I managed to retract my roots before the stupid lilies were able to eat up all my nutrients and starve me, but I was still running very close to empty by the end of it all. It was honestly pretty amazing, I mean, I was more full of magic than any other moment in my life (except for the time when I ate that weird blue rock), and maybe growing those deformed trees had already been steadily eating at it, but just that small bundle of lilies absolutely DRAINED it all away! Even just using my healing ability that I got from them wasn’t even anywhere near as bad as actually growing the damn things! And what’s more, they didn’t even fully grow; I had to pull up my roots before they even finished, so they just withered away to dust!

 

Why do those freaking flowers cost so much?!

 

Til gave me an unimpressed look when I told him that I had to go hunting right that instant, but it’s not like he could really tell me not to, so instead he just took his time walking along while I skittered all over the place searching for prey. Really, it’s been so so very long since I had to eat such small things for sustenance. Well, actually maybe it’s only been a few weeks, if I think about it. I keep thinking of when I was just a little plant, but I guess in reality the last time I ate small creatures was when I was injured at that lake. Amazing what a large leap I made from then to now! Just look at what amazing fantasy creatures I’ve taken down in these past few days!

 

…And now I’ve been reduced back to this.

 

Siiiigh…

…Oh look, one of those doofy bears!

Come to me you big beautiful edible thing!

~~~

I guess part of the reason Til was so dissatisfied with having to slow down back there was because he knew how close we were getting. Turns out we were actually just a day away from where the elves lived! He didn’t even sleep at night like he normally would have either, he just stayed up the whole time and marched on like his life depended on it. The only time he stopped (besides his eating and occasional bathroom breaks) was to pull me aside and ‘have a word with me’ before we made it too close to elf territory.

 

“L’Lan’e’frea. You’ve stated that you wish for me to like you, yes?”

 

=Mhmm?=

 

“Then please do me a favor and wait here until the elders allow you passage. You’ll scare everyone otherwise, if you just suddenly come inside.”

 

Oh? Well, I guess I can be quite scary! Now that he mentions it, if this were a normal group of humanoids, then they’d probably see me as a scary monster and try to kill me, right? Since these are elves, they should know that I’m a ‘L’Lan’e’frea’ or whatever and not try to mess with me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t scare the ever-loving pants off them anyways!

 

If I'm being honest, that thought is actually really appealing.

Having people get all afraid of me without attacking me?

And I’m literally where they live so they have nowhere to run?

Hehe… Sometimes it’s hard to hold back the evil plant-monster thoughts, really.

 

Ah, but I jest! I’m not evil enough to do something so traumatic to the elves. Heck, I’ve been lonely lately anyways, and having Til here to tell me about stuff, take me to points of interest, and all importantly tease, has actually been super fun! Really, it’s been a blast! And heck, maybe meeting more people that I don’t feel an immense urge to eat might just be good for me! I like Til, but maybe I just like him ‘cuz he’s the first person I met that wasn’t edible, you know? Well, no, he is edible, but… Well, you know what I mean.

 

There’s plenty of fish in the sea and plenty of elves in the forest!

If Til doesn’t like me, then maybe I can find somebody else to take me in and give me a free lunch!

 

…Oh, right. Til’s been here waiting for my answer this whole time while I’ve been scheming- I mean, thinking! Wow, and his eyes are narrowed like he can see right through my thoughts too, huh. Was I maybe muttering while I was thinking or something...?

 

I frantically nodded while affirmatively gesturing with my tentacles, to erase any suspicions that he might have had.

 

=I’ll be good and wait right here! Promise!=

~~~

I waited for a good while like a patient little plant, but I was really starting to get bored. If I was photosynthesizing then I would have been able to pass the time more easily since I’ve kind of gotten used to zoning out while doing that, but this patch of the forest where the elves lived had almost zero sunlight filtering into it; The trees were all thin and tall, and kind of reminiscent of super-sized palm trees. It felt so weird to be nowhere near the sea, seeing them here. And there weren’t even coconuts or anything growing off of them! They just had some odd little purple grape-like clusters growing off of them instead, which I could only make out clearly from this insane distance because of my odd magic-vision. The only things that could possibly try to eat those grape-things would be birds and monkeys. No, even monkeys wouldn’t wanna be up that high with no branches, I’m sure.

 

Hey, I wonder if there are any bird nests up there...?

 

Well anyways, back to the main point! I was bored! Sooo I decided I could do a bit more gardening practice again! These fakey palm trees absolutely sucked, or at least I thought so since there was absolutely no variation in them from what I could see. I thought it’d be a super cool idea if I could maybe add a splash of intrigue to the place, you know? Luckily I’d managed to snag a few snacks here and there as we made our way over during the past day, so I was sitting prettily enough on nutrients to get away with a bit of experimenting.

 

Of course you know I was gonna try to make that blue willow again!

 

My first attempt turned out a lot like where I left off before I screwed myself making lilies. The second attempt was a little better height-wise, but the proportions weren’t quite right and it ended up looking terribly wonky. The third try ended up just as wonky, but in a different way, but then the fourth try the proportions were almost perfect! Sure, it wasn’t quite as tall as I liked, and only a portion of the flowers on the willow-fronds had actually managed to bloom, but hey, it was really big progress for me, so let me just celebrate it anyways!

 

Maybe if I slowed down the process a bit and focused a little more next time then it would be perfect, but for now… I wanted to just bask in this pretty thing that I’d made.

 

~~~

 

It was maybe four and a half hours later that Til finally came back for me. To tell the truth, I’d been a little bit worried at that point that he might just leave me waiting there and never come back, you know? Heck, I even had time to pop out and find a nice few choice bites of prey, all while constantly checking in to see if he’d come, and he still never came back! I mean, I’m pretty sure he has way too high of a sense of duty to just leave me there like that, but… Well, you never know, do you?

 

“L’Lan’e’frea?”

 

I could hear him calling out to me, but he couldn’t really see me very well behind the curtain of blue willow fronds that I’d been resting behind. Truly, I felt like a mystical forest fairy when I was inside of this thing. It’s lucky he didn’t catch me wriggling around and dancing while I played pretend back here.

 

Hey, I had to do something to pass the time, didn’t I?

 

I majestically pulled the curtain of fronds aside with a tentacle, still channeling that fancy fairy feeling from all the make believe I’d been doing. I gestured sweepingly with one of my opposite tentacles towards Til and the other elves that he’d brought along.

 

=Welcome back, Til. Come join me in here, won't you?=

 

The other elves he’d brought with him looked absolutely confused by my actions, but I guess Til had long since gotten used to my bullshit while traveling with me, because he just shrugged and entered first before beckoning for the others to join him. The five of them looked at me hard for a while, as if they were really weighing if they could trust me like this or not, but then one of them, the youngest looking one, let out a ‘ho ho ho’ kind of laugh and started to make her way in. She looked back at the other elves with a small taunting smile as she went.

 

“What’s making you so scared to enter? ‘Tis only a tree. You’re all being quite rude, are you not?”

 

The four others took their eyes away from me to study my tree, and seemed to realize that she was right, and soon followed her in. That doesn’t mean they didn’t stop giving me wary looks, though. I led them over to a few mushrooms that I’d created to use as chairs while I was busy playing, and some of them sat down. I sadly didn’t join them even though I wanted to, since, as I found out after making all those ‘chairs’, my roots didn’t particularly like bending in that way for very long. They’re resilient, sure, but my roots aren’t very good at that kind of flexibility it seems.

 

Til decided to stay standing as it turns out, and maybe because he was acting as the bridge between me and his people, he actually stood next to me as he spoke.

 

“Elders, I present to you the L’Lan’e’frea that I’ve spoken to you about, and L’Lan’e’frea, I present to you the five Elders of this village of the Wood Elves.”

 

One by one they each stood up, giving me a small bow and telling me their names. They all sounded too flowy and foreign for me to really get a firm grasp on, though, so really their names just went in one nonexistent ear and out the other. Funnily enough, even though they were all called ‘Elders’, they all didn’t look too much older than Til did, and were all slim, sleek, and feminine, not at all like Til. There were three men, each of them lanky and tall, like a teen who’d just gotten their growth-spurt and hadn’t fleshed out and gotten used to their bodies yet. Sure, they had slightly different faces and hairstyles, and even slightly different clothes, but since I was new to elves, they didn’t really stand out enough from each other for me.

 

Contrasting the men, there were two female elves amongst the Elders, and both of them were quite compact and petite. With the elves’ natural beauty and their small figures, they looked almost like cute little dolls, or maybe enlarged fairies. Truth be told, they looked like they weren’t finished growing up yet, like maybe they were only about 10 or so years old and were just a little tall for their age. It certainly didn’t look like they should have been called an ‘Elder’ by anybody. The first female elf had a stern face behind her long straight waterfall of hair, but the second one, the one that had teased the other Elders earlier, had been actively smiling at me this whole time. Her hair was in elaborate and elegant looking braids, things that looked like they would have taken hours to weave and create, and her cute little button face looked like it should have been in paintings.

 

“Greetings to you, L’Lan’e’frea, I am the Elder called Chireelia. I give you my thanks for watching over my grandson.”