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Deep in the underworld beneath the fallen one, where all is gray and all is dry and all is brittle as bone, there rises a creation called a tree. It is perhaps the single largest tree anyone has ever conceived of. Villages hide in the roots about its base. Its heights disappear into the mists above, and its shadowing branches drown out the half-light of the never-day.
The ghostly inhabitants go about the business of their unlives in an unhurried and contented pace. Here, there are no real urgencies. The mother tree provides, and the spirits that gather around its base, somewhat like a flea on a dog, don't seem to register their surrounds as such at all.
And when Kayla appears, as she has appeared several times in the past, they take no more notice of her than they had the last few times she's been by. Left to their own devices, they just go about their little routines. Her arrival does prompt a response from the mother, of course. Kayla will recognize the cracking of the stone and dirt nearby as roots force their way up and out of the ground, twining about each other and weaving together the shape of a woman. Matronly, beautiful after a fashion. A wraithly dryad.
"Daughter," the great being says. Somehow. Don't think about it too much. "Is it time?"
Kay appears, after manifesting her mastery of Death to make a passage to this place. Magic woven to hide and conceal her from time and magic. Her gaze settles on the ghost, on the size, on the heights and then finally on the strange being at the tree.
Kay takes a deep breath, trying not to let her immediate emotion drive the initial conversation. She switches her language like she did before, to the Lenape's language.
"If I knew what for, it would help." Kay is in black slacks, white button up shirt and a long black coat. "I have worries, anger and questions, so many question. I was hoping you'd be able to answer some."
"Oh," the mother answers, a little sadly. She was hoping. "If I knew for certain, I would tell you. I can never leave this place, Kayla. I can only send for word and listen for what is said. I think this may be how it needs to be, Kayla. I think we both will have a role to play in what is to come, and that they will reveal themselves for certain in time."
"At least I believe that for myself. Perhaps I can answer some questions for you. I would certainly like to try." The roots groan and creak as they stretch and bend to make the being's arm offer out a hand whose fingers are slowly growing twigs. Offering a hand to hold for the difficult conversation ahead. She does not say I am Groot, fortunately.
Kay accepts the offered hand, holding it firmly, as a sign of her current inner turmoil. "I saw how I awoke, the fruit I ate was dragonblood, abyssal. I saw the abyss get cleaned off an illusion trying to trick Balm when she ascended." A deep breath.
"And when I come back... I see that the legacy I've been obsessively building, crafting, planning to leave behind as a curated, closed practice already shared." a beat, another deep breath. "that my work's been left in the supernal as part of her plan."
"Is she trying to destroy the Watchtowers? Is my role in this to serve only her own design? However altruistic it might be..." another deep breath. "I'm rambling again..."
"You are a mycologist. Kay. And so you know there is never a single spore. And that a single spore may become a great and full ring. You came to me to study the mycology at my feet. And I let you. You say you were obsessively building-- but darling, child, you took something I had already grown and made it yourself. By choice. By destiny, perhaps. But by choice."
"You have been asking questions, hoping for different answers. That is understandable. But the truth simply is. It is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong. It merely, simply is true. And that truth is that the question for you hinges on whether or not you chose to come to me or were compelled to come. Were you made to eat the fruit, or were you compelled to eat the fruit. Were you made to see what you say at Balm's ascension, or were you compelled to see it for yourself. I understand why you come to the Mother and say, why mother? Why did you allow these things to happen to me? And I might tell you it is because she always knew you would and wished to give your death and rebirth and creation and being the opportunity to reach the Supernal."
"The child grows, Kay. As does her field. You are already where you are needed in every way that matters."
"She is trying to win, Kayla. This was genocide. Look at my feet. Look at their faces. Unless you wish to be the one to tell these unrestful dead at my feet that you wish to turn away from this. You can. No one will force you to walk the path the Mother is showing you. Just as no one made you bite the fruit you stole, curious child. And no one forced you to come and sample my fungi, curious girl. No one will force you forward when the time comes. Save perhaps you and your curiosity."
"You already cannot die in any way that matters, Kayla. Lose your fear."
Kay runs a hand down her fingers. "Oh yeah, choices made without any proper information." Kays seems to give up that specific train of thought. Waving it off physically with their free hand.
"My worries, my anger aren't going to stop me from understanding what I'm looking at. I understand the stakes here. They're why I strove forward." Kay gestures to the ghost folks around the place
"Even if I have no clear idea of who or what I need to find to move. Even if I have to move before I'm ready." Kay squeezes the hand. "I want to help, do my part. I just don't want to be the reason things could get worse if it all fails. I am frustrated by how little information and clarity there is and... how OK i'm supposed to be with it all."
"Wisdom of the many outweigh the will of the One." Kay whispers to herself.
"You are wise to point this out, Kayla. Have you brought your concerns before the Emissariate? Have you told them of your visions? And your concerns? Do they all know about The Child?" The mother's hand grows a little more tightly around Kayla's hand, the twigs thickening and acquiring proper bark. A few leaves sprout from the back of her palm.
"I fear you may be trying to do alone what you have a whole tribe waiting to help you with. I know this, Kayla. The ones you are seeking are out there. The terrible spirit I spoke of before? I hear of it still. It may help you to know I believe the spirit has found a host, and that the host is a man."
"I realize it's not an awful lot to go on. I can't imagine the Mother would have left me with anything less than everything I need. And so you must have it, too. All I have said and my advice. Don't do this alone. Share with others. Accept their insights."
"Balm didn't do it alone, did she? Why are you?"
"That's... that's actually a lot clearer to me than it was. I met one of them before." Kay says her voice full of melancholy. A deep breath. "I mentioned information to Peacekeeper when we returned from Balm's dream." a beat. "I think everyone was mourning, consoling and processing. So I left it alone."
Kay takes another look around. "I'm even more worried now." a bit of an emotional laughs. "I have a feasible, tangible next step."
"I'm not sure I'm less angry either, but I can always deal with that later if needed." Another emotional laugh. "I might also be able to talk to the child. I know people sometimes summon beings from the Supernal. Do you think she might speak to the mother from over there?"
"It is possible, though nothing is certain. Stygia is both just over the road and forever away from the Primal Wild. But if anyone we know might have done so and be able to speak of it with certainty, it is likely to be her. If you do this, Kayla, you must remember to be kind to that child. As kind as you would have wanted yourself to have been treated. All the kindness you ever deserved, and were ever denied? Give it to that child. Love is the only thing that grows here apart for time. And you both will need it before the end."
From overhead a massive crack can be heard, and a branch the size of another forest's might oak rains out of the sky from overhead to crash several hundred meters away, sending up a cloud of dust and a shower of splinters and bark. It looks almost in slow motion for the size and distance. But it perhaps the most impressive display of guerilla carpentry she's like to have seen. The bits of wood and bark fly in every direction, some spattering across the dust to skitter about at their feet in chunks of bark and shards of brittle wood.
"Take some of me with you. Place my flesh beside my sister. Let her purity make me perfect. Carry me with you. Make a tool of me if you wish it. Whisper your secrets to me and I will hear them. It will make it easier for me to get word to you in the land above, too. For one of our own, Kayla, it ought to be all the evidence they require of your cause."
"If I call upon the child, I will show her the kindness you call for, I promise."
Kay yelps in surprise at the movement and size, using her coat to cover her head and ready to weave magic in defense of everything. Once things settle down and it's not the apocalypse here, they relaxes.
Kay grabs a shard of wood and a piece of bark from the ground. They set the pieces down in the pocket of her coat. "Thank you for this gift, I'll listen and speak as often as I can once your sister perfects it."
She gets a pondering, curious smile on her lips and whatever cross her thoughts she shakes it off with a smile. "Nah, she'll want to show that around, not a good idea." she speaks more for herself there.
"The only thing that grows here, Kayla," is the Mother's answer to the unvoiced thought Kayla is dismissing. The branches around Kayla's hand begin to wither and recede as the avatar of the mother releases her child to her liberties once again.
"I miss you when you aren't here. Go be where you are meant to be."
Kay blows a kiss to the mother and as she leaves and grabs a few more pieces of woods. "I'll heed that wisdom... Thank you."
"Alright... let's get to it." Kay wipes at her eyes, waving to the ghost, the mother and the area as she makes her way back home again.
Once Kayla is gone, the avatar's vital brown and green leaches back to gray and black. The sticks and branches wither and crackle, collapse in on themselves, and then blow away to mingle with the rest of the gray, unliving dust.
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