Creating the Seam Part 2: Arboreal Prompt

Two tree angels with mommy issues reminisce about a willow with an enslaved space fungus.

The apothecia of this field of lichen, button-like, pulsed a series of neon purple lights — the time for naming was now. Seed-That-Stays had not moved from his spot in months, waiting for the light to return, to report when Avirāma was ready to generate again. Seed had been ready for over forty years.

He felt Bark-That-Listens approach before he saw her. She had taken her turn to rest and return her roots into Avirāma so that she may partake of the mycorrhizal network’s sustenance, its food and its social. A pataṅga still rested on her shoulder from her sleep, soft wings folded flat along its body, faintly glowing like flamelight. She had not brushed it off. When the apothecia purpled again, the pataṅga opened its wings and flew toward the light, drawn to the fungal organ as it pulsed. The lichen pulsed again. Seed looked to Bark.

“Avirāma is ready,” Seed said.

“For months I have been waiting to hear that. You have given this grove your life, Seed. It is time. Let us name your successor.”

“I have been waiting for over forty years to hear that.”

The pulses settled into repose, the purple making way for cerulean blue. And the world stopped for a moment. Around them the listening place gathered itself. The moss was damp from a rain three nights past. A kumuda lotus floated on a nearby pool, its petals still folded against the cold. A mūṣa mouse sleeping within a nest under one of Seed’s right arms opened an eye, twitched its whiskers, and curled its tail tighter around its furry little body. A ṣaṭpada beetle crossed the moss on its six careful legs, hard wing-cases catching the cerulean light, with the deliberation of a creature not wanting to be noticed. And above it, a baka heron called once and crossed the upper canopy with its long legs trailing behind. Heralds.

For a long time neither of them spoke.

The elm and the hazel stood close enough that their outer roots from their stumpen feet trailed toward each other in embrace.

“She should be a willow, like Dawn,” Seed said.

Bark did not answer at once. Dawn had been their janayitrī — their crèche guardian. She had raised them from rohiṇā sproutling, and had even watched both her darlings grow old themselves as aranyi, their bark hardening, their canopies wide, on the verge of their own pralina state — the ancient age where the body dissolves back into Avirāma. Seed had loved her from the very moment the tendrils of his roots touched hers. “But Dawn is not finished Descending, Seed. She went back to Avirāma’s training just forty years ago.”

“Yes,” he said. “Dawn.”

“You are sure.”

“She was our janayitrī. She chose us. She named us. There is no one else I can ask Avirāma to generate for the gardens. There could never be anyone else. The whole crèche owes her this.”

“I know.”

A pause. The baka did not call again.

“She would have liked this naming. Dawn would know how to ensure Avirāma crafted the best sproutling within her maker’s womb,” Bark said.

“Knowing Dawn, she would’ve tasked Avirāma with creating chains of forest, and we would have another Light-Through-Stone and her million creepy aspen eyes watching us all the time.”

“Which is why we are doing it and not her.”

“She would not have waited forty years.”

“She did not wait for anything. That is why I want her back.”

“For her,” Bark said. “And for the crèche.”

“For her. And for the crèche.”

Seed pushed his root tendrils down first.

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