Chương 9: Chapter 7.5 - The Quiet After

Dendron sat in silence following his ascension. His roots had grown deeper and stronger. He could feel the earth breathing underneath him, the slow pulse of distant water, and the tiny organisms burrowing through the soil. He felt everything. At first, it was just too much. His roots moved beneath the soil and he could feel the movement as if someone were touching his skin. A beetle crawled on one of his smaller roots, its legs brushing against his bark.

He could also feel water seeping into the soil and winding around his roots, cool and comforting. There was the heaviness of the soil above them—he didn't feel this heaviness as pressure, but simply as an entity present. His roots had grown so deeply into the earth that he could no longer discern the boundary between himself and the rest of the forest. Wind blew through his branches, rustling the leaves as they trembled one against another, in perfect coordination. Dendron froze.

In all his lamentations about what he had lost, he had not stopped to think about what he had gained. He could no longer feel the wind touch his skin. He could feel it with every leaf. He could not walk through the forest anymore. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. The forest walked through him. However, what struck him was not the power. It was silence. The wolves had left. The apes had left. Even the sound of the crickets held their breath.

It dawned on him slowly that there was no one there. He heard no voice calling out to him; he felt no steps approaching. With all the sensitivity that he had through his newly acquired body, he was still alone, feeling everything around him, sensing each and every motion in the clearing, but with no one to share it with him.

"Is this what it means to be alone?" he asked the empty clearing. No one responded. He grew one of his Soul Fruits—simply to observe its development. A translucent blossom, a swollen ovary, a burst of light and essence. It was beautiful, he realized. He had not noticed it before.

"I spent my life running from things," he told the fruit.

"Jobs. People. Myself." The fruit hung perfectly still.

"Maybe that's why I ended up as a tree. I can't run anymore." He nearly laughed. Instead, he sat with it. The sky bruised into purple, then softened, surrendering to a slow spill of gold and amber filtering through his leaves. The dew on his bark held the cool remembrance of rain. Somewhere, a stream murmured—a sound he caught only by rooting deeper into silence. The earth beneath his roots breathed dark and patient, waiting to be acknowledged.

A tiny bird landed on his highest branch, chirped once or twice, and settled in to smooth its feathers. Dendron watched the bird's movements. The tiny creature seemed unaware of the eye watching it, and only hopped from foot to foot, flapped its wings, and then ducked its head under one of its wings. There was something about this that bothered him—not that the creature was trembling, but that it wasn't. There was nothing for it to be afraid of. To the creature, it was just another tree.

This fact somehow brought him peace. He could've driven it away. His roots were strong enough now. And yet he did not. Dendron listened as the bird stayed for an hour, singing to the morning.

"I didn't know trees could enjoy things," he said.

"Maybe I'm starting to." For the first time since awakening as a tree, he wasn't angry about it. He was only... there.