by Iliev, Neven
She spoke with a voice so sweet that it could give someone a toothache. She reached up to the sides of her head with both hands and felt antlers growing out of it. Her fingers traced the signs of her adulthood to her vine-covered scalp and she gently ran her fingers through the hair-like vegetation dangling from it. Then, on some strange impulse, she patted herself. It made her unexpectedly happy, but also frustrated at the same time.
“Hmm? This isn’t quite right either.”
Her eyes drifted idly over the area, her high vantage point giving her an unobstructed view for kilometers around. Well, except for her trunk behind her and the lush canopy overhead. The ground underneath her shade was dominated by a sprawling city. Structures built out of wood, stone, and brick were densely packed around her protruding roots or dotted around her trunk. Various beings—both humanoid and not—milled about at a pointlessly rapid pace. This was of course, merely a matter of perspective, for that dryad spent several days staring idly into the distance without really noticing either the passage of time or the lives of those tiny and insignificant creatures.
She yawned mightily, causing her perception of time to rapidly accelerate to the point where her seconds were of the same length as those of the real world.
“Mhm, that’s better,” she said with a chipper voice.
She stretched her arms out, twisted her waist and squatted a few times to limber up her thoroughly dull body.
“Well then, I suppose I should see if any of the others are up yet.”
The dryad known as Birchis sank back into her branch, and appeared within a certain ‘safe’ space. It was inside her neighbor and sister’s trunk, yet still had fresh leaves and vines covering most of the walls and ceiling, while the floor was left bare and relatively flat.
“Lilly!” she called out. “Are you awake?!”
Slowly, but surely, another dryad rose from the ground. Her appearance was identical to that of Birchis in every conceivable way, apart from her thoroughly drowsy expression and vacant stare. The newly arrived dryad blinked a few times and yawned before her apparent sleepiness went away.
“Morning, Birchis. You’re up too?”
“Yup. I think it’s just you and me for the moment, though.”
“Haaaah,” Lilly yawned again. “Guess the others should be waking up soon too, huh?”
“Probably.”
“Then, shall we wait for them?”
“Might as well.”
The two sisters went to lay down on the floor, and two beds of soft grasses and leaves sprouted out of the hard and gnarled bark to provide comfort. The dryads just sort of lazed around for a few hours until Pinea, Castelia and Torenia showed up. They all greeted each other happily and the latter three took after the former two’s example and also laid down on improvised bedding.
“I have a nagging feeling that something’s wrong,” Pinea muttered.
“I was just thinking that.”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
“Same here.”
The others were quick to confirm they felt it as well. Something was, for lack of a better word, off. The quintuplets had ‘known’ each other for a mind-boggling amount of time, yet the silence that hung in that room was unnatural, awkward. The air in the room steadily shifted to a more thoughtful atmosphere, as the five dryads hummed and hawed in an effort to figure out what caused this anomaly. Though their shared, stunted growth likely left each of them dumber than the average dryad, there was nothing they couldn’t solve if they put their heads together.
“Now that I think about it,” Lilly spoke, “how come all of you decided to gather here. I mean, why my trunk, of all places?”
The others furrowed their brows trying to come up with a reason.
“It just… felt right, I guess?” Torenia offered.
“Yup, yup,” Castelia vigorously nodded her head.
“Hmm? Wait, did you two always get along this well?” Birchis asked.
“Why wouldn’t we?” the pair answered together.
“Wasn’t there something about sharing the sunlight being a problem?”
“But our branches and leaves are as intermingled as our roots by now, so that can’t possibly be the case,” Castelia stated with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“I guess so…”
“Besides,” she added, “Mister Sun shines down on all of us. His light and warmth are things that should… be… shared…”
Her voice gradually diminished as she realized the words that came out of her own mouth were somehow not her own.
“Oh? Castelia says some wise things, huh?” Lilly remarked. “I guess you learn a thing or two after being burned so badly, huh?”
“Burned?”
“Yeah. Didn’t your canopy get… Wait, what?”
No matter how one looked at Castelia, she was perfectly healthy and impossible to differentiate from her other siblings by sight alone.
“Come to think of it, how come we’re all lying on these beds?” Pinea spoke up next. “I mean it’s comfy but… it’s strange, isn’t it?”
The group once again went silent, as they sank deep into thought. The fragmented and deteriorated mementos of a distant past floated inside their minds. Trying to dredge up those lost memories was ultimately pointless, and their efforts only served to make them aware of an inexplicable void, a mysterious longing they couldn’t quite nail down. At the very least, there was progress, as they were finally able to pin down the nature of that unpleasant feeling they’ve all shared since waking up.
“Someone’s missing,” they spoke in unison while staring at the empty space in the middle of their five-pointed formation.
“I want to be patted on the head,” Birchis stated, and was met with many affirmative nods.
“I want to play with fuzzy leaves,” Lilly chimed in, much to the approval of her sisters.
“I want to take a nap in someone’s lap…” Torenia lamented, and the others understood her completely.
“I want to be hugged,” Pinea selfishly demanded, though none of the other quintuplets could fault her for it.
“I want to pop the blue things!” Castelia shouted, prompting a round of soft applause.
The impromptu dryad conference once again fell into silence. This one lasted for only a few seconds rather than the several days that the other lulls in the conversation had taken.
“Say, Lilly,” Pinea pointed at the wall opposite her. “What’s that?”
“Hmm? That’s my heartwood, silly.”
“No, I mean that. There’s something there, see?”
All of them turned their eyes towards where their sister was pointing. Lilly waved her hand and cleared some of the vegetation blocking the view, allowing them all to see the oddity that Pinea had spotted.
Carved into that dryad’s most precious place were a series of symbols. Although they looked like doodles and random scribbles, they were actually the letters of a language. A certain ancient tongue no mortal could decipher on their own, and was far older than any of those five ladies. Yet, they understood that writing’s meaning instantly.
‘Mummy loves you.’
“Mummy!” they screamed in unison.
Both happiness and sadness swelled up within them as the memories of those precious few days flooded back into their minds. How could they have forgotten? They were the ones that asked that relentlessly cheerful catgirl to leave those words behind in the first place. They would have undoubtedly burst into tears by now, if dryads were capable of such a thing.
And then the emotional burst of nostalgia steadily faded, giving way to a grim realization.
“That wasn’t our real mummy, was it?”
“Well, yeah. She wasn’t a dryad, or even an elf…”
“I don’t think she was a person at all, come to think of it.”
“She was really nice and kind to us, though…”
“Yeah. She played a lot with us even though she didn’t have to.”
&nb
sp; “Took care of us, too. Those blue things she gave us were delicious.”
“Hmm? That’s not how I remembered that bit.”
“Pinea has a point. It was the red juice inside the blue things that was the delicious part, right?”
“Yeah. There were plenty of white things that were the same on the inside of those shells.”
“But mummy said not to touch anything but the blue ones…”
“Wonder what was up with that.”
“Maybe the other ones weren’t ripe yet?”
“Oh! That makes sense!”
“Yup, yup, seems right!”
The quintuplets’ mood rose significantly as they let nostalgia overwhelm them once again. Even if they had grown physically, their mental state had barely moved on from their former, childish selves. A problem that would naturally correct itself with the passage of time, now that they were awake.
“I still think popping them was the best part though. Very fun.”
“I completely agree.”
“Personally, I think that game of ‘Catch’ was better.”
“Yeah! Throwing things was also fun!”
“I still want to play with something fuzzy though.”
The dryads chatted back and forth for a while, before they realized one of them had suddenly gone completely quiet.
“What’s wrong Castelia?” asked Torenia.
“I feel itchy,” she answered while scratching her midriff.
Those three simple words set off a cascade of complaints.
“Come to think of it, I feel quite itchy too.”
“Me too…”
“I don’t really itch, but some of my roots feels numb.”
“I’m totally fine, by the way.”
“Say, back then Birchis itched it was because of those stupid bugs, right?”
“Yeah!”
“Them again?!”
“Let’s go check!”
The five of them decided this was no time to mope around, and they immediately transported themselves through their intertwined roots and branches until they reached the source of Castelia’s itchiness. As expected, they found a bustling termite nest that was selfishly burrowing under her bark.
“Ugh!” groaned their victim. “Nasty, nasty things! Do not want!”
The cavity inside her own trunk instantly filled with dozens of thick, heavy vines that moved around like the tentacles of a giant octopus. Castelia tried crushing, smashing and entrapping those infuriating vermin, but failed to do much. The termites either squirmed or bit through her grasp, or outright evaded her whip-like attacks. She felt proud of herself after she finally managed to kill three, but then got depressed when she noticed there were thousands of them left.
“Ah, this is hopeless!” she despaired while pulling on her antlers as if she was trying to rip them out.
“It’s okay, sis! We’ll help!”
“Yeah! Let’s all work together!”
However, despite their enthusiasm, the total termite death tally after an entire day of work was around sixty. They tried everything their implanted knowledge provided them, including poisoning the air and flooding them out, but none of it worked. The quintuplets decided to momentarily retreat to the safe room inside Lilly and rethink their approach.
“Say, how did Birchis’s itching go away back then?” asked Pinea.
“Uhm… Mum- I mean, K- Kei? Kerira?” the dryad in question stammered.
“I think just calling her ‘mummy’ is fine.”
“I agree. Mummy is mummy. Anything else feels like an insult.”
“Besides, we never really asked for her name, so it’s pointless to try and remember it.”
“Yeah, don’t force yourself.”
“Ahem!” Birchis cleared her throat. “Okay, then. Mummy led some people inside my bark and they killed them all with f-fire.”
“Ugh…”
The others groaned in unison at hearing the f-word. Even if that element was somewhat of a natural enemy for them, they could easily deal with it given time. As long as it wasn’t dragon fire. Even the seemingly endlessly tenacious hylt trees couldn’t survive if repeatedly bombarded with that stuff. Few things could withstand the destructive breaths of those living calamities, after all.
The problem at hand was that those bugs probably reproduced at a rate where killing a mere sixty in a day didn’t even make a dent in their numbers. If they were going to try exterminating them, it needed to be done in one fell swoop. But ‘fire’ was out of the question since the dryads had no idea how to make it.
“We could try popping them,” Pinea suggested.
“That might work, but-”
“-they’re not blue.”
“So? We can still pop things even if they’re not blue, right?”
“Ah! That’s right!” the other four exclaimed in unison.
“But won’t mummy be mad?”
“I… don’t think mummy’s still around, Torenia.”
“Oh. Right…”
“I miss her so much…”
“Yeah…”
All of them solemnly stared at their feet as they grieved for that creature that had passed away by now. This sad scene was the reason why dryads tended to shy away from contact with the world at large. Getting overly attached to someone destined to die off long before they did would just result in a gaping wound in their metaphorical hearts. Thankfully for these five, they could console each other, which would help them get over their shared loss fairly easily. That would only come later, leaving the tree-ladies feeling very hurt indeed at the present.
“Well, if mummy’s not around, then we can do what we want, right?”
“Yeah, Lilly has a point! Let’s go pop those nasty things!”
“YEAAAH!”
The five of them returned to that crawling cavity and began focusing on the ‘needles.’ First, they opened long, narrow tunnels within the termite-infested timber. Inside those holes they formed thin, dense spears out of solid, polished Ironbark. The outcome was a weapon that could rival a Masterwork spear forged out of the finest steel. A spring-loaded mechanism, also made of Ironbark, was then added to the underside of it.
“Gnn, this is much harder to do than I remember,” complained Torenia.
“Really? I think it’s surprisingly easier this time around,” said Castelia with a casual tone.
“Of course, you do. We’re inside your trunk, dummy.”
“Tehehe! That’s right, isn’t it? Sorry, sis.”
“It’s fine so long as you understand.”
“Still, to come up with this sort of thing, mummy sure was amazing, huh?”
“Yup, yup!” came a chorus of affirmations and nods.
The dryads’ admiration of their ‘mummy’ was genuine. They knew they would have never figured out how to make those ‘needles’ all on their own. It had taken Boxxy’s unique perspective as a trap-loving, shapeshifting Artificer to design a simple-yet-effective mechanism that even juvenile dryads could build and use. After all, even if the process through which a dryad moved and deformed vegetation was mechanically different from a doppelganger’s shapeshifting, the end results were identical.
“Ugh… this is tiring,” Castelia complained after a while. “How many did you girls make yet?”
“Fifteen.”
“Eighteen.”
“Sixteen.”
“Four.”
Torenia hung her head in shame while Pinea gently did her best Keira impression by patting her on the head with a warm smile that said ‘there, there’ louder than any words. It was super effective, and her sister felt better right away.
“What about you, Castelia?” Lilly asked.
“I made sixty.”
“Wow. Talk about ‘home-ground advantage’ huh?”
“Okay. Let’s give this a try, shall we?” the over-performing dryad changed the subject.
“Yeaaah!”
Yet for all their enthusiasm and fist pumping, the plant ladies f
ound themselves briefly paralyzed with indecision.
“Uhm, how do we make sure we go at the same time without mummy here?”
Keira had been the one to coordinate their simultaneous attacks during the siege of Fort Yimin. The shapeshifter had insisted on doing so in an effort to instill horror and indecision in the Imperial troops. The plan had worked flawlessly, but the naive ‘daughters’ remained blissfully unaware of the insidious motivations behind ‘mummy’s’ instructions. From their perspective, it had all been part of the game.
“How about we just sing the song?”
“Oh! Good idea!”
The tune they referenced was something Boxxy had come up with while it was bored and had nothing better to do. The former mimic had always enjoyed the tasty sounds known as music. That had been part of the reason why it had, at one point, developed something of an obsession with making music boxes. This had naturally progressed to the creature idly composing songs inside its head as a sort of hobby. Just something it could do to pass the time when social obligations kept it from doing anything useful or tasty.
“But, uh, how did it go again?”
“Had something to do with stars, right?”
This particular piece had been inspired by the special date Keira and Rowana had gone on before the former shipped out to the front lines. The view of those shiny dots in the distance framed by the darkness of the hylt tree canopy had given the monster a new appreciation of the night sky.
“Ah! I remember now!” Birchis exclaimed.
She shared the centuries-old memory of that strange song with her sisters, which in turn caused their own minds to vividly recall it. After muttering among themselves for a while, they turned their attention to the swarming mass of insects far below them and lined up next to each other. They closed their eyes and opened their mouths, took deep breaths, then let their combined voices rise as one.
Twinkle, twinkle, shiny star,
How I wonder what you are,
Up above the world so high,
Just a shiny in the sky.
When the blasted sun is gone,
When the nothing shines upon,
Then you show your tasty light,
Shiny, shiny, all the night.
Then the traveler in the dark,
I will eat up like a shark,
