Please let me hear. That's all I've been thinking for the past 5 minutes. Do to the effects of time manipulation and the fact that I'm a plant, not a human, it has been nearly 10.5 months on the calendar. I imagine that the elf who lives in this house was rather confused when I stopped my clairvoyance. Maybe he's guessed exactly what I'm up to. Maybe he thinks I'm plotting to kill him. That last one's unlikely, since I still haven't died, which means he's still preserving me. Oh look a skill.

Well that's exactly what I wanted! That took much less time than getting the other two. Maybe it's because it's a lower rarity? Maybe it's because plants are more compatible with this skill. I don't know. Time to attempt communications at last! I turn clairvoyance on to see what's happened in the last 10 months. I use time manipulation on my soul¹This might have been unclear, but our protagonist has a modified version of time manipulation. It has an added function that lets them speed up their soul, and how fast they can think, all for an INCREDIBLY low mana cost. It's implied this modification was granted by the "God of the System". to see time the same way a human does, turn on clairvoyance, and activate vibration sensing.

At long last, I can see more or less like a human can. It appears to be autumn, and leaves flutter slowly to the ground. A few of the elves walking through the village look at my eye and wave. One of the ones who waved, she has blonde hair and a scarf, runs off somewhere. Unlike before I had time manipulation, leaves are fluttering to the ground. Before, they shot to the ground like bullets. The sun does not appear to be moving, and I can actually look at the elves' faces now, since they aren't moving at the speed of sound.

I take my eye back inside and investigate the room. Aside from the furniture being rearranged, nothing has really changed. Suddenly the door swings open and the tall, well dressed man walks in, and the woman with the scarf is at his heels. They stare at my body, then at my eye, which looks like a black splotch in the air btw, and then say words I can't understand to each-other. But I can hear them. My hearing radius is set to 1 meter to lower mana costs. The man is within the radius and the woman is not. I can feel exactly where all his noises are coming from, whereas with the woman's voice I can only tell what direction it is coming form.

I turn off all my skills since there's now a more important matter at hand. I need a way to communicate. There are two skills I want to get now. Telekinesis is one of them, and the other is a skill that will let me cast illusions AND make sounds. The plan here is to use telekinesis to move and whatnot and to use the illusions/sound making skill to interact with people I don't want to tell I'm a plant. Why illusions/sound making instead of telepathy? I'm a very fragile being. I require life support from this elf just to not teleport all over the continent(s?) every 20 days. I don't need every man, woman, child, and dog to know that I'm a blade of grass. The reason I need those two as one skill is to keep my total skills down to five, since I can only keep that many when I transfer my soul. I don't want to spend too long getting these skills because it's possible that this elf might stop supporting me sooner or later, and I want someone to ask questions to once I gain the ability to speak. Well, I guess he'll probably have to teach me how to speak.

Time to grind for skills. Clairvoyance: on. Time manipulation: on. Stare at this pen and imagine it flying across the room: on.

Approximately 21 months real time and 10 minutes my time pass before I'm greeted by the following notification and the pen (which had been moved but never removed from the household) went flying across the room.

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA. I am now probably the most telekinetic grass on the planet. Now I need to start getting my next skill... I start to imagine a humanoid being talking in front of me. As I think, the image in my mind drifts between many different people, like men, woman, little girls, butlers, peasants, and farmers. I continue to imagine for minutes, knowing that for every hour that I experience, the tall elf man experiences 10. Half an hour later I am at last greeted with the appearance of a little girl next to my plant pot and a new message.

Well, that's not what I was expecting, but it is kind of what I was hoping for. I suppose it's time to say hello to a certain tall elf.

POV: Tall elf

I entered my house to see a little girl sitting on a stool behind my table. She was rather cute, with white skin, pointed ears, and a round face. She wore a plain shirt and shorts. She was the very definition of a "cute little girl." Between her and me sat a blade of grass in a pot on the table. I had been keeping it for nearly 8 years, preserving it with my skill "Plant Manipulation++." I took the plant in because my "Aura detection" had gone off from it, and it had a clairvoyant eye. I was interested enough to bring it home and take care of it. My wife, who can use "Appraisal" told me that it had a trait she'd never heard of and "Sapient."

But back to the matter at hand. Who is this little girl? "Hello?" I ask. She spews nonsense I get the feeling was supposed to be words. "This is Theguya. Can you speak Theguyan?" I say to her slowly. She looked at me like a dwarf looks at a dragon who's about to kill them and then banged her head on the table with an audible thump, but the table didn't move. Looking at her, she's actually kinda weird. Her shadow looks unnaturally fuzzy and seems to be going in the wrong direction. "Aura Detection" isn't going off for her at all, although the grass is giving a stronger aura than ever before. She smiles and jumps off the stool, takes a step towards the table, and disappears. I gasped audibly, and then again even louder when she reappeared in front of me, stuck her hand through my chest, and smiled.

POV:Protagonist

Maybe sticking my illusionary hand through his chest was a bit much for his heart because I think he's scolding me. At least, that's what it looks like. To a random person watching it probably looks like an insane man yelling at a plant.