Once upon a time, there once was a tree that grew with purple flowers. It did not grow alone. It grew under the shelter of strangers, kind and cruel, friends, and family. It grew from weakness into strength., basked in the golden glow of their love. And it grew to remember another story:
Once upon a time, he had been Seed. Once upon a time, he had lived, abandoned his life for a new one, grown a while, found family and friends and lovers, some he lost and some who remained, and died. But what could the little tree do? The body that lay tangled at its roots was not one the tree could convince to move again.

And then its elders knew what to do. They saw the spell the gods had cast and the kindness of the scurrying forms below. And they knew what the little tree had wished, what it had always wished. And so…They took their roots and reached down to the mangled, slightly burned, and somewhat decayed body at the core of the sapling. They tugged the sapling’s roots towards it again, pulling it around the body that it had once belonged to.
”It can be healed.” “It can.” “It can.” “Heal.”
And the sapling took the words and the feelings the deer had given it, and the trees of the wood and the little sapling that was once a deer began to work. Where the body was damaged, wood grew from its (for when was Seed’s body ever a he? Seed’s heart was a he; the gods didn’t care much for the difference) bones to fortify it. The trees covered the wounds with wood and moss and stirred the organs with life.
And at last, they said to the sapling,
”Go. Go. Fill it with your life again.”

And the little sapling grew down from the surface. Life bloomed from the dead wood, bloomed from its antlers, sparked from its blood as the color returned to its magical skin, flickered effervescent fro its golden eyes.

He lived.

Seed awoke in darkness, in blackness, in lung-crushing soil surrounding him, trying to rush into every space – his gaping mouth, his fluttering eyelashes, the stirring of his limbs as he tried to understand what just happened.

He did not try long – Seed pushed desperately up a small channel, widening it with shakes of his antlers. Something about it…Seemed to him like the path of roots. It felt fuzzy, like a dream. Eventually he reached air. Light. Sun. He felt sun on his back for the first time in several weeks.

”You OK, sugar?”
The oak’s voice descended from above. Seed breathed too heavily to think for a while.

”I-I think so. Maybe. I…had the strangest dream. I…died. And was a tree again, but I wasn’t exactly...” The events of the past few weeks swam in and out of focus. He looked up at the trees. ”Why was I in that hole?”
”You may have….Been momentarily life-impaired there, honey.”
”She means you died.” “You died.” “Died.” Seed blinked. “There was silly deer-blood all over the place, and your bones made many interesting noises as we planted you in the manner of flesh-creatures.”

A long pause expanded outward between tree and deer.
”And now I’m alive.” The words came out as if they were completely alien to Seed.
”You are a resident of this forest.” ”A resident of this forest.” “This forest.”
At this, Seed smiled wistfully. He had always said it – but maybe some little bit of him had stopped believing it.
”You’re right…This isn’t a place for death.”

Seed took a few more deep breaths, relishing the feeling of air filling his lungs. Yes. He was alive…He was alive because he was Seed. Because whatever could be said of him…He mattered. He was Seed, and Seed was a thing that people had felt needed to exist. He couldn’t really remember the rest – his thoughts couldn’t quite order themselves back into deer-thoughts to get the memories straight – but he remembered that.

Compared to that memory, being a hero, or some sort of half-demon war god – amazing and somehow replacable – seemed silly and fragile, and hardly worth the effort.
“…Ok. Drink first. Then maybe I’ll take a moment to inform my loved ones I’ve returned to this veil of tears, and then…Then I still have business to take care of.”
Seed trotted towards the lake, the trees scrambling their branches as he passed.

”WHAT?!”

Seed laughed softly.
”Don’t worry. I’m not going to do that again. I’m not a fighter.” He shook his head as he reached the willows by the lake. ”The forest needs…”

He looked down. Nearest to the shore was the reflection of his legs – from the knees down, his forelegs were coated, or perhaps even made, from wood with bark that followed the grain beneath. They were certainly living wood, with little leaves sprouting here and there. It had felt so natural he hadn’t noticed. On his hind legs, the wood ascended the edges of his inner thighs up towards the line separating the kirin pelt’s green scales and its soft underbelly, outlining the divide in a streak of wood.

Around his chest, at the peak of his brisket – yes, his eyes told him, his breath faltering, where the horn had gone through – was a great curled knot of the wood, branching off into little knots on his shoulders, each of which bloomed into an aquamarine flower. Something was on the end of his back – he couldn’t see it in the water, and it was that mirror-Seed, looking at him with stunned eyes and gaping like a fish, that held him fast. His neck was constant, his masked face unchanged… But his antlers had morphed, halfway between the antlers of a deer…And a pair of little trees with purple flowers. A little step forward, a little step back…It left him reeling. A single flower detached and fell into the water.

A fish broke the surface of the water, and the spell of reflection-Seed broke. Seed examined these things for himself, flexing about to see the details. On his back was a patch of moss, host to a collection of small plants. He touched his nose to them. They tickled, and he felt the pressure of his face on his back.

A tight, thin laugh burbled from his throat.
”…What...Am I now?”



((I'll be bringing Seed back in-forest after this, assuming the rest of the story occurs sometime between the time of the last chapter and now for continuity's sake, since the rest takes place over about a day.))