Chương 28: Chapter 24.5 - Open for Business

The shop was complete, and it was no longer merely a promise but had taken on physical form—it was complete with a frame of wood. There was a hand-made sign hanging over the door, and the dirt of the road continued ahead of it, having not yet grown back to hide the tracks of construction. It should have been a moment of triumph. Dendron found himself looking anyway, having no other choice. Luan and Torou were gone.

They were both aboard the same caravan, heading off to the same city, together for the first time since they had become a part of him. He could feel the threads that held him connected to them, weakly but present—a sense, not unlike his pulse, which he no longer really felt.

"Well," he said to the empty clearing.

"This is new." There wasn't any particular place for the joke to land. There was no one left to laugh—or to at least pretend to laugh—except for the trees around him. But the attempt was the automatic response; the response before the feeling could take hold.

"Guess this is what happens when your entire business model consists of 'sending everyone I care about somewhere else.'" There was no answer. There was nothing at all except for the truthfulness of it all, even in the quiet clearing. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. He thought of Luan on the caravan, awake or sleeping, imagining the city that he'd never seen before.

He thought of Torou, still lugging whatever it was that he'd been carrying since the castle, ever since the day he'd heard a strange name on a mysterious mouth, going out there to live the life Dendron had wanted for him—built roads, shops, trade routes all so that he could. And he was here, rooted where they both weren't anymore. He'd wanted this. He remembered this fact to himself with clarity, like reading a label. He'd wanted them to have somewhere to go.

But he had just failed to understand the implications of this fact until now.

"Is this what it means to be alone?" He'd asked this question of the clearing once, many lifetimes ago, when he first understood what these new senses meant. Everything he could feel, all of the sensations from every single root and every single leaf and nobody to experience it with. He was alone then too, just not quite aware of it. He was aware of it now.

He remembered the sensation of it well, of having somebody answer back when he spoke, of the thump of a wolf's tail against the ground and the mumbles of the apes under their breaths. And now he knew how heavy silence was because of it. The sign over the shop creaked once in the breeze. Dendron found himself reaching for another joke and, for once, decided not to. He allowed himself the luxury of letting it pass without an ending, just as he'd managed to do all those weeks ago.

Though it hadn't become easier since then, but it had become more familiar. A bird landed on the shop's roof. It was small, brown, unremarkable—perhaps the very same bird from those weeks ago, though he had no way to know that nor much of a reason to wonder about it. The bird simply perched there and doing whatever it did while towards the end of the day, regardless of the tree that had built an entire road so that he could leave on it.

"Does being the reason why somebody leaves make me feel better than this?" He said to himself. There was no answer, just the sound of the breeze and leaves rustling. Beyond the line of trees, beyond the road, and past the reach of his roots, a caravan moved quietly through the night, taking two people into a city bathed in light. He remained still because that was all he knew how to do and let the night be quiet around him. It was not peace but something near it.