Forgiveness – Numair
"I beg your pardon, Madam!—this is entirely due to a misunderstanding. You see, I mistook you for someone else—an old friend. I am attempting to rectify a past mistake. I was somewhat hasty with my temper on a particular occasion and I have come to regret my actions."
The woman standing before him as he hurries to explain is as tall as Numair. She has long, slender legs and arms, skin weathered a deep, coarse brown by years of exposure to the sun, and masses of thick, tangled hair bleached to an ashy blond colour that looks pale green in a certain light.
There is quite a bit of skin on display; the woman is naked. Numair is trying to apologize while keeping his eyes somewhere beside her left ear.
The woman stands gracefully and her face is peaceful. Her dark eyes are appalled. She opens her mouth and the sound that comes out is like the wind rustling through hundreds of leaves in an angry thunderstorm.
"Of course I am going to turn you back," says Numair. "Just one moment." He raises a hand and says a short phrase whose syllables get swallowed up by the air almost before his mouth has finished making the sounds.
Thick-ridged brown bark sprouts on the woman's legs and encloses them, drawing them together. As quickly as a thought it spreads, rooting into the ground, traveling up her thighs and torso, swallowing her arms as she flings them upwards and freezing her fingers into stillness. A mass of green leaves decorate the tree where her hair used to be, rosy-red apples sitting here and there like jewels. The face of the woman is set into the trunk at head height. Instead of skin, ridges of bark protrude a little into her features. Only her deep eyes are the same. Numair speaks to her.
"I'm very sorry to have disturbed you, Madam, but it was an honest mistake. It's difficult for me to tell you apart. Do you think you might be able to help? You may have seen my friend. He'd be a tree past his first youth, quite handsome, a little twisted—"
The mouth opens and the tree whispers a disdainful reply, the breeze gently ruffling her leaves.
"Thank you," says Numair. "That's very helpful."
The dark eyes serenely ignore him. Numair wonders if perhaps she's embarrassed by the whole thing. He says a final word and the bark face melts smoothly into the rest of the trunk.
Numair walks a little further into the orchard and to the right. He stops in front of a tree that looks like all the others, except the apples it carries are a particularly toxic colour of yellow.
Numair beams. "Tristan!"