This story is meant to be fairly wholesome and for most viewers. However…
*It contains numerous LGBTQ characters.
*Depictions of xenophobia can be found.

Book of the Dryads - Chapter 7
From the Dust

Emily’s Notes - May 27, 1933

I’m over fifty years old now. And I barely look like I’m twenty. The magic of life in the grove is really something. Even those in Grovewall feel the effects. Brice might still look like he’s in his forties, but he’s almost eighty now. His adult daughter has come to help in the past ten years, and she’s noticing what everyone else is. Lilac suggests that the community link is drawing some of the grove’s power into the town, giving slowed aging to those who live there.

But I’m okay with this. I have a new life, a different life. It feels less like my old life was even real, more like a nightmare I woke up from one day. Here, I get to be surrounded by kind and compassionate people of all shapes, sizes, and colors that stand up for one another. Whoever you are around here, you are told you belong, whether your human or dryad, male, female, or something in between. I admit I might have my eyes on a dryad who lives here now… And I think she might be the same!

I’m just too chicken to ask right now.

But the fact I’m accepted here gives me hope. It seems there’s no limit to the compassion of the dryads… I don’t know how I’d feel if I were wrong.

=======

Alimia looked up at her rescuer weakly. She could make out a blurry mass of leafy green, some gray, and some purple. But she was too weak to see clearly. Even his voice was dull to her.

She noticed the land was slowly dying over the last few years, and she tended to her fields as best as she could with her magic.

But then the dust storms came.

Everything died. The topsoil was ruined, and nothing would grow anymore. And Alimia found herself getting weaker without that connection to life, never mind the dust that likely got into her lungs. She came from the grove in Oregon, but she wanted to try to have a life among humans. She could pass as one pretty well, usually.

But with the dust storms, she needed to get home fast. It was the best place to heal for a dryad. But weakened, she wasn’t getting very far.

Matters got worse. As she traveled, she started to feel like she was being followed. Strange men grabbed her, and they noted her ears. She felt their dismissiveness of her, like she was an animal to them rather than another intelligent being. Agents of the DMR, the Department of Magical Resources. She heard about them, but she didn’t realize this recently formed clandestine group had any teeth to them until it was too late. They took her into custody without any ability for her to fight them off…

That was, until he came. She remembered hearing tales of the fox people from another “unnatural” world when she was growing up, but this purple-haired green kitsune with two tails fought off her kidnappers with animal-like ferocity. He then offered her a hand.

For weeks now, he had been doing everything he could to keep her alive and get her home. Why, she didn’t know. Kitsunes and dryads had never gotten along. But the whole way, he put her safety above his own. He even fought off more agents of the DMR all while making sure that she was safe. Although her vision had gone blurry, she remembered all the scars and wounds he had from the battles. She wanted to thank him, but all she could do was whisper.

He looked down at her. She was another magical being, like him. His world was dying. Slowly, but he couldn’t stomach the idea of moving again and again as the decay of the Hallow set in. So, he took a portal to Earth and didn’t look back. Already, the curse had taken his friends and family – he realized anyone who went underground would become engulfed by cursed energy, becoming afflicted with the curse themselves. And… He couldn’t get the horrors of that fate out of his head.

But he found Earth had its own problems. The Department of Magical Resources was hunting any non-human with magic. And he stood out like a sore thumb. Gone was the peaceful existence of living comfortably in a home. He was a nomad, continually moving, becoming a local legend wherever he went. (Usually as a werewolf sighting – he was a fox, not a wolf, for crying out loud!)

But when he felt the strange magic of the woman he was carrying now, he knew he had to save her. So he wouldn’t be alone anymore. She was able to weakly tell him about her own struggles, and that she needed to get back to her homeland in the mountains of Oregon to heal. He was going to get her there. And while he was strong, all the fights with random DMR agents had him wounded and weakened.

He was almost there. He could feel it. Magic. This world’s magic, for that matter, the one she shared in. But in order to get there, he had to use a bridge. It was strange: it looked like it had been grown in place, guided into the perfect bridge. This had to be the doing of Alimia’s people!

He crossed the bridge into a settlement. There was magic all around, and yet it had hallmarks of human intervention… Could he trust anyone here?

One of the townsfolk, a young-looking gray-haired woman, saw the fox man holding a dryad woman in his arms. She looked pale. He didn’t look like he was doing much better.

“Oh my gosh!” she yelped. “Who are you? WHAT are you? Are you okay!?”

The kitsune latched onto that last question. “P-please… Help her…” He dropped the dryad woman to the ground, collapsing himself.

“Dad! Someone! GET HELP NOW!”

=== The grove. ===

Emily rushed outside. A massive commotion could be heard. She ran up to Skyla. “Mom! What’s going on?”

Skyla turned around. “I don’t know! I keep hearing the word ‘kitsune’ being thrown around, along with a gravely ill dryad…”

The pair pushed their way through the crowd, and in the clearing, they got their first glimpses at the fox man, the kitsune, who collapsed in Grovewall. He was still unconscious, likely having overexerted himself. Emily and Skyla could make out a large number of injuries despite the fur. Lengthy cuts and gashes. Even round spots suggesting gunshot wounds. He took a lot, and he still carried a critically ill dryad from who knows where.

“We’ve got her healing, but we can’t say for sure what caused her illness…” she could overhear from a dryad.

“Drought. I’ve seen it before,” said Lilac. “But I have never seen it that bad before. The way she’s struggling to breathe right now must mean the land she tended to perished violently. Dust storms. Some of that must have entered her lungs.”

“That must be that ‘dust bowl’ phenomena they’re talking about in Grovewall. I pity anyone out in that, human and dryad alike…” said a human bystander.

“Now, what about this thing…” The contempt in Lilac’s voice was startling for Emily and Skyla.

“Th-thing!?” Emily muttered, startled.

“The kitsune collapsed with her in its arms. It’s likely it came here with her help. She may not have been in the right mindset…” suggested the older dryad.

“Create a holding area and make sure it’s watched over,” Lilac ordered.

Emily could hardly believe her ears. So far, the dryads had been kind and accepting of everyone, even the humans they had been afraid of. But this kitsune, who appeared to carry an ill dryad back to her home, taking everything the world could throw at him and, according to the rumors, pleaded for others to help her, was being treated with absolute contempt.

The same she felt from others who found out she was attracted to women. The same Tomas showed to Skyla.

Something boiled over in her. “How can you say that!?” Emily roared.

Her outburst startled the dryad elder. “Emily…?”

“Ever since I came here, I’ve seen love and acceptance of all those who were different. Like my mom. Or me! And now this fox man can’t be shown the same respect!?” Emily growled.

“This kitsune isn’t from our world, Emily. It’s unnatural. They belong far from here, a land that can’t be reached even if you travel past the most distant stars. They belong there, not here,” explained Lilac.

“Do I belong here, then!?” Emily shouted.

“Emily, calm down!” Skyla yelped, trying to calm things.

Emily ignored it, too furious to hear. “I’m from a distant land! My ancestry makes me an enemy of the dryads, does it not!? And yet I’m here! Why do I get better treatment!?”

“Kitsunes damaged dryad realms in the past with their gateways, magic from their world damaging the balance of our sanctums. You wouldn’t understand…” Lilac tried to explain.

“Of course I don’t! You never told me these stories before! How long ago was this even!? You’re willing to give humans a chance, but kitsunes are unforgivable!?” She walked over to the unconscious kitsune a few of the dryads were loading onto a cart. She pushed them aside to pick him up herself. “Look at him! He took HELL to get that dryad here. And all he could do was plead that you help HER!”

“Emily…” Skyla muttered in shock.

Tears were now streaming down her face. “And HE is the monster!? Have you been lying to me about how noble the dryads really are? Has this all been a ruse to show dryads in a better light than they actually are?”

“No-no-no, Emily, I-“

“YOU’RE NO BETTER THAN HUMANS! I CAN’T BELIEVE I TRUSTED YOU!” She grabbed the massive tome she had been writing on the dryad culture. She shook for a moment as she held it. She threw it to the ground and stomped on it with her boot, leaving a dirty imprint on the cover.

“I’m done! I can’t write lies about you anymore!” Emily screamed. She took off running, her cries echoing throughout the canyon.

The assembled dryads and humans alike stared at Lilac. Emily had been an upstanding member of the community, and she had personally seen Lilac through many harsh winters over the decades. The hurt Emily felt was palpable to everyone…

As were the dagger-like glares now digging into Lilac.

The dryads finished as they were ordered, if hesitantly, putting the kitsune man on a cart to haul him away to somewhere where he could be imprisoned and watched. Lilac didn’t even watch them take him away as she had first thought. She was too busy trying to process what just happened…

The older dryads had long held resentment over dryad realms that were corrupted by the “wild magic” that leaked out of the kitsune realm of the Hallow, damaging them sometimes beyond repair. It was a kind of life, but it wasn’t their life. It felt wrong…

But so did this.

The crowd dispersed, but the whispers could be heard. A chill was in the air. Skyla walked up to the book, grabbing it and trying to wipe it off as best as she could. The boot imprint stubbornly wouldn’t come off. She then walked up to Lilac.

“I’ve been here for longer than Emily. And even now, this is the first I’m hearing of this. I’m as dumbfounded about this as she is. But I’m not going to apologize for her,” Skyla stated, anger rising in her voice. “She is right.”

Lilac said nothing. She simply stared at the ground.

“If I’m not old enough to know about this, then how is half the colony supposed to know? Or the humans in Grovewall? How ancient is this grudge? Centuries? Do you even know if it was on purpose or an accident? Because it seems like a whole lot of nothing has happened recently between us and the kitsunes. How do we know they didn’t just accidentally open a gate somewhere they shouldn’t have, and the dryads just, what, eternally hate them for it?”

Lilac still didn’t respond. She seemed blank.

Skyla walked by her. “I’ll see about talking to my daughter, try to calm her down. But what happens next is on you.” She walked away, heading in Emily’s direction.

Lilac stood there, alone. She started shaking before falling to her knees. Emily was right. Skyla was right.

“M-Mother Earth, wh-what have I done!?” she muttered, tears now coming from her eyes.

CHAPTER 7 END

By CrystalSeaDragon44