Dark offered to help, but King has no more time for that man's lies. They're his trees, he doesn't need anyone's help to find them.
There's always been something just beneath his skin trying to draw him outside, but King has always assumed it's from living indoors which has always seemed unnatural to him. It's so confining and boxed in and horrible. The air isn't fresh and it's recycled and tastes dead. He's always just ignored it because he couldn't do anything about it, but this time he follows it.
The feeling leads him back to the park where he'd last seen his trees. It's less than a third of the size it used to be, a large portion of it bulldozed for new buildings just as he'd expected but there's some of it left and as he follows the draw, it leads him to the small green space left in amongst all these grey buildings.
It's like a tingling as he gets closer, like a kid waiting for Christmas, or their birthday, or the Jims finding one of their news stories. A raising in anticipation that just runs up and down his spine and draws a smile from him without him meaning it to.
Not all of these are from his forest, and he walks past the ones that aren't his without even thinking to stop. There's maybe five of his trees here, it's a little hard to tell since they're clustered together but there's one that King has his eyes on now and he knows, he knows that it's his.
Marching almost right up to it, he stops short and looks at it. He can feel it. That tingling is almost like his heart is doing backflips right now and he feels so much more complete than he has in years. Carefully, he reaches forward, a little scared in case he's wrong, in case he's reading meaning into indigestion, but the second his fingertips brush against the bark he knows.
A brisk wind blows around his legs and a chill runs up his spine, along his arms and swirls around his head as tears form in the corners of his eyes. This is a part of his forest. It isn't dead. Stepping forward, he shifts, bowing his head so he can rest his forehead against the bark feeling that connection to it immediately. It's here. It's been here, waiting for him.
The tears begin to spill and he doesn't care. It's just so…. He thought it was dead. He thought that the few small remnants of what used to span for miles around were destroyed because that's what was going to happen when he left. That's what Dark had said. Yet here it is, under his fingertips that gently run over the coarse bark in utter disbelief.
Beneath the relief, there are the seeds of guilt as he looks over his tree, over all the trees, and sees where people have cut at them. One of the trees has one of those gaudy 'someone 4 someone' messages carved into it and King wishes he had been there to stop that from happening, but he can't let himself get distracted, not right now.
It takes a while but King eventually identifies six trees as being from his forest and he makes the call. Dark tells him to stay there. that Wilford is coming, and he is more than aware of the importance of this intended cargo.
"Don't be afraid to get mad at him if he's doing something wrong." Dark instructs before the call ends.
All that's left to do is wait.
Bing yells as he's shaken awake and as he sits up, he barely has time to register the Jims before they grab his arms and all but lift him from his bed and begin to drag him through the corridors.
All questions as to what in the actual frick are ignored, both of them grinning a storm as they lead him outside to what passes as the building's garden. It used to be kind of small and nothing to write home about but overnight it looked like it had grown over three times bigger to accommodate the new trees that stood pretty dang tall.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Bing walks over to the trees in disbelief. They had definitely not been there the day before. Definitely a hundred percent new and Dark didn't let anything not important take up residence on this property. King must have found them.
The Jims babble excitedly, having set up their camera and mic ready to film a report. Apparently, being the best friend of the suspected bringer of the trees made him the perfect interviewing subject. Of course Bing agrees to be interviewed but asks that next time something like this occurs, that they at least give him a chance to change out of his jammies.