará you grew full grown trees in the blink of an eye. You made the forest throw hundreds of tons of boulders.”
A drop of sweat rolled down her face. “That was different. Those were fully awakened trees; the whole forest was working with me towards a common goal, lending me their strength and experience. This little tree is still very young. She can’t even talk yet.”
The fire died out and Philiastra’s arm dropped in exhaustion. The tree stopped moving, it was now much taller and fuller than it had been before.
“I think that’s all I got for today,” Philiastra said, breathing hard as she rested her hands on her knees.
Storgen touched his brow and found it to be dry. “Man, I am never going to lose weight as this rate.”
“Not like you need to.”
Storgen lifted up his tunic and examined his toned and ribbed midsection. “I dunno, I’m worried all this cruise liner food will make me soft.”
One of the priestesses from the lito deck caught a glimpse of him and whistled.
“Hey, eyes up here!” he shouted back, pointing at his face.
Philiastra sat down next to the pot and touched her arm bracelet as she closed her eyes.
“Okay, Odelia says the next step is to apply dendrýllio oil to the leaves.”
“Right, got it,” Storgen said, fishing a small vial out of his bag.
“Here ya go.”
“That isn’t dendrýllio oil, it’s dendrýllio lotion.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“NO.”
“All right, all right.”
“Hurry, we’re falling behind the daily schedule.”
Storgen sprinted back down to his cabin, ignoring the giggles of the priestesses as he ran past them. By the time he got back to the observation deck, he was low on breath.
He found Philiastra sitting quietly with the pot in her lap, singing softly. It wasn’t so much words as notes, gentle motherly tones that soothed and caressed the tiny tree. There was something so natural about it, something so instinctively right, that he found himself watching quietly for a few moments. He couldn’t help but smile.
“Got your oil,” he said, placing a drop on each leaf and allowing it to soak in.
She nodded without opening her eyes, continuing to sing.
“Did Odelia suggest this?”
Philiastra nodded. “Normally, trees learn to talk from the rest of the forest, but she’s alone, so we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
He sat down, fascinated. “So, how does one teach a tree to talk?”
“It’s kind of hard to describe. Have you ever known what someone was thinking without them saying a word? Like, you see their expression, their body language, and you just know?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, trees can do that with their aura. Think of it like a kind of sign language, with simple words and ideas. Once they learn that, they can begin to learn how to actually link and share thoughts.”
“So, you can see their aura?”
“Yeah, obviously. As I sing, I’m flashing my aura, and she is learning to mimic with her own.”
She opened her eyes. “Wait, you can’t see her aura?”
Storgen shook his head.
“Seriously?”
“Why would I lie?”
She was flabbergasted. “Holy cow. So like, you don’t see anything right here?”
She held her hand over the top of the small tree. “Like, here, right now, nothing?”
“Should I?”
“Well, yeah.” Her eyes went wide. “Oh, wow, it’s no wonder humans are so thoughtless. All this time I thought they could see aural fire, but they just cut down the trees anyway. Now you don’t seem like such jerks to me.”
“Well, thank you, that’s…
“…more like oafish elephants, thoughtlessly stomping around, but not intentionally malicious.”
“You have such a way with words.”
“Thank you.”
Storgen scooted closer, and the tree gave off a small noise. It was very subtle, a twinkling of light, somewhere between a whistle and the tinkle of a bell.
Philiastra’s jaw fell open. “Oh my gosh. She just responded to you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, she recognized you,” she smiled brightly. “That’s amazing.”
“Oh, wow!”
“I didn’t even think that was possible with humans.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, your aura is so weak and dim compared to ours, it’s kind of easy to miss. But, I guess she’s spent so much time around you, she knows who you are.”
“That is so cool.”
Storgen found himself smiling so hard it made his cheeks a little sore. But he didn’t care. Something about the fact that this little tree recognized him made him feel indescribably wonderful inside.
He held out his hand over the small tree, and she made the sound again.
“Ah! She did it again!”
“I know, this
is amazing!”
“So, what is she saying?”
“Well, it’s not so much words at this point, as a want.”
“A want?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she is asking for more dendrýllio oil, and she associates you with it.”
“Wait, so you mean she considers me your manservant?”
Philiastra snickered. “Basically, yeah.”
Storgen gave her a stern look. Philiastra tried to hold it in, but the laughter broke out anyway.
“Okay, I’ll give her some more oil, but after her nap I expect you to have a talk with your little one about showing me some respect.”
“Yeah, okay, sure.”
Once the oil was applied, Storgen took the small tree and put her back inside the greenhouse.
Philiastra held out her hand. “Hey, hand me the portable meter. I want to check the PH level of the soil for the day.”
Storgen fished around for it. “Here ya go. Sheesh, this is complicated.”
She tapped the sigil and powered up the device. “Well, what did you think it would be like?”
He pulled out a pita and leaned back against the railing. “I dunno, I thought we’d just throw water on them every couple of hours.”
“Hmph. Would you like it if someone just randomly threw steaks and chocolate on you every couple of hours?”
He thought for a moment. “Actually, yeah, I would.”
“Fílos trees need stimulation, interaction, engagement.”
“Oh, I get it, almost like a person, right?”
He tossed her and sandwich and she caught it. “See, Storge, that is exactly the kind of attitude that makes humans so disliked.”
He took a bite and watched her as she put the copper probe into the soil. “You know, for someone who was raised among humans, by a human family, you sure seem to rag on them a lot.”
“Hey, I love my family, okay? My father took me in when I had no one. He gave me a home, he loved me with all his heart, like I was his own flesh and blood. My mom, too. Every good thing I have in my life is because of them.”
“Okay, so what about other humans?”
She shrugged. “It’s not that I don’t like humans. I mean, sure you’re pinkish and squishy and hairy, and you have this weird obsession with skin color.”
“Says the one who just used the word ‘pinkish.’”
She closed up the greenhouse and sat back. “After all this time I’m actually pretty comfortable around humans. It’s just that you have a season that is so different from my own. And it’s not just that you look different. You think different, you act different. You get bored soooo easily. You don’t appreciate how nice it is to just sit and let the wind run over you. You’re always so busy, you never take the time to just wriggle your toes in the sand and meditate silently for weeks.”
“It’s probably because we’d die if we tried it. Hunger and thirst are surprisingly effective motivators.”
She took a bite and thought. “And when it rains, you all go running inside. What’s up with that? When it rains you should run outside and let the rain fall on you.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound fun.”
“See? You humans make no sense. You love standing in showers and letting the water fall on you, so what’s the difference?”
He took out a water pouch and slurped some down. “Showers are warm. Rain is cold.”
“It’s not about temperature, it’s about feeling the droplets land on your leaves.” She closed her eyes and wriggled in delight. “It’s such a wonderful sensation, ticklish, but in a good way. It makes you feel calm, peaceful, serene.”
“Yeah, well I don’t have leaves, and having my clothes soaked in cold water would make me feel lots of things, but wonderful isn’t one of them.”
“See? That’s the other thing I don’t get. Your obsession with clothes.”
“Clothes?”
“Yes, it makes no sense.”
“Without our clothes we’d get cold and/or sunburned.”
“And yet you cut your hair and shave your bodies. That’s my point. You humans are always doing one thing to cover up another thing you do. The forest doesn’t work that way. The forest never acts without careful thought, and never retracts a decision once made.”
“So, what you’re saying is that the forest never forgives.”
Her eyes became sad, and she nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. You humans forgive each other. You believe in second chances, you believe in redemption. It’s one of the things I admire about you.”
“So, what’s the problem, then?”
“Well, it’s like windows.”
“Windows?”
“Yeah, windows. You humans spend all this time cutting holes in the walls to install windows so you can look out, but then you just cover them with curtains all the time. Why spend all that time making windows if you aren’t going to use them? Just leave it a bare wall and call it a day.”
“Perhaps we like keeping our options open.”
“You eat so much food you get fat, then you go out and exercise in order to get skinny. Just eat less food.”
“Don’t you work at a pastry shop?”
“Same thing with clothes. If you just grew out all your hair and stopped shaving, you wouldn’t suffer from the elements so much.”
“Now there is an image I didn’t expect to have in my head. So, let me ask you something, does wearing clothes make you uncomfortable?”
She looked down at her coveralls. “Not anymore. I’ve gotten used to it. But, you need to understand, they really don’t do anything for me. My kind are all but immune to the elements.”
He shielded his eyes from the sun. “That must be nice.”
She took a swig of water. “You’d think so, but boy, oh boy, did it cause problems when I was a kid. My poor mom and dad nearly had a heart attack every time I ran out to play…”
“Butt naked?”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “I was going to say ‘unencumbered with unnecessary articles,’ but yes.”
Storgen burst out laughing, nearly choking on his bite of sandwich.
“It’s not funny, Storge. It became such a problem my poor parents finally they had to sew me into an outfit so I couldn’t take it off. The stupid thing itched like crazy.”
Storgen began to laugh even harder. “Come on, you weren’t that young. You can’t tell me you didn’t understand it would make a fuss to go out in public without clothes on?”
She clucked her tongue. “It’s not that I didn’t understand, I think…I think I was acting out because I didn’t want to look like a human. It was like a way for me to assert myself and say, ‘hey, I’m not like you.’”
He wiped a growing tear from his eye. “Oh man, you were a nudist. A green nudist. I never would have guessed that about you.”
She sat forward. “I wasn’t a nudist!”
That made him laugh even harder. “Isn’t there a god for nudists? If not there should be. Nudista the Everfree or something.”
He laughed so hard she couldn’t help but get infected by it.
“Anyway, Mmister Storgen. Humans aren’t so different that I can’t follow along, but they are just different enough that I still don’t feel comfortable around them, even after all these years. I kind of have to be two people, I have my public face when I’m out amongst the humans, and then my private face when I’m alone.”
“Well, I hope you know you can be yourself around me.”
She smiled to herself. “Oh, I know. In fact, you’re probably the only human I can really relax around.”
“Thank you.”
“…I think it’s because, to me, you don’t really seem like a human. More like a pile of character flaws mashed into the shape of a human.”
“You say the sweetest things.”
She tapped her fingertips together. “The truth is, I’ve always felt like an outsider, even when I’m with my family. When I was younger, I used to think, ‘humans have been so
kind to me. Why can’t they be more like me?’ Then, as I got older, I realized the truth. The problem isn’t that they are not like me. The problem is that I am not like them. I guess you could say my feelings about humans are…complicated.”
She looked up at him earnestly. “But not with you.”
Storgen smiled, then looked away abashedly. She rarely saw him nervous, and she couldn’t help but smile at how cute he looked when he was.
“Hey Phili, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, taking a drink.
“Do you ever think that, if I didn’t have someone I was destined to be with, that you and I could have been more than just friends?”
She coughed and spit her water all over herself. “Holy crap, Storge!”
As the reality of what he had just asked her set in, her face blushed brighter and brighter, until she thought she might pass out.
“What, are you crazy?” she said in a panic. “You’re like my dumb big brother. There’s no way I could see you like that.”
Storgen looked away and forced himself to feign indifference. “Well, of course. I mean, yeah. I was just kidding, anyway.”
“Right,” she said nervously, looking away.
A shadow fell over them as Ambera’s airship returned. They watched in awkward silence as sailors grabbed the mooring lines, securing them to the steamship.
Storgen sighed and held up his water pouch in toast. “To friendship.”
“To friendship,” she said, conflicted.
They spent a long time together in thorny silence, letting the cool ocean breeze pass over them, watching the waves cresting lazily over the horizon, and both wondering if they really meant what they said.
Chapter Eighteen
Agadis largely rejects the strict codification of laws embraced in Erotan. In Agadis, might makes right and peace and security are achieved by joining a powerful familia for protection. The exception to this are territories owned by Jabez, godfather of justice. In his domains, theft, murder, and dishonesty are almost completely unheard of. The streets and roads may be walked freely at any time, and anyone giving their word can be counted on to keep it with perfect exactitude. This is because in his realms, all such crimes, from the most minor infraction to the greatest offense, all carry the same punishment, the only punishment Jabez ever administers. A slow painful death known as the moútro. An agonizing decay of open sores covering the skin, tongue, and eyeballs. So fearful are residents of Jabez’s cities, that the poor will starve to death rather than steal, and nobles frequently give away vast swaths of their possessions for fear that they might fall under Jabez’s somewhat nebulous definition of stealing. His temples are rarely visited, for what mortal in need can predict the judgments of a precocious deity? A starving factory worker asking for food may find himself gifted with food, but is just as likely to find that the factory owner has been cursed with moútro for not paying him enough, or find that he himself has been cursed along with his wife for having more children than they could afford to care for.
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