Looking across the table at the druidess Shomos, Stephen cupped his steaming cup of tea in his hands and returned her intense stare.

“Thanks for the tea,” the graduate student said, taking a sip.

“Thanks for the tea leaves and the other supplies. Your contributions were quite generous,” she said. Her ageless face was framed by locks of curly, silver hair. The staff she had used to raise the fog defense previously leaned in the corner of the simple hut.

“I didn’t imagine you’d live in a hut. I was expecting a tree house or something,” said Stephen.

“What’s a tree house?” asked the druidess.

“A house built in the branches of a tree. Where I’m from, children like to make them, then play in them,” he replied.

“I don’t think the tree would like that very much,” she replied.

“Maybe not,” he admitted. “I’m sorry that I’m not very good at talking to women.”

“How is talking to women different from talking to men?” she asked.

“I don’t know, it just is. My last date was awful. We met at a coffee shop and the entire experience was humiliating,” he responded.

“What’s a date?” she asked.

“A courtship social function,” Stephen responded with a wave.

“Ah, so you’re courting me,” she asked and smiled for the first time. “It’s been decades since anyone tried that. A few initiates have thought that would be a back door into the druid order.”

“No,” said Stephen, turning red. “I’m not courting you, but people deny courtship, even when that’s what’s happening, so you don’t have to believe me. Did it work for the initiates?”

“The courtship worked, but it didn’t get them into the druid order. Romancing druids isn’t the way to join us,” she explained.

“How does one join the druids? In a game I used to play, you could just be a druid, like anything else. You were considered an initiate, until you became powerful enough, at which point there was a limited number of positions for druids, and you had to challenge another druid to raise higher in the hierarchy. Initiates had magical powers, though.”

This got a chuckle from her. “Is this a game children play in their ‘tree houses’? And one can become a druid by deciding to be a druid?” she asked rhetorically and shook her head. “Perhaps this is our way as well. Challenging another druid is a strange way to phrase it, but not wholly incorrect. What was this game you played?”

“DoD, ‘Domains of Danger’,” Stephen answered. “It’s a type of role-playing game. Players assume a role, like a druid, then another player runs the game and describes what’s happening. It’s a form of collaborative storytelling. There are rules to simulate the world and determine the outcome of events. So if five druids fought against a blue dragon, the rules would help determine the outcome of the fight.”

“Why would five druids fight a blue dragon?” asked Shomos.

“Good question,” said Stephen. “In part, you’re playing to find out. Fighting the dragon might be a solution to their problem or get them something they wanted. If druids wouldn’t fight a dragon, maybe fie fighters would or a fighter, a wizard, a thief, a ranger, and a cleric.”

“That seems more likely,” said the druidess.

***

“I included a bottle of celestia. I don’t know if you like it or not. My friend Rurth can’t get enough of the stuff, and I’ve acquired a taste for it, drinking with him,” Stephen said, as he put down the package of supplies in Shomos’ hut. “I used to not drink alcohol at all.”

“More supplies, a mere two-month later,” said the druidess. She arched one eyebrow at Stephen. “Perhaps you intend this to be a second date.” Stephen chuckled awkwardly and looked away. “What is it you’re after?” she asked him.

“Shall we each have a cup of celestia and talk about it?” he asked.

“Do men in your world ply young women with liquor in an attempt at seduction?” she asked. While asking, she turned away and retrieved the two cups they’d previously drank tea from and put them on the table. “Men in my world know this trick.”

“That’s been known to happen,” Stephen said and smiled. He retrieved the bottle from the packed supplies and placed it on the table.

“Such an approach would not be successful with me, and it would be dangerous for you to try it,” she warned.

Holding his hand up, Stephen said, “My brother’s now wife warned him she had knives the first time he came over to her place.”

“A wise woman,” said the druidess. She opened the bottle, sniffed it, then poured a large amount in Stephen’s glass and a small amount in her own.

Stephen sat down and took a sip from the cup. “I’m trying to find a mystical place to learn about,” he began. “What wizard’s call quintessence, and which my own special magic seems to connect with the color violet. Something associated with the heavens. I’m looking for it in order to power an ability that I’m hoping will let me return home. When I first developed this ability, it brought me here, to your world. After the trip, it became exhausted, and I’ve been seeking energies to power my return.”

“Honesty is good,” said Shomos. “It sounds different from lies, doesn’t it? I’m not around people enough to learn the games of deception they love so much.” She sat down and took a sip from her cup. “So it isn’t my body you’re after, but you want to pillage the sacred grove I’ve dedicated decades of my life defending.”

“I’m not sure pillaging is the word I’d use,” objected Stephen.

“But this is how your kind view everything in the world. You’re cold, so you destroy wood in a blaze of fire to heat yourself. Instead of just putting on some warmer clothes. It’s dark, so you consume to give yourself light, instead of just going to sleep and waiting for dawn.”

“Wolves eat rabbits to survive, rabbits eat plants to survive, trees spread their canopy to prevent other nearby plants from getting sunlight to protect their access to nutrients in the ground. I’m not sure your view of me as unnatural is completely fair,” said Stephen.

“Ho, ho,” she said, eyes widening in surprise. “Perhaps you know more of druid challenges than you let on.”

“No, just high school biology and a life sciences class I was required to take in first year,” he said.

***

Munching on some pastries he’d brought, Stephen finished describing coffee to Shomos.

“Well, it sounds awful, but I’m sorry you miss it so much and can’t find it here,” she said.

“What I was telling you on my last visit, about finding a site that will provide violet energy, something strange has been happening when I find sites. It’s happened with people, objects, and places. When I have strong feelings towards them and a full understanding of them, I remove them from reality and everyone else forgets they ever existed. They then become a concept in my mind, which I think of as cards. I can release the cards and bring them back into existence or draw power from them. The two men and the ghoul you first saw me with are all people, and a creature I suppose, that I’ve accidentally captured in this way. I don’t have control over it, other than not learning about things, I suppose.”

“And so that’s what you’d do to my ‘Circle of Roots’, capture it and remove it from reality?” the druidess asked sharply. “I don’t care for that at all.”

“Well, if I did do that, you wouldn’t even remember it previously existing,” said Stephen, then held up his hand as Shomos looked at him angrily. “But I haven’t been learning about it from you, and I’m not going to. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about it, either.”

“Good,” she said.

“I don’t want to capture you, either, so it’s probably best you don’t tell me much more about yourself. We can talk about anything, other than your grove or yourself. Or, if it’s too much of a risk to have me around, I can leave you alone in the future,” he said.

“The bear is only a danger when you don’t understand why he takes the actions he does,” she said. “I understand the danger you pose to the grove and myself. You may return in the future.”

***

Working at the ponds, alongside Shomos, Stephen pulled in the net full of small fish.

“So, you’ll use the fish carcasses as fertilizer for bushes, and the bushes will break down the pollutants?” he confirmed. “We have something similar like this on Earth. Zebra muscles filter pollution out of the water that they’re in. That part is useful, but they’re an invasive species, and they throw off the ecosystems that they’re in. They don’t have predators in the waters they get introduced to.”

“Wisdom must guide any changes that affect natural systems,” agreed Shomos, as she dumped the fish she’d caught into their bucket.

“Did I ever tell you about permaculture?” asked Stephen, as he also dumped his fish in the bucket and started setting up the net again.

***

Lying in bed, Stephen looked over at the sleepy eyed druidess lying next to him.

“That was nice,” he said.

“You weren’t expecting it to be nice?” she asked without opening her eyes. One eyebrow arched up.

Chuckling, Stephen said, “Well, with the age difference…”

This brought an amused smile to Shomos’ sleepy face. “Yes, you did ok, given your limited experience.”

“Ouch, baby, ouch,” said Stephen, closing his eyes and laying back in bed.

***

Sitting outside the hut, Shomos and Stephen looked out on the grove and sipped fruit juice in chairs next to one another.

“If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is,” said Stephen. Shomos didn’t react and continued sitting serenely in her chair.

“I haven’t learned any new spells since I got the hang of ‘magic missile’. I don’t think I’m going to bother spending time back in Hopedale learning magic anymore,” he said. “I’ve found a contentment here that always eluded me back on Earth. I don’t know if any of the feelers I have out on violet sites will pay off, but I’ve stopped caring. I like my life better here.”

Shomos gazed at the former graduate student. He continued. “If this is my life for today, or for the next few years, or the next few decades, I’m content.”

With a sickening falling feeling, Stephen found himself dumped out on the ground and looked around the grassy field he now found himself sprawled out on. Inside his mind, he felt the energized concepts of the druidess and her mystical grove.