[2-B] Dammit, I'm Mad!

Time was measured in rings. Rings around her center. Rings where she could breathe, where the sounds of insects soothed jagged nights and rain fell. Rings where cold set in and her life slipped away into the ground, fluttered down around her.

There had been one survivor. It was one of the younger trees, but not the youngest. Straight, medium height. Forgettable. But when the forest burned it sheltered her in its roots, deep in the cool dark earth. Protected her, like she protected the grove.

It hadn't escaped unscathed. The tree was scarred with great black streaks that ran up and down its trunk. It was weak, painfully weak, but it wasn't dead. That was the thing about plants. Nothing short of death itself could stop them from growing back.

Day by day, she could feel strength returning. It was painfully slow. Yang wasn't a tree, and she wasn't patient. She wanted to move, to do something, but for the longest time she couldn't even materialize. Her new Heart didn't mind the wait. Not even when when it was in pain, when the wounds the fire had left felt like they were still burning.

It was easier to focus on her Heart than herself. Her trees didn't get frustrated. They felt only quiet determination. Peace. Sometimes a twinge of soft, directionless sadness, like they were mourning for something but couldn't remember what it was. To her Heart, pain didn't matter. Frailty didn't matter. It was not dead, and it would heal. Whether that took months, years, or even decades, it didn't care.

Yang cared. She'd never been a good dryad. Sometimes the stillness and quiet was peaceful like it should be, but most times it was suffocating. When she'd expanded, nurturing her Heart's children, she'd reveled in the freedom to walk around the grove.

Now all that was gone, and she was trapped the way she used to be—half-dreaming inside her Heart, or poking her head out and watching the world go by, dynamic and chaotic and wonderful, and always out of reach.

Her Heart didn't see this as a setback the way she did. If it was lonely, she couldn't tell. It just knew that it was alive, and that it would grow. That soon its own children would spread all around it, and its children's children. The grove would return. It would die. Its body would nurture the grove. Yang would move on. To the tree, all these things might as well have been a few minutes away. They were certain.

Until, very suddenly, they weren't.

It took Yang a long time to figure out something was wrong. Rings went by, strength returned. Winter came, and it dwindled again. Then spring, and they would be rejuvenated. It was a constant upward spiral, until spring came and they didn't feel rejuvenated. The exhaustion of winter waned a little, then returned worse than ever.

Her Heart was patient. It was cautious. It was willing to endure until it recovered. But Yang was scared, impatient, and maybe a little reckless, so she summoned up energy she wasn't totally sure they could afford and poked her head out into the world.

Her trees were gone. She'd known they were, but part of her had expected to see them anyway. Worst of all was the gap where her Heart had been. Her Heart, and her biggest failure. All erased. But, at the same time, the landscape wasn't a barren wasteland of ash and charred wood. It was fresh and green. There were tufts of grass and blueberry bushes and young slender saplings, all bursting into life in the height of springtime. Everything looked young. New life. New beginnings. She thought she might have preferred the ashes.

Still. She wasn't here to mope. She craned her neck to look around—and just like that, the problem was obvious.

"Oh, come on. Mistletoe?!"

A strong tree could support a handful of the parasites, but her Heart was not a strong tree. Not yet. It needed every bit of energy it could muster, and here was this stupid vine sapping it all away. Worse, she couldn't reach it! Manifesting fully would probably kill her Heart outright. Before she'd had her grove she could only do it occasionally, and not for very long. Now, with her tree injured...

"Fantastic," she grumbled. "We survived a goddamn inferno and now we're going to get killed by a weed."

She pulled her head back inside. Had to save their energy. There was a chance, if they had really bountiful summers, that maybe they would pull through. She'd just have to wait it out.

So, that was what she tried to do. Anxiety became such a constant presence in the back of her mind that she couldn't remember what it had felt like to be without it. Her Heart was calm. It didn't fear death like she did—it was only part of the cycle. Yang really wished she could talk to someone who wasn't a tree.

She hadn't realized she'd become so dependent on conversation. It had been years—she wasn't sure how many, but probably more than most two-leggers lived—since she'd had someone to talk to every day. That was a wound that still hadn't healed. She'd just grown over it, like a tree grows over a notch with a knife still sticking out of it. She'd gotten used to the silence, and having long drawn-out discussions with confused rabbits. Then she had to take in a stray.

The first goodbye had been a brutal, wrenching blow that Yang had tried to play off. The second was, if anything, worse. By the third and fourth, she was used to it. It was only a phantom pain, a ghostly ache more for the fact that she did care, that it did hurt, than for the fact that Blake was leaving again. The main thing that got her through it each time was knowing that she'd come back.

She'd run away during the fire. That was just common sense—two-leggers were fragile and she couldn't have done much to help. At first Yang had hoped she'd made it out, that it was just a matter of time. But, if she hadn't come back by now... she probably couldn't. Not ever again.

Rings came and went. Usually Yang loved fights—an unwary woodsman wandering into her grove was one of the highlights of her last decade. This fight was different. Instead of adrenaline and action, it was all about endurance. Her Heart struggled, and she stayed very still so that she didn't leech energy from it. She cut off food supply to some branches she knew were infested. Sometimes she looked to check if the mistletoe had spread. It usually had.

Branches died. If she was lucky, they fell away and returned to the soil as nutrients her Heart could use. If she wasn't, they stayed there and weighed the tree down. It was a constant tug of war between her and the parasite. She was losing.

More rings. She was in the dark almost constantly. Sounds were muted. Awareness contracted to herself and her Heart. Her soul was leaking out, slowly but surely, leaving her sluggish and empty.

But if Yang and her Heart had anything in common, it was that they were both stubborn as hell. She hung on, culling the dying branches and extending root systems and halting all nonessential functions. She kept the leaves on the branches a little longer than was natural, praying that an early snowfall wouldn't kill them both. Her Heart bore it all with the same quiet patience. They turned a corner.

The mistletoe was still there, and would be for a while, but now they had the energy to support it. One spring, eighteen rings after the fire, her Heart bore its first nuts in a long, long time.

Yang could almost sense the same future her Heart did. A new grove, all descended from her old Heart, spreading over the valley floor. Farther, even. Before the fire, she'd been planning on expanding to the top of one of the two ridges on either side of them. If she couldn't travel the world, at least she could look at it.

So she spent one spring day in a dreamy half-sleep, listening as the night sounds started, her mind on the future. And, sometime around midnight, she heard footsteps.

She snapped back to full wakefulness. There was someone in her grove—though it wasn't really her grove anymore—someone coming from the stream to the south. The sounds were so quiet she almost thought she'd imagined them, but then they got closer and she was sure. She kept still. Sometimes hikers or hunters passed this way. Maybe it was just a lost kid.

Something touched the trunk of her Heart. She tensed, half-expecting a hatchet, but it wasn't steel.

"Yang? Are you there?"

There was a lurch, and for a second Yang was back in the roots of her Heart, drifting. Then she thrust her arm out, grabbing Blake by the wrist. She jerked back, startled, and hung there.

"You're alive," she murmured, reverently.

"So are you." Yang let go of Blake's arm. She was still reeling. The relief faded, and in its place she felt a surge of resentment. She was fine, this whole time.

"Yang, I—"

"Things have been kind of fuzzy, time-wise, but I'm guessing since you're wrinklier it's been a while."

"...Yeah."

She sighed. Explosively. "Great. Nice of you to check in."

Blake looked at the ground. "I know I should have come sooner..."

"Oh, really?"

"I... I'm sorry. I didn't think you were... then I saw the tree and I thought maybe—"

"Look, I don't want to hear it! I get that this was just a convenient place for you to crash, I knew you weren't going to stay, but a heads up to let me know you're alive after you disappear in the middle of a forest fire would've been nice."

"I'm sorry! I just..." She lurched, grabbing at the tree's trunk to steady herself. Her hand left a red smear on its bark. Yang had about half a second to stare before Blake tipped over, and she reached out and caught her on instinct. Then, very carefully, she lowered her to the ground between her Heart's roots.

"Damn it," she muttered.

A twig snapped somewhere nearby. Not a deer, either—only two-leggers made that much noise.

At the height of her power, with her grove behind her, she could have fought off the intruder. She could have grown the roots of her Heart over Blake to hide her. Now, weak as she was, she covered her with her body and hoped she blended in enough.

She heard footsteps nearby. Crunching leaves. A disapproving grunt. Then the footsteps receded, and Yang relaxed—though only a little. She went to work the moment the hunter was out of earshot. Maybe that wasn't wise, he might come back, but she had the sense that waiting might make staying hidden a moot point anyway.

There were things to be done, things she didn't really know how to do—though she'd had a lot of practice over the years. She wrapped the wound in leaves. She gathered whatever moss or soft grasses she could that were within arm's reach of her Heart, making Blake as comfortable as she could. And all the while she was conscious of a sick, leaden feeling in the back of her mind. She wasn't strong enough for this.

Nightfall left her slumped at the base of her Heart, the back of her head resting against its trunk. It was, as always, a solid and dependable presence. Blake was sleeping, or maybe unconscious. Yang didn't know enough about two-legger biology to tell the difference. All she knew was that the water in people was red, like in animals, and they died if they lost too much of it at once. Her trees, it seemed to her, had a much more sensible way of storing it.

Yang glanced down and saw that Blake was shivering in her sleep. Right, she thought. They also die if they get cold. That was true of her trees too, but there wasn't even frost on the ground. She glanced around. There was nothing to burn, and she didn't think she would have been able to face lighting a fire even if there was. She didn't have any body heat. That left... what?

Just then, she caught a glimpse of a doe standing a few dozen feet off, staring at her with liquid black eyes. Slowly, so that she wouldn't startle her, Yang reached up and tugged on one of her Heart's branches. It bent, bringing its lowest leaves within easy reach. The doe approached slowly, wary more of Blake than Yang.

"It's not free." The doe cocked her head, freezing in place at the noise. Yang pointed at Blake. "Can you lie down there?"

A lot of humans and faunus assumed she could talk to animals. That wasn't true, at least not the way they meant it. They did share a basic connection, but it was a pale shadow of what she had with her Heart. They usually got the gist of what she meant. Usually.

The doe kept staring at her. Then she extended her slender neck and regarded Blake through thick lashes. Her head tilted back towards Yang, incredulous.

"Yeah, I know. I'm an idiot."

With that admission, the doe came closer. She sniffed at the leaves Yang was offering, then edged nearer to Blake. Finally, she prodded her back with her nose. No reaction. The doe hesitated, then gave her another nudge. Still nothing. Satisfied, she trotted back to where Yang was holding the branch. She ate all that was offered, and finally lay down next to Blake. The shivering didn't stop, but it did seem like it had slowed down some.

Twice, Yang heard the sounds of people searching the woods, but they didn't come close enough to see anything. Finally, when it had been hours since she'd heard anything suspicious and it was so dark she doubted any human could navigate the forest, she collapsed back into her Heart and rested.

She emerged again when she felt a hand on the bark of her tree. Blake was slumped against the trunk, one hand pressed against the clumsy bandage around her middle. The doe was nowhere to be found—she had probably bolted when the faunus started to stir.

"What...?"

"You passed out. A few people came through the woods, but they didn't see you."

At that, Blake tried to sit up and hissed in pain. "I thought I'd lost them."

"It's okay," Yang insisted. She put her hands on her friends shoulders and gently discouraged her from doing something stupid like standing up. "They're gone now."

"But I—" Blake groaned and pulled her knees to her chest. "I swore I'd never—I shouldn't have come back here. I don't even know why I did, I just... I should go."

"Yeah." Yang leaned her elbows on her Heart's trunk and propped her chin on both fists. "'Cause you're in great shape for hiking right now."

Blake tried to argue with that. Yang just stared at her, one eyebrow raised, until she stopped. "There's a hole in you. Stay put."

At that, she finally gave up and leaned her back against the trunk of the tree. Then she glanced up, twisting her head around to look. "Is that..."

"The last one. Yeah."

Blake curled both arms around her middle and looked at her lap. "I'm sorry."

"It's not like you killed them," Yang pointed out. Even saying the words hurt. She tried not to think about her first Heart. The whole point of a dryad was a symbiotic relationship with the trees. They fed and sheltered her, she took care of them and shielded them from harm. Some guardian she turned out to be. Couldn't protect her trees, her Heart... or her sister.

"Yang?"

"Nothing," she said automatically. "Just lost in thought." Blake had curled up even tighter, and she wasn't making eye contact.

"I did," she murmured.

"Huh?"

"It was my fault. The fire... they were chasing me. I thought I lost them in the woods, but..." Yang froze. Slowly, she looked at Blake. Still staring at the ground.

"You know, I understood why you ran off," she gritted out. "It sucked, but there's not much else anyone can do against a fire like that. I only stuck around because I have to. But I figured you'd come back in a few days, once it was safe. And then I thought, hey, maybe you'll come around in a month, or a year."

"I thought about it," Blake said quietly, "but—"

"No!" Yang slapped her hand against the trunk of her Heart so hard that a few bits of bark flaked away. She winced. "No. You always came back here looking for a place to crash, and that was fine. All I ever asked was not to hurt the trees. Then that goes to hell, and you don't even check to see if I'd survived for over a decade?! I thought you were dead!"

Blake flinched. "I didn't think it was safe to come back. I told you I shouldn't have, I can just—"

"You're not going anywhere with that," Yang snapped, gesturing at her stomach. "You stay here until you heal up, one last time. And then you go away, and don't come back here. Understand?"

Whatever Blake tried to say came out as a croak. She nodded shakily.

"Good." Yang turned on her heel, then realized there was nowhere for her to go. She stalked back into her Heart, letting its calm wash over her.

I know you don't care, she thought at it. That's why I'm here. You don't know how to be angry at people who hurt you.

Yang stayed like that for a while, trying and failing to relax. She was only snapped out of it when she felt someone tapping gently on the trunk of her Heart. She stuck her head out.

"What?"

Blake bit her lip and looked at the ground. "I was wondering... do you have any more nuts?"

Yang took a deep breath. It didn't help. "No," she said shortly. "I don't. That was the last of them."

"I thought..." Blake glanced over at the tree. "I mean... they used to..."

"Yeah. Used to." Yang folded her arms. "It's still weak from the fire."

She looked at the scars on its bark and flinched. "Oh."

Both Yang's hands curled into fists, and she turned her head away while she tried to cool off. She spotted something on the ground and stooped down. A sprig of mistletoe had fallen.

Straightening up, she turned to face Blake and tucked the leaves behind her ear. Judging by the way her eyes widened and flicked to the upper branches, she recognized the plant.

"You two match," Yang said, and disappeared back into her Heart.

Sometime the next morning, Yang felt a twig snap. She threw herself out of her Heart's trunk in a panic and whirled around. Blake was in the upper branches. Slowly, she sifted through the leaves around her until she found what she was looking for. Another stick broke off, and she tossed it to the ground.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

Blake startled so badly she almost fell out of the tree. She grabbed a branch at the last second, but she pulled at her wound and crumpled against the trunk with a small, pained whimper. Then, slowly, her white-knuckled grip relaxed enough for her to look over her shoulder.

"There are dead branches up here. I... I've read they pull nutrients from the live ones."

Yang stared at her for a moment, mouth slightly open. Then, she squinted at her Heart's upper branches and realized that something was missing. Sure enough, the mistletoe vine lay in an undignified heap on the forest floor. She looked back at Blake, who was pale and a little shaky.

"Get down from there," she said. It came out harsher than she meant it to. She sighed. "Thank you, for that." She pointed at the parasite. "But leave the dead twigs alone. Snapping them off hurts, and I can stop giving them energy if I want."

Blake needed a hand getting down, and once she was back on the ground she leaned heavily against the tree. "I need food," she said. Then, seeing the look on Yang's face, she added hurriedly, "Not from you. I can forage for myself, I just..." She wobbled a bit. "I need a minute."

Yang sighed. "Look, just... take care of yourself, okay? Don't open that up again." She gestured at the cut on her stomach.

Blake bit her lip. "I—I'll go, if you want me to. But I was thinking, last night, and... you're right. I've been taking all this for granted, and I'd like to make it up to you if I can."

"...What?"

"Well, you told me once it can be hard for you to manifest. If you're running low on energy... I can walk around. Find things like fertilizer. I can climb other trees and move their branches so they don't block the sun."

"You... want to help."

Blake nodded.

"Fine." She had to force the word out. Blake's eyes lit up, which was almost as irritating being forced to accept help in the first place. She resented the idea that this was repayment, that it made things square. Things were not square.

At least she left Yang to stew when she went looking for food. She spent that time in her Heart. It was going to be hard keeping them alive even with someone else helping. Might as well start conserving energy.

Throughout that spring, Blake grew stronger and Yang spent more and more time hibernating. Her dreams turned sweet and sluggish as sap, and when she did manifest it was only to poke her head out and talk for a minute or two. Even that left her exhausted, but she could never resist the urge for long.

Fear kept convincing her that the next time she looked outside, she'd be alone. She never mentioned it out loud, but Blake started leaving a little pile of stones at the foot of her Heart whenever she had to go somewhere. By the time summer had baked the ground dry, Yang didn't have the energy to be suspicious. The rocks meant it was safe.

Time slipped by. It started slow, then picked up speed until whole months slipped through her fingers. She couldn't check on the outside world anymore. All her being was contained, dormant, in the steady green core of her Heart.

When Yang pulled herself together enough to manifest, she was greeted with a lush, blooming forest. The air was cool and misty, and the leaves were a vibrant yellow-green. Spring. Blake wasn't there, but the pile of stones was nestled between two roots. She relaxed and slipped back into dreams.

She started to feel like herself again in autumn. It wasn't the autumn she'd been dreading, the one leading up to the fateful winter. That one had passed. Her Heart had survived it, though she wasn't sure how until she saw it for herself.

The second winter started. Her Heart had already shed its leaves—she helped to regulate that, but it was usually wiser to let the trees handle it themselves. They had a better sense of when the weather would turn. She poked her head out one night, and everything was pitch black. No stars. In a sudden panic she thrust her arm out, and her fingers met canvas.

It's a windbreak.

On the ground she found a thin layer of broken twigs piled around her Heart's roots, protecting them from some of the cold. All techniques Yang herself used when winter rolled around, if one of her charges was sick or injured.

She had to wait until spring came around again to ask how Blake had known any of that. She admitted, with more than a little embarrassment, that she'd done research at the library between visits. Then she froze.

"What?"

Blake flushed. "Well, um... I thought paper might be a touchy subject?"

Yang rolled her eyes. "As long as you don't chop any of my trees down, I'm not gonna make a fuss." Especially since you probably saved my life. "And, y'know, recycle and all that."

Now that she was stronger, Yang noticed things she'd missed. Blake's clothes weren't new, but they also weren't bloodstained, so they couldn't be the ones she'd been wearing when she showed up. A curved longbow was propped up against a crude lean-to shelter made from deadfall. There was also a fire-pit, though it was ringed with a wall of stones and placed far away from any dry brush. Yang didn't complain, knowing how easily humans and faunus died without heat.

"You've been in town." She pointed at an iron skillet.

Blake nodded. "I did what I could out here, but I'm not that good at living off the land. Sometimes I had to spend a few weeks picking up odd jobs nearby, then come back with supplies. I always left stones, but I wasn't sure..."

"It's fine." Yang stepped out of the trunk, relishing the feeling of stretching her legs for the first time in over a year. She nudged a heap of canvas with her foot. "I'm guessing you didn't sew that yourself, so... can't complain."

Yang couldn't help herself. Over the next few weeks, she softened. She spent days fighting it, at first, trying to force herself to remember what had happened to her grove. Eventually, she gave up. It wasn't exactly forgiveness, but it was coexistence. Blake had saved her life, and even if she endangered it again... Yang couldn't find it in herself to care.

One summer afternoon, she emerged from her Heart and found a pile of rocks instead of Blake. She returned to her tree and waited. Stuck her head out. Waited some more. By the next morning she was sitting there, cross-legged, not caring that she was wasting energy.

By the morning after that, she was sure she wouldn't be back. Blake had gone on other shopping trips, and some of them had lasted over a week—but never unannounced. Yang glared at the heap of rocks (or what was left of it after she'd kicked it over). Running off was one thing, but leaving a sign that she was going to be right back? Stripping away the feeling of safety it had given her in the long months she'd spent, barely coherent, knowing that sign meant that it would be okay?

If she ever comes back, Yang decided, I'm going to punch her. No more apologies and second chances.

When Blake came back with a pronounced limp and a bandage around one arm, all her righteous fury evaporated. "What—?"

"I'm so sorry!" She stumbled over a root and let out a pained hiss. "I was going to be back sooner, but I couldn't walk on it until this morning."

"Oh."

Yang swallowed a rush of guilt for assuming the worst and knelt down to look at Blake's ankle. It wasn't sprained like she'd assumed. There was a long, clean cut, like from a blade.

"I can't stay," Blake said, as she lowered herself to the forest floor.

"What?"

Blake stared into her lap. "I got away, but they recognized me. They might come back here if I don't leave."

Yang remembered the acrid smell of smoke, reaching into the trees she cared for and killing them in a vain attempt to save the others. She nodded.

"I'm sorry. I really thought—I don't know. I've been stupid. I shouldn't come back, but... I probably will anyway." She picked at a loose thread in her shirt. "If... if that's okay with you?"

She should say no.

"Yeah."

Apparently they were both idiots.

"I wanted to stay long enough to plant the new nuts, but..."

"Probably not a good idea."

"Right."

Yang stood up and plucked one from a nearby branch. There were only eleven of them, an even smaller crop than the one from two years ago, but she thought she might get at least one strong sapling out of all this. It would be good to be able to move around more.

"I'm sorry," Blake said again. "For... for before. I didn't realize it was so hard for you to make these."

"It usually isn't," Yang pointed out. "And... honestly, the seeds don't matter much in the long run. I'll need to grow more trees eventually, but a few years here or there isn't that important."

"Isn't it? You almost died with that tree, if there were more of them..."

Yang grinned. "That's not why I plant them. I... it's stupid, but I always wanted to be able to plant one up on that hill." She pointed. "I'm stuck in a valley, so I don't know what it looks like on the other side. I figured I could grow that way until I got to the top. Get a view, y'know?"

"Right." Blake glanced around. Yang could see the moment that she recognized the place where her old Heart used to be. It was closer to the hill. "Oh."

"Yeah." Yang tried for a grin. "One step forward..."

"I could bring one of these up there," Blake said suddenly, holding up the nut she'd been examining.

Yang stared at her. "What happened to you needing to leave?"

"It wouldn't take long. It's... the least I can do, really."

Yang squinted up at the distant hilltop. "I'm not sure if it would work," she said eventually. "I might have to plant it for it to be connected to me."

"Have you ever tried before?"

She shrugged. "Never been anyone else around."

"It's up to you," Blake said, "but... I think it's worth a try."

Yang frowned, thinking. Then, slowly, "Nah."

Blake looked stricken for a moment. Yang reached out and closed her hand over the nut.

"If we're gonna experiment," she said, smirking, "might as well really push the limits, yeah? Find a safe spot somewhere else. Somewhere far away."

That earned her a small smile. "Okay."

Life went on. There were other nuts to plant, and soon they were sending up little green shoots. They were such tiny, fragile things. Of the ten she'd kept with her, three made it through the first winter. And the other... she thought she could sense it, a faint pull from somewhere far away, but it might have been her imagination.

The saplings grew until they were taller than she was, when she was manifested. Her sense of the other sharpened, until she could almost picture it when she closed her eyes.

It took a long time for the three new additions to her grove to grow large enough for her to walk into them as she did her Heart. By then there were already six other saplings—all of them offspring of the newest generation. Her Heart was still struggling, so she had told it to stop producing nuts. New bark was growing over the scars left by the fire, leaving only odd bumps.

Yang stepped into her Heart, her whole body vibrating with nervous excitement. She was sure the fourth seedling had survived. It felt different than her other trees—like her connection with it had been stretched and stretched until it had gone thin—but it was there. It was hers, and she reached for it.

When she stepped out of the trunk, the air was warmer. She stood frozen for a long moment, staring open-mouthed at a different forest than the one she'd lived in all her life. It was everything she'd ever wanted. Terror gripped her. She reached for her Heart, and relaxed when she realized she could still feel it. It was just distant, like the new tree had been. Steeling herself, she took her first step onto new soil.

The trees around her were mostly birches, with their bark flaking away in curly pale sheets. A fox watched her with wide black eyes. Part of her, a stupid part that had somehow despite everything expected Blake to be there, twinged painfully.

"Right," she said aloud, startling the fox. "I guess this makes us square." It did, it really did. The sun was on its way up in this forest, not setting like it was in hers. She'd moved, farther than any other dryad ever had.

She was left feeling strangely tense. Waiting for the gravity of the moment to hit her, for the soaring feeling she'd been expecting. Instead, there was the noise of the forest. Birds, insects. The fox sniffed at her curiously.

Yang heaved a sigh and turned to walk back into the tree. She stopped mid-stride, her foot poised over a small pile of stones. They were balanced between the new tree's roots, with larger rocks on top of smaller ones. Smiling, she sat cross-legged beside them. Waiting.

Okay, so this one... ehm... it was half the reason this story took so damn long to finish. Let's just say it used to have a completely different premise, then I ran into a brick wall while writing and decided to change it.

And if anyone's curious, the reference made was to The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. Y'know, that book that makes parents bawl their eyes out in front of their children.