kudzu on the wishing tree

He's always liked parties. if not for socializing, then they were an adept people watcher. And if not even that, then there were usually drinks, and food, and dancing. 

As such, getting into the establishment was no problem. He had snuck into dozens, maybe even hundreds of parties in his time. For business, pleasure, shits and giggles. 

This time, though, he had very specific reasons for being here. 

The man he's looking for isn't hard to spot, looking tense and quiet, back pressed to a tree, as though if he presses hard enough, he can simply vanish into its bark and away from the loud throng of people in front of him, a cup clutched in his pale, clawed fingers.

"Dr. Flynn?" he says, and the man jumps.

"Oh, erm, yes?" 

"I just wanted to congratulate you!"

He squints. "I...uh, I appreciate it, thank you, but this is all really for Shay, she put together the-"

"No, silly!" They reply, "on the paper you've just published!"

Flynn’s eyes brighten, and he sets the cup down on the nearest surface. “The one on dimensional travel?”

“Mmm-hm!” he’s missed his friends, he thinks, “I thought the visualization at the end was just stunning!”

“Ah,” Flynn says, bringing a hand up to brush some hair off his neck, “You flatter me. I suppose I'm not quite used to being complimented on my writings, and the scientific community at large has ignored everything I’ve published.”

“Oh don't be so hard on yourself, Dr. Flynn,” they say, honorific nearly catching on their tongue. They aren't used to speaking to him so formally. “Most geniuses are underappreciated in their time!”

He barks a laugh. “Higher praise than I would have expected, Mx…?”

“Mr. Rowan Corriander.” They say.

“My, what an unusual name! If I may ask, where do you hail from?”

Now it’s their turn on the back foot.

“Ah, um, that’s actually what I wanted to speak with you about.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Y’see, your writing on dimensional travel caught my eye, because I’ve got some experience.”

He raises both eyebrows.

“And, I just wanted to tell you that you’re pretty much spot on.”

They let the words hang in the air between them for dramatic effect. Flynn gapes at him.

“You- you’re-”

“Yes,” they say, grinning, “I am.”

“Wait- then, then I was correct!” He says, more to himself than to them, “physical transfer is possible!”

“Not quite,” they cut in, and his attention snaps back to their face. “Informational transfer is perfectly viable, but the fabric between is rigid and impermeable, and you can only get through by…”

His eyes burn into theirs. They let their words drift off. 

“Hm. well, I suppose I shouldnt give you the answer, now should I?”

His eyes widen, and he leans closer to them.

“Are you part of an… Organization?”

They laugh. “I suppose I am! It’s not quite as conspiratorial as you’re making it sound, but I am. And in all honesty, I really shouldn't be here right now, it isn't my job anymore.”

“Is this organization…”

He trails off, and they let him draw his own conclusions. 

“Welp,” they say, clapping him on the shoulder, “Don't worry too much about the particulars. Someone just like me is going to show up here soon.”

He jumps, but his attention stays laser focused.

“Actually, here-” they say, taking their Book off its clip on their belt, flipping it open, and taking out a slip of paper. “This is the symbol they’ll be wearing. Keep an eye out, and keep publishing. Maybe you’ll find that answer I'm keeping from you.”

He nods, and a very serious look overtakes his face. While his eyes are closed, Lettuce picks the drink he left on the table up, and vanishes into the crowd.

----

His second conversational target finds him.

"Hello."

He turns with a start to face her, nearly spilling the thick, sweet drink in his cup. She’s approached him in relative silence, despite the ornate and plentiful jewelry on her person. It's a look that blends in with the other nymphs at the party, but their gaudiness doesn't suit her, and she does seem mildly uncomfortable under the amount of metal on her, which makes sense to him, the Shay that he knew would never have worn something like this. 

He blinks once, twice, then replies: "Hello, Miss Shay! Are you enjoying the party?"

She gives him a stiff nod, not taking her eyes off his, and steps around the table to sit down opposite him.

"I suppose it is a bit much, if you're used to the woods, but-"

"Sir, don't take this the wrong way," she cuts in, "but...who are you? You've got the tail and fins of a river-dweller, but they're the wrong color. I know all the inhabitants of my forest, and I've never seen you here before."

The table lapses into tense silence. He moves his cup back next to his plate. As his eye combs her, it becomes unavoidable that this is not his Shay. the structure of her face, her voice, it's all a little subtly different. The scars that he remembers are not there, the minor scrapes and pains he had been there for, are replaced with an unfamiliar constellation of freckles, the way she sits her hands in her lap is different too, and though all these little details are too minor on their own to be truly unsettling, they form a picture of his friend, his former friend, that never knew him.

"Well, I suppose I should have expected this!" He says, brain rushing to catch up on this world's history- he studied, of course, but quick thinking always comes hard to him in emotional situations. "I am from beyond the river, Miss Shay, a diplomat from the people of the-"

"No, you aren't."

He pauses, one hand still in the air, gesturing.

"I've already spoken to a delegation from the sea. They left last week. and no Oceankin would use the name Rowan Corriander." 

His hands sink back down to his lap, and he plays nervously with the softly-blue flesh between his fingers.

"And..." Her voice gets quieter, conspiratorial, "I feel like I've seen you before, Lettuce."

His blood freezes.

"How...how much do you know?" His voice falls to match hers.

"Flashes, only flashes. But, I know enough to know that you shouldn't be here. I saw you speaking with Flynn."

He clutches his book closer to his thigh. He was right, He really should have expected this.

"He has a tendency to be distracted by the bigger picture, so if this is what I think it is, he didn’t ask anything of you. But you've broken into my forest, and all I ask-" She breaks off, and takes a deep breath. "-Is for you to give me some answers."

She stands from the table, maybe a little too quickly, and offers her hand. 

He takes it, and she’s leading him further into the woods.

----

She walks through the woods unobstructed by the branches that he keeps tripping on. He can't tell if the forest is moving out of her way or if she’s just so well acquainted with the land that she doesn't need to look down anymore, but either way, they end up in a clearing not too far from the party, close enough that the music can still be faintly heard.

Shay releases his hand, makes her way to an overturned log, and sits down with a huff.

He sits across from her, cross-legged on the mossy ground. 

There is, again, a beat of silence, far more comfortable than before. 

“Your forest is beautiful.”

“I suspect that you’d know.”

He looks at her. Shay looks much better here than she was at the party. The moon’s light is filtering through the clouds, then the trees, and finally settling on her face, gentle as a leaf. She looks regal, a queen of the wilds. Her green skin, mottled with leaf shadow, could fade into the camouflage of the brush easily if she so chose. One of her hands sits on the fallen log, and a bug of some kind scampers out onto her hand. Without raising her eyes from him, she lifts her arm and the bug continues onto a branch. She’s a part of the forest.

He sighs. “What do you want to know?”

Her eyes drop off his face, tracing the growth of the moss at his feet. 

“I have been having nightmares. And dreams, I suppose. Where I see you, overgrown, or in flames, or in my tree. I would like to know who you are, and what you’re doing here.” 

A large bird flies over them, far above the forest. The moonlight blinks out briefly, and then returns.

“...and… I would like to know what is happening to me.” she adds.

“Well, I suppose I owe you answers.” Lettuce says, idly running his hands along the spine of his Book, safe in his lap.

Her eyes rise to meet it, and then snap to his face when he begins speaking without opening it.

“You don't need to know my life’s story, but I met you at a low point. I was looking for someone, and I had been for a very long time by then. I should have set down where I met you, searched for some time, and then left. But…” he looks up. “-your tree. My memory of it is, well, hazy at best. But I must have fallen asleep near you. And when I woke up…”

His hands card through his hair. Shay’s eyes track the motion

“I was not myself.”

“I…overgrew you?”

“Something did. I spent a very long time like that. Of course, when I was woken back up, it was a hard time all around. I…” he trails off again, the memory of it weighing heavy, " I blamed you for it. Well, not you, but I thought…”

“You thought my tree had eaten you alive?”

Lettuce shrinks under her gaze. His hands drift back to the spine of his Book for a moment.

“The flowers.” he says, “They were the same color.” The Book flips open and his fingers find the page of their own accord. Shay’s tree, the one he knew, sits there, neatly diagramed next to a sketch of the flowers that were in his hair, rendered in their beautiful bright purple.

She sits back on the log, worrying a strand of her hair between her fingers.

“I didn't come here to tell you all this. I came to say goodbye.”

Shay looks back up at him, confusion filling her expression. “I don't know who you are.”

“I know.” he says, “It’s selfish of me. You were my friend for a long time after that. You and Flynn… I was having maybe the worst crisis of my life. You and Flynn kept me safe, you were there for me. But I… I was terrible to you both. The Flynn and Shay that I knew want nothing to do with me now. But, I just wanted to say sorry. To say goodbye.”

Shay climbs off the log after a moment and joins him on the ground, curling her legs up neatly. 

They are silent for a long time after that. The forest breathes around them, the distant sounds of animals, the faint music, the leaves and the wind. 

“I think I know what happened.”

She’s so quiet that had he not been listening to her so intently, he may not have heard her.

“I am a wishing tree. You were in despair. You said you don’t remember, and I was not there. But I think you may have wished for something.”

He looks up at her.

“I think you wished to forget. To be annihilated.”

They are looking at each other now. Her eyes are full of a familiar sympathy, and it cuts him to his core. 

“Shay-em,” he says, “I’m so sorry that I-”

She breathes in, and the calm steadiness he remembers her for returns. 

“You still have not told me why I can remember all of this.”

Lettuce blinks. He didn't…he doesn't…

“I don't know.”

“Please,” she implores, her eyes searching him for answers. “I shouldn’t know all of this. It weighs on me.”

His breath is becoming shaky now. He opens the book to a random page, scanning it, as though it can answer what he cannot. Shay looks down at it too, and her presence, different from his friend as it may be, is comforting. 

He flips from chapter to chapter, year to year, watching the script change back and forth, languages that only he (and Cada) would know flitting past his eye like butterflies spun in a centrifuge. 

“You’ve been to all these worlds…” Shay murmurs, bringing him back to the present.

“I have.” he says, voice filled with emotion. “Have you read that paper Dr. Flynn published?  The experiments with informational transfer between dimensions?”

She laughs, “I have, but, most of it went over my head.”

“I don't blame you. But, his thesis was correct. Transfer of information….” he trails off, puzzle pieces slotting together in his mind.

“Lettuce?” Shay's hand on his arm, “Are you alright?”

“I…think I figured it out. Why you know.”

Her eyes widen, and her mouth clamps shut. 

“The way that I’ve seen all these things. The way I moved between dimensions.” he starts, speaking quietly, slowly. “My mind is printed on the fabric of information between dimensions.”

Shay’s brow is furrowed, but she nods once.

“And I…” the words clot together in his mouth, his tongue not enough to get them out. Bitter realization is growing on his shoulders, and it's getting harder and harder to sit upright.

“I…” 

“You printed me on there too.”

Lettuce looks up at her, and Shay’s eyes are full of understanding. Their guilt claws at them harder. They did this. They hadn’t even thought- It, it shouldn’t have-

Their mind is hazy, they must have said those things aloud. Or maybe their face simply says it all, because Shay pats their back, kind of awkwardly, seemingly unsure of what to say.

They steel themselves. It shouldn't be about them, not right now. They’ve ruined her life enough.

“Miss Shay,” they say, slowly, “I am so, so sorry. It was…irresponsible of me to-”

Her hand moves away from their back. “Lettuce, did you ask the me that you knew if you could do this?”

“Well, of course, but-”

“Then it isn't your fault.”

They blink. “I still- I didn't explain it well enough, I-”

“She agreed. I might not remember everything, but I know enough. My people’s roots run deep. We feel our forest as though it were our own bodies.”

She shifts her weight to her left side as breeze rustles nearby foliage.

“We are used to that cosmic, all-encompassing, feeling. Do not worry on my behalf, little thing. I will manage.”

The grief, the terror, the weight that’s still sitting on him doesn't vanish, but it lessens. He looks up, past the trees, to those unfamiliar stars above them.

“I’m still sorry, miss.”

“It isn't to me that you should be apologizing.”

He looks back down at her. Her eyes are still fixed on the sky.

“Lettuce, you’ve given me what I asked. I have but one more request.”

He nods. “Of course, Miss Shay. Anything.”

“After tonight, please never return to my forest.”

He nearly chokes. The statement feels like a slap in the face, even though it’s something that he was going to bring up if she hadn’t. He’s already implied it to Flynn, hell, Lettuce has put in paperwork with their higher-ups. He isn’t going to come back here. But his brain still starts rushing again.

This time, he takes a breath, politely reminds his brain to shut the hell up, and responds quietly.

“Alright, Shay. I promise. I’ve already put that in motion. After tonight, you’ll never see me again.”

Her eyes don't fall to his face, but they gain a wistfulness. Nearing sadness.

After a long quiet moment, she rises to her feet again.

“Goodbye, Eli-ka.” Her expression is full of nostalgia, and his heart swells at his name, the one he trusted her other with.

“Goodbye, Miss Shay-emka.”

She smiles, and then vanishes into the forest, back towards that music. Back towards her Flynn, her world, her life.

Lettuce raises his face to the clouds, and closes his eyes as he begins to crumble.

----

“Shay-” Flynn hisses to her once she returns, “-where the hell did you go!”

“Off to catch my breath, Flynn, why do you ask?”

“I have been losing my mind out here!” he wrings his hands. “How do you deal with these people!”

She laughs. “Diplomats are notoriously…difficult, aren't they.”

He nods, then sighs, slipping down in his chair. They sit together in their own little bubble against the tide of conversation, music, and dancing around them.

After a moment, Flynn starts to look around, back and forth, searching the floor for someone.

“Say, Shay,” he starts, still distracted, “did you happen to see a… Rowan Corriander, anywhere tonight?”

Shay, graceful, quiet, and truthful as ever, folds her hands in her lap and says “Flynn, I have no forest-damned clue what you are talking about.”