Title: Son of Trees
Characters: Spectre, Earth, Revolver||Ship: N/A
Words: 2,558/25,000||Chapters: 1/8
Genre: Drama, Friendship||Rated: G
Challenges: Diversity Writing, DM/5Ds/VRAINS, J4, 7-15 chapters; Word Count Set Camp, #37, 25,000
Notes: This was sparked by episode 75 of VRAINS. It contains no real spoilers for that, however. Spoilers of a sort may come in the future, however. I don't intend to update this until December at the earliest and I can't be certain even then.
Summary: Child of Earth, Spectre, searches for what was taken from him, tracing down the ferocious ogre no matter where he has to go.
As soon as he entered the town, Spectre shuddered, hands clenching into fists for a few seconds. He hated just the feel of being in this place. If he hadn't needed to be, then he wouldn't have been. He wouldn't have come anywhere near here.
He glanced around, hoping against hope that he would find some sort of hint as to where his target might possibly be. It wasn't that difficult to locate him, or so Spectre hoped.
Nothing. He held back the deepest of sighs, making his way through the crowds of people, trying not to openly flinch at the feeling of such dead earth beneath his feet. He didn't think he was doing a very good job of it, but there wasn't any other option. He had to be here to find Earth, and being in human ruled towns meant that the earth remained either dead or tamed all around him.
He pressed his lips together, moving through the people until he found a small alleyway, shadows gathered thick there.
Darkness wasn't his favorite element in the slightest, but it had its place, and he needed a few moments to himself. So long as he stayed out of their way, it would be better.
He stepped about halfway down the alley, to where the shadows hung thickest and deepest, and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall of one of the buildings. He didn't do any of the myriad of things that he could have done. Doing any of them in darkness could alert him as to what he was doing.
Spectre had no intentions of letting the Child of Darkness know that he searched for his partner. Yuusaku knew too much as it was.
He would have much preferred to reach out towards Ryouken-sama. Sensing the warm touch of his master's mind would put him at ease. But doing that, especially here of all places, would just make it all that much worse.
The earth he stood on wasn't any more alive than the earth out there, being trodden over by hundreds of feet on a daily basis, each one pressing more life out of the soil. He'd felt more dry, dead earth since his search began than he had anywhere else in all the world.
Which really wasn't all that surprising. He'd lived with the living earth for as long as he could remember.
He was, after all, the Child of Earth. That was why he'd been chosen. That was why Earth existed.
And that was why he would ensure that the ogre who took what was his would pay for it with his very life. That was the way it had always been, taught to him by the Treemother and by Ryouken-sama.
Spectre lived in a tree. Not in a treehouse or in a hollow tree. He knew of people who made their dwellings in places like that, but they weren't for him.
No, for as long as he could remember, when he wanted to go home and rest or perform whatever actions one did in one's home, he simply stepped into his tree, and there, in a place that no one could reach but him and anyone that he invited, he was.
Spectre lounged on a wide spread of deep green moss, several clearings over from his tree, on a morning when the sunlight shafted downward in columns of brilliant gold, and the sky arched overhead, all shades of brilliant blue. Flowers dotted in every direction, a myriad of colors beyond what mortal eyes could see.
Normal mortal eyes. Spectre didn't count as normal. He never had. Equally as long as he'd lived in his tree, he counted himself as the son of the Treemother, as did all the trees in the land.
On that day, he would have been perhaps six or seven, as humans counted time. Spectre didn't worry himself with how much time passed since he was born. He spent his days enjoying the sunshine, finding things to eat, and chatting with the Treemother.
The Treemother hadn't spoken for a time. Spectre – which wasn't his name then, he had no name by human terms – remained quiet himself, playing with the moss and wondering if he should go find himself something to eat.
The dryads helped him find what he could survive on. Dryads knew things about humans, more than he did. But they had centuries to learn and while he didn't count the seasons, he knew they'd been around much, much longer than he had.
Something felt off that day. Something that made him look around and up and there and yet no matter where he looked, he couldn't see anything that could explain why he wasn't comfortable right now.
Squirrels ran up and down the trees, gathering nuts or seeking out water. None of them seemed bothered by anything at all.
Nor did the birds, coursing here and there through the leaves, perching in their nests to check on their eggs.
Seeing all of nature so quiet and unconcerned made him want to rest. Surely nothing at all was wrong if they were all so quiet.
Or rather, it made him want to want to rest, like he would any other day. Try as he might, he couldn't relax enough to actually rest. Any time he started to do so, he jerked himself up again, staring around for whatever answer was hidden around where he couldn't see it.
The Treemother spoke.
Mortals come. Humans come.
For all that he spoke to her, babbling as the dryads taught him human speech, the Treemother seldom spoke back to him. The dryads told him this was not quite true.
"Trees are not like humans. Trees take time to do what they need to do. So when the Treemother speaks, she's been working on speaking for days and days."
Spectre wasn't entirely sure he understood that, but he knew what she said now, and he scrambled to his feet.
"Humans?"
He'd never met humans before. The dryads didn't let them come into the forest of the Treemother, with rare exceptions. He'd been told that he was one of those exceptions.
Child of Earth. Wind gusted through the Treemother's leaves and a branch caressed against the side of his face. Go with them. Fear not. You will return.
How long had the Treemother worked to speak those words where he could understand them? His heart beat faster just at the thought as he raised one hand to touch the branch.
"I don't want to go."
It will keep you safe.
The wind gusted again and from the heart of the Treemother there stepped the eldest of the dryads, tall and slim and with eyes of leaf-green. She was and wasn't the Treemother herself: the Treemother's spirit, given form that had no leaves of branches.
"They seek you out, little son," the dryad spoke, her words somewhat softer and quicker to form than the Treemother's. "They will not harm you: the earth will not allow it."
He shivered just at the words, though. "I don't want to go!" How could? Even if he didn't know how long he'd been here, this was the only place that he knew. Why would he ever want to go anywhere else?
Now her hand touched the other side of his head, as warm and caring as the branch itself. "We know. We don't want you to go. You are ours. We are yours. What is ours, we send away only because we must. Because we have no choice."
"But why don't you?" He wanted to know, hands gripping together. "Why do I have to leave?" He wanted answers.
What he got was the dryad turning him towards the pathway out. "True mortals must never enter here," she told him, voice quiet and reassuring. "You must go to them."
He could not have said how much he didn't want to go. This was his home. This would always be his home.
And yet the Treemother wished him to leave. He couldn't understand why. Being told it was necessary, that he just had to go, that people wanted him, those were things he'd never heard before.
The idea of being wanted, by humans at least, wasn't one that he'd ever thought about before. He'd been told so little about whatever humans brought him here. He was the Child of Earth, he'd been told, and so he had been brought here when nothing more than a baby. This was where he belonged.
But how can I belong here if Treemother's sending me away? That didn't make sense. He couldn't imagine how it could, or even if it should. He might not be a dryad, but he belonged here. He lived here with them.
He wasn't certain of when he crossed the threshold from the inner clearing to the outer woods. He wasn't often allowed out there to begin with, and only when several of the dryads of the inner clearing came with him. They were not as old as the Treemother's dryad, but they were old and wise and knew how to watch over him.
And none of them were here now. Only the Treemother's dryad remained, one hand on his shoulder, guiding him until he could hear voices.
Those weren't dryad voices, speaking in the whispers of the wind on the leaves and the growth of the branches, the song of moonshine and starlight. Nor were they dryad voices that spoke in the language of man, accented in ways that sounded a mixture of strange and familiar.
These voices were different in other ways, and he shuddered at how heavy and thick and rough they sounded.
But then another one spoke, and that voice caught deeply at his heart. Light and soft and gentle, much like the voice of a dryad and different at the same time. He didn't have the words to describe it, but he wanted to hear whoever had that voice, to meet them and see what they were like.
The voice sounded like the patter of rain on the leaves, like the wind tossing the clouds this way and that, with a hint of lightning and the faintest growl of thunder.
A storm spirit? Was that a storm spirit? What was one of those doing with humans?
Without paying much attention, he moved forward, caught by the thought of meeting a storm spirit. He'd never done that before. He'd seen them dancing in the skies, leaping from cloud to cloud, bringing in the weather, but he'd never talked to one. The dryads and the Treemother told him that storm spirits seldom spoke to those who walked the land. It hadn't happened in centuries, at least not around here.
But now he walked, searching for whoever and wherever this storm spirit could be.
He had to cross two clearings before he saw them. Despite how small he was, he managed to cross the clearings and make it through over the mossy branches and roots without that much effort. He'd done it before, so many times.
Between one moment and the next, he saw them. He saw him.
Human or storm spirit, he stood ethereal in the afternoon sunshine, hair like woven moonlight, eyes of gray mist…
There were others with him. Four or five humans, none of which the tree's son paid much attention to. He stepped out of the circle of trees, his eyes on the one who so resembled a storm spirit.
That one turned and their eyes met. Both stepped towards one another. The tree's son couldn't remember ever having seen someone that called to him so clearly and yet without a single word being spoken.
But then that boy did speak, and he frowned. The words didn't make any sense to him. They sounded like human speech, but they weren't any speech that he actually knew.
Wind blew and with it came the words of the Treemother's dryad.
You will have to learn to speak their language. They are from far away. Be safe, my son.
A thousand memories flooded through him, from the first days he'd been able to recognize the dryads and the Treemother, when he'd learned to speak in their tongue, when they taught him how to walk into trees to live in the places beyond the bark…
And each of those memories tucked themselves in the back of his mind, where he could find them when he needed them, but not now, not when he stared into this stranger's eyes.
He swallowed. He held his hand out to the stranger, quivering from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He breathed a little faster, waiting, his heart easing slowly when the other reached out and touched his hand.
"Ryouken." A single word, but this time, he thought he understood it a little more, especially as the other waved one hand to himself. Then he reached out toward the tree's son, head tilted.
He wants to know my name. But he had no name. What the trees and the dryads and the Treemother called him wasn't a name, it was what he was: the Child of Earth, their son.
One of the others with the storm spirit – with Ryouken – offered a hand to the tree's son. This one looked a little like the dryads, though not all the way like. He decided that this was a 'she', like they were.
All the others were probably 'hes'. He wasn't sure, but he guessed from how they looked. All of them smiled at him, looking happy to see him. Ryouken gently tugged him along and led him through the woods, towards a path he'd known about but very seldom followed.
The path, he'd been told by the dryads, led out of the forest and into the lands of men. He'd never wanted to go there; there'd never been a reason or a need. There was just too much for him to see and do in his part of the forest. Maybe one day he would have wanted to go down that path.
Only that day became this day, since there was a thing of some time, with four legged hornless deer tied to it, that they led him to. Ryouken grabbed hold of part of the thing and pulled it, showing that part of it came open, sort of like broken bark. Inside there were places to sit, as soft or softer than the moss, and he worked himself in there next to Ryouken.
Once they were all in, an order of some kind must have been given, because the device started to move. He gripped onto the strange not-moss beneath him, only eased a little by Ryouken's grip on his hand, and wondered what was going to happen next, and when he would be able to go home again.
Spectre opened his eyes, a little more centered than he had been. He didn't like this place any better but how he could walk here without running a risk of losing his temper.
Ryouken-sama wouldn't like it if you did that, he reminded himself. He squared his shoulders, stepped out of the alleyway, and caught the attention of the first not otherwise occupied person that he saw.
"Have you seen an ogre coming this way?"
To Be Continued
Notes: I will detail out this world's version of the Lost Incident in future chapters. Things were different, for many reasons.
So, next time adult!Spectre searches more for his Earth and young!Spectre gets his name. And starts learning to speak their language. Also, Spectre and Earth will get a better ending here than episode 75 indicates.