Leaf never told his friends why his family called him Leaf, though he thought Jack, as another Forest-boy, could probably guess. Forest folk liked to liken each other to plants - shooting up like a sapling, berry-bright eyes, flowers blooming in your lips and cheeks, moss-soft skin and hair (and hands, palms open and giving, and souls, ready to offer warmth, friendship, kindness). When you lived among towering trees you understood these things. This was the world they moved in, and it held meanings those outside the Forest couldn't see. There was a whole language hidden in the names of trees, flowers, describing what those who saw you saw in you.
'Got deep roots' meant you were grounded, steady, dug deep into your own life, while 'wide roots' meant you had links, a community spilling out around you. Rupert, Leaf thought, had wide roots - until he met Sez, and realised he had maybe never actually met anyone with wide roots before. Later he would learn things he'd never known about trees and plants, even from a lifetime in the Forest, and realise that Sez was nothing to do with wide roots; Sez was the fungal network that spreads throughout the forest, linking tree to tree and forming a vast web of filaments and threads that can spread for miles with only the occasional discreet, easily overlooked aboveground presence.
When Grey mentioned that Jack's family nickname was Beanstalk, it told Leaf more about their tall friend than Grey guessed.
They called Jack a Beanstalk for his growth - his height, a little, but more for his soul. The Farris family may not all have understood, but they could see him growing up and reaching outward every day. Jack's family watched him grow (slowly, but steadily. They wouldn't be there to watch him shoot up at last) and called him Beanstalk. He was getting taller, inches of height as he got older and a few more when he finally stopped stooping and stood tall. He was growing, knowledge and ideas and dreams, reaching for something bigger and brighter than himself, not caring if he got burned.
The Beanstalk grows. So do leaves, but that wasn't quite it - or not quite all of it. The leaf grows, but it reaches for the sun not by getting taller, but by turning it's face to the light and drinking it in. Leaf swallowed kindnesses, turned to the people who offered them, and opened his heart wide with a smile.
They had a classmate who'd long ago been nicknamed Weeds, because he was gangly and thin. Leaf thought in quiet moments about all the meanings the Forest-folk would read into that, thought about plants that seem to be impossible to get rid of, hardy things that only needed the barest toe-hold to spread back through a garden the moment your back was turned, impossible to break. He listened to Weeds murmur stumbling, self-conscious, deep-seated doubts about his own worth, about whether he fit in, belonged, and thought about how weed outside of the Forest was really just a word for a plant you didn't want to grow in a certain place (but which grew without needing your approval).
He thought about leaves, about new growth every year and reaching for things that were warmer and better. He thought about the first signs of spring and the crunch underfoot in autumn, and about realising that his family weren't entirely sure whether they were seeing a strength or a flaw. Leaves turn to the sun - but they wither with the first frost. The new leaves you see next spring aren't the ones from the end of summer. Those have withered and died, falling in a blaze of colour.
Leaf had thought and thought about that, and decided that if he ever fell it would certainly be colourful.
Heather has a plant name too, and he thinks it suits her - or maybe she suits it, grown into it as surely as if her parents had scattered the seeds in her heart. Pretty - soft purple flowers and dusky grey leaves - and (or perhaps because of this) easy to overlook, but upon inspection hardy, tough, a plant that grew over exposed moors and rocky outcrops. Heather was one of those plants that you didn't really find in the Forest, but Leaf knew enough to know it was the landscape; imagining heathland without heather was like a forest without trees. It was something you noticed when it wasn't there, or in golden moments when it caught the light just right and filled the world. Heather bobbed around the outskirts of groups, got into passionate debates with Gloria, turned up to training sessions with a glint in her eye and mud under her nails from digging up some interesting plant. Leaf made a point of noticing her presence, because he thought it would be easy to overlook her until she was gone as well, and noticing someone's absence isn't the same as seeing them when they're there.
Leaf makes a point of noticing because he thinks maybe he's the same: one leaf out of many is easy to overlook. On bad days he wonders whether if he disappears people would notice him by his absence, or if he would be just one interchangeable face in the crowd. Leaf makes a point of noticing everyone, giving everyone a chance, inviting everyone into his life, because the other thing about leaves is that you generally need more than one. Leaf is a leaf because he's has to be part of something bigger than just himself, needs to be part of a group working for something.
After months of friendship, bruises and battles and easily diverted study sessions, Red asks what's with the plant names. Leaf tries to get the gist of it across, without going into detail. Some things seem personal, even when they're wrapped up in someone's very name, and some things you perhaps need to be from the Forest to fully understand. Red nods and smiles, and after a quiet moment of eating his share of the chips they're sharing at Sally-Ann's looks up again.
"So, what would my meaningful Forest nickname be?" Leaf thinks about plants from the sea, about plants that withstand whatever is thrown at them, about people who are always there, who always come back when you think they're gone (and about how sometimes the meaning isn't what you're certain of but what you hope is true), then answers solemnly:
"Seaweed."
Just for that, Red steals the basket of chips and eats every last one, holding them high out of Leaf's laughing reach.