Oddly Targeted Container

[eternally_aggrieved]

The island is deserted, save for the statues.

And now, a rectangular brown paper package. It rustles and rocks, then tips over onto one side and stops moving.

Comments

[all_the_worlds_have]

The patches in the genome appear to be making the bush be a bush, as well as making it a bush of roses rather than some other sort of flower.

Magical inspection of the wood that the bush is currently made up of suggests that it is actually made of analogues to hawthorn and cherry, with rose-buds grafted on somewhat haphazardly.

[endragoned]

Well, then. Perhaps it would be happier as a tree. He'll try that first.

[all_the_worlds_have]

As soon as he considers 'a tree', he can see how it ought to be shaped. This golden part should be cherrywood: this part should be hawthorn. Here is where the trunk was removed. Here is where its branches were clipped away.

[endragoned]

Perfect. Then he will make it a tree.

And since that went so well, perhaps before he grows this seed he can do something about the flowers, too. Replace them with the kind of blossom that this tree wants to have, whatever that is.

[all_the_worlds_have]

The final adjustment is almost trivial, now that he knows what the Takkarash wants to be. Even under the closest inspection he can do, the seed no longer has any of the golden strands left in it.

Where shall he plant his Takkarash tree?

[endragoned]

Hmm.

As much as he adores that hedge, he wants to meet this tree without any distractions.

He walks around to the other side of the tiny planet, leaving behind the hedge and the piles of Takkarash coins.

And there he plants the seed.

[all_the_worlds_have]

The seed settles into the ground like a stone thrown into a pond, the soil shrinking away as it burrows deeply into the dirt. The hole falls in behind it, and it vanishes from sight.

[endragoned]

He puts his hands on the ground to sense its progress. Not too far, he hopes.

[all_the_worlds_have]

The seed settles six feet beneath the surface, bouncing and rolling to a stop as if it were a stone hitting bottom in a lake.

There, buried deep in the earth, it sprouts. It happens too fast for the eye to follow: one moment, there was a seed, and now -

Now, a tree. Not a vast tree: not a great, towering redwood, or a mighty oak. But a respectable tree, a tree that could claim to be the lord of some empty plain. Its gnarled branches stand black against the sky, like lighting in negative: its serrated leaves cut into the air, keening softly with each faint breeze. The bark of its trunk splits in a score of places, scarlet sap filling the air with the scent of ashes.

[endragoned]

What a good tree. The Endarkened hugs his tree.

[all_the_worlds_have]

The tree creaks a little beneath his hug, and more sticky red sap wells up from the splits in the bark. Some of the jagged bits around where the sap wells up are poking him, but otherwise hugging the tree is about as comfortable as one would expect hugging-trees-while-nude to be.

[endragoned]

And will the tree make flowers if he asks nicely?

[all_the_worlds_have]

Scattered here and there throughout the dense branches, delicate five-petaled flowers open, each one softly shining with cold white light. Looking up, it's as if a patch of night sky has appeared in the middle of the day.

[endragoned]

What a beautiful tree.

Let's see what the fruit is like.

[all_the_worlds_have]

At the very crown of the tree, a single flower folds inwards, its light dimming. Its petals meet, becoming the skin of the fruit: then it swells outwards, growing to the size of a fist, glowing a dull cherry-red like a hot coal.

[endragoned]

How charming! Now he shall eat it.

[all_the_worlds_have]

It's rather a long way up, but he doesn't mind climbing spiky tangled branches, does he? And even if he did, he has wings.

[endragoned]

Climbing spiky tangled branches is fun!

[all_the_worlds_have]

And there's a prize at the end! Closer up, the fruit looks sort of like a plum, if plums glowed like dying stars.

[endragoned]

It's very pretty.

Nom.

[all_the_worlds_have]

Juices spill down his chin as his teeth break the fruit's skin. It has the same basic taste as the bush, but deeper, more full.

He swallows, and the pain hits him.

He can feel the tree straining, a dull ache of tension as the boughs creak beneath his weight. He can feel its roots impaling him, snaking through his earthen skin - and the thousand little pinpricks of the uncountable blades of grass beneath the tree. He can feel the distant dissolution of rock, consumed in fire as it sinks into the molten core of the planet...

And he can feel the shock of impact against a set of complex wards, as they shove away his new sense from the woman standing at the base of the tree. A severe bun pulls her frizzy black hair away from her face: her charcoal-grey suit brings out the icy blue of her eyes.

"And The One Who Is said to the First Woman: 'But of the Tree of the Knowledge of All Things, you may not eat: For on the day that your lips touch its fruit, you shall be doomed to die.'"

She looks up at the Endarkened.

"Congratulations."

[endragoned]

"And who are you?" he inquires.

[all_the_worlds_have]

"Audrey Fraser, VP of Pain for OTC. I see we're going to need to add some more security layers to the Takkarash."

She smiles.

"That said, I do mean my congratulations sincerely. I believe you're the first new person to eat of Eve's Tree in this millennium."

[endragoned]

"It's a nice tree," he says, petting a branch. "I like this tree. Why did you hide it that way?"

[all_the_worlds_have]

"Eating Eve-fruit and thereby experiencing pain on behalf of everything and everyone tends to cause rather complex consequences. Not to mention the side-effects of suddenly having actualized concepts in your universe. I'm very glad the Wild Magic asked you to take your experiments to this sealed plane: these trees tend to be rather bothersome when they appear in inhabited worlds."