I comically turned my ‘head’ back and forth between the Elder Chireelia and Til as I processed her words, and soon pointed a tentacle at each of them.

 

=Oh, so you’re Til’s grandmother?=

 

Was that why she was being so smiley at me while the others were being all wary? What, don’t tell me he told her about all the (maybe a little bit heartfelt) jokes I made towards him! That talk was just supposed to just be between the two of us! What, would the average person go up to their grandma and say ‘Hey, someone hit on me because they wanted to use me as a food bank’?!

 

How could you do that to me, Til???

 

The small cute elf gave me a knowing smile, one that showed off the wisdom of age, hidden behind her youthful looks.

 

“Yes, but we can talk that over later. For now, L’Lan’e’frea…”

 

Chireelia quickly gestured towards the other Elders and herself and then to me.

 

“We are here to have a talk about you.”

 

Me? Ah, well I am indeed pretty interesting I suppose. Maybe I’m just getting a big head over it, but all these ‘important’ people coming to see me is making me feel even more interesting than I already typically felt!

 

=Sure! What about me did you want to talk about?=

 

I used some of my remaining nutrients to make another cute little mushroom chair, and tried to sit down and cross my root-legs like I’d seen all the interesting and powerful women on TV and magazines do during interviews in my past life, but I quickly realized how much my body didn’t really like being pretzeled like that, and I had to get up again soon after while trying to act like it was completely normal. Understandably, this whole process left confused and unimpressed looks on all the Elder’s faces. Til didn’t look too surprised at least, although that’s probably once again due to him being very very used to my foolish ways. And since he was the only one not giving me an odd look, I instead grabbed hold of him, and repositioned him on my now empty chair in an effort to make it look a little less bizarre. Of course, understandably, it seems that also wasn’t the play, but oh well. Such is life~.

 

After a small moment of awkward silence, it was one of the skinny little lanky man-elves who talked first, sounding much older in the way that he spoke than how he appeared, and stroking his long goatee.

 

“Hmm yes, well… The boy has told us a bit about you, but there are still quite a few things that we do not understand; For instance, it’s obvious that you can talk, but we do not understand why.”

 

=Oh?=

 

I tilted my ‘head’, not really understanding what he wasn’t getting. These people knew what I was before even I did! Shouldn’t they already know how I work?

 

=...Well, I have a leaf in my head that I grew so that I could talk? I can’t really show it to you, since it’s kind of completely encased in there, but it looks like a pair of ‘hookers lips’- Oh, maybe that’s not what you guys call ‘em here. Have you ever heard of a leaf, well really it’s a flower, that looked like a pair of sexy lips? Well, I wanted to talk and they were the first thing that I thought of so… So…=

 

The elf that asked the question had long since looked away from me and turned a questioning and displeased look towards Til next to me, making me shut up from the sudden awkwardness that filled the air.

 

“...Is the L’Lan’e’frea doing this on purpose?”

 

His tone made it seem like he was asking if I was really this stupid, or if I was just being rude to him for whatever reason, and honestly? I didn’t have the faintest idea what I’d done wrong. So yeah, not thinking I like this particular Elder.

 

Til, who’d been trying to keep a respectful and serious look on his face to make up for the fact that I’d disrespectfully sat him down in front of his Elders or whatever, bowed his head slightly towards the man.

 

“Please forgive her, Elder; She doesn’t know any better and did not fully grasp your question. She’s quite young, and I’m sure she did not mean anything by it.”

 

...Hmph. Yeah, another strike for making Til apologize for my antics. I especially don’t like the look on that elf’s face while he’s talking to Til... But okay fine, it’s a misunderstanding, whatever. Maybe I’m a little ticked off, but I don’t wanna keep acting ‘young’ and have them make Til apologize for me more, so I'll just shut up and let the ‘adults’ talk instead.

 

“I see… Well then. Let me rephrase the question. What would cause a L’Lan’e’frea to wish to converse suchly?”

 

Pffft. How’s it my fault that I didn’t understand what he meant when he’s asking his questions like that? Really! At least it made better sense this time, but I really don’t think Til or I should have taken any of the blame here.

 

=Mmm, well… I kept meeting humans and other things and getting frustrated that I couldn’t talk to them or ask them anything. So yeah, I decided to make myself something to talk with.=

 

“Ah, so you met with humans…”

 

The other female elf, the one that wasn’t Chireelia, was the one who spoke this time.

 

“The different prey that a L’Lan’e’frea meets can indeed influence their growth in the early days. I assume you ate them all, of course… You must have come a long way, seeing as I've not heard of any of the human settlements in these sections of the forest disappearing.”

 

=Huh? Ah, no, that’s not it.=

 

I wiggled a tentacle side to side in front of my face, as if I was shaking my hand ‘no’.

 

=I didn’t kill those humans. Well, okay maybe I killed a few of them, but it’s just because they were doing bad things! Or, you know, some of them were because they were mean to me I guess? Yeah, I went near a bunch of different towns, but… Most of the humans I met I just let go.=

 

Maybe let’s not go into details about how most of the humans I met just flat out ran away from me before I could even think about eating them. That’d be way too embarrassing.

 

I guess what I said must have been super weird to the Elders, because they were looking at me like I just grew a bunch of extra heads or something. Even Chireelia, who’d been mostly smiling and laughing casually as she watched all my silly little antics, had a look on her face like she was surprised.

 

“Oh my, L’Lan’e’frea! You just… let them go?”

 

=Hmm? Yeah. Why? They weren’t bothering me or anything or doing anything bad, so…=

 

“But L’Lan’e’frea…  It’s true that Ek’Til has told us how you do not have your own territory yet, but… You found them in the forest, did you not?”

 

Yeah? Of course I found them in the forest! I’m a plant, a corpse plant even! Where else would I have been?! Ah, well, I guess I did take a small detour into the windy territory or whatever it is that it’s supposed to be called, so I shouldn’t be acting like that… But Til probably would have mentioned that important little tidbit to all of them already since that ‘Wind’s Avatar’ thing was chilling there, so then what’s the whole big deal here?!

 

Since I wasn’t sure what to say (nicely), I just nodded back to her, and all five of the Elders quickly huddled together to talk to each other.

 

“This is unprecedented.”

 

“Yes, I have to agree. Why did the L’Lan’e’frea not kill them all?”

 

“Perhaps it has to do with the lack of a territory? It’s possible that because there was no territory to defend-”

 

“Ah, but you forget! We have records of young, landless L’Lan’e’freas still consuming the villages that they came across.”

 

“Feidalos is correct, all of what we’ve seen says that the humans should have still been considered food.”

 

“Surely all these mounting irregularities must come from the same source, correct?”

 

“I believe you must be right, after all, this one is so…”

 

“True, this L’Lan’e’frea is quite… strange.”

 

“If we’re looking at the records, then she’s far from the first one to talk, but to be able to converse to the extent of prattling on as she does… And for the trigger to have been wanting to simply speak to humans instead of using it to prey on them…”

 

“If it were just a small batch of humans then it’s possible they could have pledged their loyalty to the forest… But with several villages that’s highly unlikely...”

 

“Yes, it truly makes no sense. The L’Lan’e’frea should have still seen them as intruders to the forest, no matter what the case.”

 

“And the fact that she has also cozied up to that boy instead of treating him as an intruder…”

 

“Could it be that this one is defective, somehow?”

 

“It would be a first, but…”

 

“Just what was the Spirit of the Forest thinking?”

 

…Hmph. So they think I’m defective, huh? And boy are they daring, saying all this stuff like I wasn’t even here listening to it! Even Chireelia, who I thought was at least a little bit more on my side than the others, was getting into it! I tried to be a patient and good little plant, but I’m starting to really be reminded that my patience is actually horribly limited.

 

Of course, being the petty little thing that I am, I decided to lean in close to Til and have our own little meeting. Let’s see how they like it!

 

=Hey, Til?=

 

“...Yes L’Lan’e’frea…?”

 

=I don’t think I like those Elders very much.=

 

Til’s face looked strained for a moment, but then for the first time ever I saw him give me a small, cunning smile. He looked like a mischievous brigand somehow, and I had to say, the look really suited him! He leaned in just a tad closer (which, wow, there’s a first time for everything I guess), and whispered back to me.

 

“Sometimes I really don’t like them either. They can be a bit stuck in their ways and hard to be around, my grandmother included, and they have a hard time parsing anything that they deem to be too ‘different’. Don’t be surprised if it’s impossible to get another word in with them for the rest of the day.”

 

Yeah okay, so this is where I ended up making a little mistake.

 

I don’t know, maybe I was too excited because I finally seemed to be connecting with Til somehow, or maybe I was just too flustered and on the back foot from the whole situation entirely, but I made the mistake that I kept habitually making in front of Til and was a biiit too honest about what I was thinking with what I said next. And of course, I said it with way too much sincerity and relief in my voice for me to ever tell Til or any of the other listeners that were around me right now that it was ‘simply just a joke’.

 

=Oh good! Well if we both don’t like them, then why don’t I just kill them and be done with it?=

 

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