Shades Of Forever

"So where's the closest outskirts sapling?" MacWillie is all energy, bouncing on her feet as she chivvies Huckens into motion, lifting him up from his kneeling position, but the young man's feet are obviously dragging. "How soon can we get there?"

"One moment, Chief Engineer MacWillie," Stove replies, Broom standing beside her. "We have not yet decided to give you permission to experiment with the trees. You are asking us to meddle with centuries of hard work, of life bought with death. We live as the trees live, and die as they die."

"Also," Broom adds, holding up a hand to forestall MacWillie's objection, "you need to rest. Your boy is about to pass out. Better to take time to recover now than waste it in the future because mistakes were made."

MacWillie turns towards Huckens. He's swaying on his feet, eyelids drooping, hands held to the tool bag at his waist.

"I can do it, Chief," his mouth stretches in a jaw-cracking yawn, and he almost falls over, "you don't listen to them. Gonna be... space dog... raise... moonhounds..." His knees buckle and he collapses on his butt. "Just need... quick nap..."

"Alright, fine, maybe you've a point," MacWillie admits, "the lad's not a true space dog yet. Find him a bed and I'll get the initial tests up and running." She unhooks the tool bag from Huckens' belt and hefts it over her shoulder, leaving him snoring on the ground. "Now where's that tree?"

"Aren't you tired, Chief Engineer MacWillie?" Stove and Broom both have an eyebrow raised, and Broom continues. "The way Sky explained it, you've been fighting for three days straight."

"Aye," MacWillie bares her teeth, "and that's why I'm the Chief Engineer. Or, was, rather," she amends her statement, "but the title makes no difference. I've the levels the lad doesn't, and a half night of rest is more than I need to keep my own engine running. We don't have time for me to be lazing about. The Voidmarch is going to be mustering forces soon, and we need all the hours we can beg, borrow, or steal."

Broom and Stove face me, and Stove speaks.

"Sky. Outsider Chief Engineer MacWillie is telling the truth, or at least thinks she is, but it is not a truth I am equipped to judge properly. What do you think we should do? Is it worth potentially sacrificing a tree?"

I freeze. Why do the clan leaders keep asking me for advice?

If MacWillie can harness the power of your trees, Sky, it solves a great many problems for us. I told you your village needed to change to help support your growth. Tapping into the trees will keep your people safe and provide us many more options.

I'd also like to try using the biomass I'm storing for Wires' memorial to cultivate a tree. If we can speed up their growth, losing one is no longer as significant a loss, and will allow us to assume more risks in combat.

That's right. I promised Wires I'd plant a forest for him.

"...Box thinks we should let her try."

"Are you okay, Sky?" Stove asks, noticing my reticence. She steps closer. "Do you need to rest as well?"

I wipe my arm across my face.

"I'm fine. It's just, I'd like to plant a tree. For Wires."

Stove's concerned expression melts into understanding.

"Of course. Will you retrieve his body, then? Broom has not allowed any of us to leave the valley."

"I... there's no body." I sniff, suddenly wracked by guilt. "It... I'm sorry. There's nothing left. I didn't mean to."

She hugs me close, not understanding my apologies.

"It's okay, Sky. His death wasn't your fault. We can spare a seed, even if it takes much longer to sprout. It will grow eventually." Stove pats my back again, and I step out of the embrace.

"Box... thinks we can make the trees grow faster. Without using a body." Stove and Broom's eyebrows shoot almost to their hairlines, but I keep going. "I'd like to see if it's correct. I was thinking I could plant the seed for Wires in the area Box ate earlier. Try and replace the canopy there."

"You think you can make the trees grow faster?"

"Box ate some trees?"

Broom and Stove's questions crash into each other, and I hunch in on myself. What am I doing, asking for this? I'm being stupid. Wires deserves a full burial ceremony, but he'll never get one without a body.

"Sky." Broom and Stove each have a hand on my shoulders. "It's okay," Broom continues. "I'll go get a seed. You can remember Wires in the way that helps you best." She steps away, but Stove keeps her hand in place.

"Grief is something everyone processes differently, Sky," she says quietly. "It can take days to fade, it can take years. Sometimes it never truly leaves. Just know that we are always here for you if you need help. Don't try to deal with it alone."

"Thanks Stove Mind," I sniff. "It's just, there were times yesterday when I didn't think of Wires at all, and then everything came rushing back. Am I a bad person for not remembering him all the time?"

"The mind is complicated, Sky Idiot," Stove smiles at me, a quick flash of upwards lips that turns her normally stern features into something completely different. "Trust me. I should know. If you're ever feeling overwhelmed, come talk to me or one of the other Minds. That's our job - to remind you why you're not a bad person even if your brain is telling you otherwise."

"...okay. I will."

I still can't believe how such an ancient and isolated social structure can maintain such a robust mental health and emotional stability focus. It's statistically impossible. You should all be bloodthirsty barbarians.

I step away from Stove as Broom comes jogging back carrying a small wooden container. It's the polished white of harvested wood - a heartseed nursery.

"Oh, hush, Box. People help each other. It's the only way to survive."

...making numbers go up is how we survive, but fine. I admit the empirical data of your village's continued existence provides a substantial logic to your claim. The clearing is that way.

I take the heartseed nursery from Broom carefully. The seed is plenty protected inside and would survive a fall, but I'm not going to take any chances on dropping it.

"Thanks, Broom."

"Do you want us to accompany you?"

I hesitate, then shake my head.

"I think I'd like to do this by myself. Also, you probably won't be able to watch what Box does without falling ill."

Stove pales, and Broom snorts.

"That's all the warning I need. May you find some solace in the growth of new life, Sky Idiot."

"And you, Broom Idiot," I reply formally. I turn to MacWillie, who's been silently watching the entire time, Huckens still snoring on the ground nearby. "Let's go, MacWillie."

I set off at a quick walk towards the green waypoint in my vision, MacWillie easily keeping pace. We pass out of the village square and into the narrower spaces of the forest proper, though there's still enough spaces between the boles for her and I to walk side by side. Some of the villagers watch us go, but seeing what I carry, merely incline their heads respectfully instead of following.

"You sure I should be at this ceremony, young Sky?" MacWillie asks after a minute of walking. The forest is hushed around us, as if witnessing our solemn trek. "I don't want to intrude on your burying traditions if it's a problem. I can wait to visit one of the outskirts trees."

I smile at her despite the sadness in my heart.

"Wires wouldn't have minded. He always loved discovering new things, and poking stuff he wasn't supposed to. Probably why we were friends growing up. I wasn't quite as crazy as him, but we had Great Grandpa tearing his hair out more than once."

I spend the next four minutes regaling MacWillie with stories of Wires and I in our youth, the silly adventures we'd manage to survive, how Wires got his scar, the time I burned off my eyebrows. By the time we reach the clearing, I'm feeling slightly better.

"Alright then," MacWillie says, stepping into the circular gap of slanted sunlight nearly ten meters in radius. Forest elders rise around us, their distant leaves swishing in the afternoon breeze, but inside the clearing is nothing but raw earth and my half-faded footsteps from the day before. "What's next, young Sky?"

"Normally we would dig a hole and lay the body inside, then place the heartseed in the chest cavity and cover everything back up, followed by a recollection ceremony. That's where everyone shares their memories of the dead so a Memoriam can record how their life affected others for the Memory Shrine. Then we wait for the first sprout to breach the soil, everyone thanks the stars, and then it's over."

MacWillie eyes me.

"This sprout, it comes up quick?"

I shrug.

"Usually after not more than an hour, though it can take longer if they were very old."

"That's odd for a tree, sprouting that quickly."

"Is it? It's how our trees have always grown."

I use my limbs to excavate a body sized trench in the middle of the clearing, warm sunlight baking the top of my head and bare arms. It's a cheerful sensation, at odds with my task. It only takes a couple minutes to clear enough soil away, and once it's done I stare down into the empty pit.

"Now what, Box?"

I will release some of the set-aside biomass.

One of my limbs manifests over the trench and fuzzes strangely near its bone-white tip. A goopy pink substance starts splattering into the hole, not quite liquid, not quite solid. Across from me, MacWillie grimaces.

"Aye, now that's something I could have gone my life without seeing. Looks like an Entity prolapsing with the squirts."

Box fills the trench halfway, then shuts off the flow of the oozing biomass.

That's 10% of our Sky Feels Guilty About Killing People Who Deserve It reserves. It's equivalent to the mass of an average human male, seventeen and a half years old.

"Thanks, Box."

I kneel down and open the heartseed nursery. Inside, a gently pulsing red lump rests in the middle of a nest of thin, fibrous tethers connecting it to the wood. It comes loose easily, its oddly dense weight warm in my hand as I lift it from the box.

WARN- recalculating...

I lean over and place the heartseed in the middle of the pink pool. It floats on the surface for a second, then sinks beneath without a ripple.

"Goodbye, Wires," I whisper. "I'm sorry."

I start shifting dirt back into the hole, and soon enough the forest floor is back to normal, the only sign of the heartseed burial a slightly raised mound. I step back from it and wipe my eyes. It wasn't a proper tree planting, but it was the best I could do. Hopefully it's enough.

...calculating...

...Sky. That thing you planted...

"What, Box?" I snap, irritated. Wires deserved more than just an absent friend and an outsider he never met standing over his grave, waiting for his tree to sprout. He deserved a long life, and a crowd of remembrances.

...calculating...

That was a reality anchor, Sky.

"...what?"

The loose soil shifts, and a thin tendril of greenish white extends upward, uncurling as it goes. It splits, then splits again, and thin leaves start budding along the unfolding lengths. The earth continues to shiver, sinking down as the tree continues to grow. MacWillie swears a quiet oath from the other side, watching the bone-white trunk stretch and spread. I ignore her, my attention on Box.

"That's not an anchor, Box! It's a heartseed!"

The tree slows, then halts its growth, its sparse crown slightly lower than MacWillie's chin, slightly taller than me on tiptoes. Vivid emerald leaves shine in the golden sunlight, occasionally flashing crimson red when the wind gusts enough to reveal their undersides. It looks like a younger version of the forest elders surrounding us, their broad boles standing like pale sentinels.

"...do they normally grow that fast?" MacWillie lips her licks nervously. "Because that is not normally how fast trees grow."

"Not usually, no," I reassure her, bringing my attention away from Box's panic. "Only if it's a little one, but we haven't had a little one die in decades, according to the Memory Shrine. Normally it takes a tree about an hour to reach that height if an adult perishes in an accident, but that's rare. The Doctors have good medicine. Most burials of elders take several hours to sprout. Plus, after the planting ceremony, it takes them forever to get even a little bit bigger."

I have-

"-so many questions."

I decide to address Box first. It needs to calm down with the wild accusations.

"Box, there's no way a heartseed is a reality anchor. You said that those make it easier for violations to appear, and I'd never even heard of a violation until you crashed on top of us. Besides, you ate some of the trees yesterday. Wouldn't you have noticed if they were anchors?"

...I really wish you hadn't just imagined that. Oh, fuck. Fuckshit dirtfucking-

Quantum observer collapse initiated

...calculating...

-fuck Fuck FUCK FUCK-

A sudden pressure squeezes my head, like my brain is trying to squish itself into the smallest possible ball while at the same time expanding so fast my skull threatens to crack.

"...hnnnghhh..."

...calculating...

SKY-

I can barely see Box's box through the blinding pain piercing my head from every direction. It's like acid needles are electrocuting the space behind my eyes, a volcano erupting between my ears in frozen gouts of flowering lava.

...calculating...

-THINK OF SOMETHING SAFE-

Box's words are more felt than seen at this point, the bulk of my attention taken up with trying not to pass out from the incomprehensible agony rattling my teeth in their sockets. Desperately, I latch on to the first thing passing through my misfiring brain - one of the ancient texts still physically preserved in the Memory Shrine, a thin book full of pictures of a black, furred creature called a 'cat.' His eyes are bloodshot, and his name is Pete. I loved looking at him as a little one. I always wondered what a cat was.

...calculating...

-HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS-

The universe turns inside out. MacWillie stretches to infinity, a countless overlap of concerned giants reaching for me as their skins morph into whirring gears of flesh and stone. Naked singularities watch me with interest, tangled lines of symbols so indescribable I want to vomit upon witnessing their whirling beauty. Fire and frost and blood and steel and flesh and decay swirl around, an endless whirlpool of dichotomy centered on me and I can't contain the immensity of it all and-

...calculati- OVERRIDE

-SKY FOCUS ON THE CAT-

-a landscape of dying gods laughs at me, faces melting into one another, rotting as they rebirth themselves through my chest and spine, a mycelium eruption of fractal fungals exploding into-

-THE CAT, SKY-

-fine black fur that defies the touch of mundane light, a midnight figure that pulls itself together from countless unseen threads lurking in my shadow-

...calculating...

-and congeals into a causal shape sitting on its haunches, staring at me as it licks a paw, oilslick eyes shimmering through every possible hue while long whiskers twitch in the afternoon breeze.

Quantum observer collapse resolved

Updating local reality baselines... updated

...sweet holy reality fuck. Those trees give me the creeps. I can't believe we survived that.

The pitch-black creature regards me from beside the trunk of the sapling, its indeterminate edges melting into the forest shadows behind. It stands as high as my waist, four muscular limbs attaching its body to the ground, a metronome tail lashing back and forth as it stares me down. Something tells me to extend my hand, run my fingers through its impossible fur.

Scintillating eyes narrow, and it swipes a set of fractal claws across my palm, barely drawing blood, then leaps into my shadow with a hissing yowl of displeasure. I pull my hand back to my chest, swearing at the burst of pain, feeling something connect me to the presence lurking out of sight.

"Ow! Box, what was that?"

...congratulations, Sky. Your understanding of the myriad potentialities of reality has expanded. Please don't ever do it again.

"...what?"

Remember when I told you our combat options were limited by what you could envision? That your imagination dictated the extent of my abilities?

"...not really."

MacWillie stretches her own hand cautiously towards my shadow, then quickly pulls back as an immaterial claw swipes out at her.

Well, you've successfully imagined me incorporating an accumulation of reality I am not equipped to handle. Yes, I ate your trees. No, I did not realize they contained enough reality to pop another hole in the universe until you brought it to my attention thank you so much.

"...like how a little one won't cry after falling over unless they know someone is watching?"

Close enough.

A shadow prowls out of my own, shifting angles of impossible darkness slinking around my legs and butting up against my hips. I rub my bleeding palm against something that might be a head, and waves of pleasure rumble through my body as it growls in satisfaction. The wound knits closed like it never existed. It feels like we're bonding with each other.

"...is this a 'cat,' Box?"

...no. No, Sky, that is not a cat. It is so far from cathood it might as well be a dog.

The ebony creature yrowls angrily, then swipes a claw against the corner of Box's box, slicing it away. The blue triangle fades as it slowly spirals down.

Aghh! Keep that thing away from me, Sky!

I giggle, reaching my hand out to pet it again.

"Who's a good cat?"

The creature smacks me in the face with a heavy paw, causing my eyes to water.

"...you little shit!"

The inky shape dives back into my shadow before I can do anything, leaving me to nurse a bruised cheek while contemplating uncertain revenge.

BING

"What is it, Box? ...also, I thought it was DING."

...BING is my unhappy noise. Back to our original conversation. When you fully conceptualized the trees as containing reality, you opened us up into a set of infinities where that reality was now contained within me, due to my earlier consumption of the biomass necessary to keep us alive. I am not equipped to integrate with the level of reality you envisioned, and thus, once quantum collapse confined us to this particular branch, I had to eject the excess in order to keep my own self conceptually relevant. Normally, that would be equivalent to an anchor event, breaching this universe and summoning a horde of violations, but unfortunately-

"Stop babbling and explain, Box." I'm slapping at my shadow on the forest floor, but the stupid thing won't come out so I can grab it and yell at it. What a frustrating creature.

...we ate ten reality anchors, Sky, which was fine when you didn't know what they did, because that meant those infinities weren't accessible to me. Now, however, you know, at a deep, fundamental level, that enough reality in one place summons non-causal violations. That... thing is the non-causal violation you summoned when you acknowledged the new reality of your trees and forced me to eject all the reality I had taken in. It's... an Entity. A very small one... and you're the anchor. We have to figure out how to send it back, or-

A pair of scintillating eyes peer out at me from my shadow, questions in one, answers in the other. I scowl at the blazing orbs.

"Physical violence is not the answer, you stupid cat! Now, say you're sorry."

A mouth snarls at me from the depths, razor teeth shining like condensed galaxies, and I glare back, leaning closer.

"Say it!"

A sudden sensation of... an upturned butt? Whatever, the teeth are gone and I feel like this is the best response I'm going to get. MacWillie clears her throat behind me, and I spin to face her, my shadow remaining still.

...I don't know what I expected.

"...and what was that, young Sky?"

"Box says it's my new Entity. I think it's a cat. I'm trying to teach it to behave."

"...I don't know what I expected." She shakes her head. "Regardless, a MacWillie doesn't break her word, and those engines are calling to me. Now can I run some tests on the tree?"

I'm about to say yes when Box halts me.

Let me check one more thing before I go back to freaking out about the Entity now apparently attached to us. Sky, can you manifest a limb beneath the tree's roots?

I tell MacWillie what Box wants to do, then step forward and kneel next to the sapling. I feel one of my limbs appear in the soil below, and then Box starts extruding more of our saved biomass, a chunky evacuation into the waiting dirt and roots.

The ground shudders beneath me and the tree extends skyward, trunk thickening and branches spreading. More leaves sprout along its extended lengths, and now its shade covers a good quarter of the empty clearing. Beside me, MacWillie is feverishly digging through the tool bag, muttering to herself the entire time. Box cuts the flow and my limb returns to immateriality.

...that's more physical growth than that amount of biomass should provide, and it's entirely too fast. There's definitely something non-causal going on with these things.

I lay a hand on the trunk. It feels like any other tree in the valley. The Entity-cat pokes its head out of my shadow to stare at the striated alabaster trunk, then pretends like it doesn't see me when I turn to look at it, surveying the rest of the forest, pointed ears flicking back and forth. It hisses when it notices MacWillie approaching with the device she used earlier in her hands, melting back into my shade, but MacWillie ignores it, intent on testing the tree.

"Aye," she declares after several seconds, "it's the same frequency as the others. I can start running diagnostics?"

I nod and she smiles.

"Excellent." She starts hauling strange tools out of the bag, arranging them in neat rows. "This'll be a bunch of boring nothing for a while. If you want to leave, I can handle myself for the next few hours."

"I'll come get you before it gets dark," I promise her, and start heading back to the village. After a couple steps, the inky shape flows out ahead of me, prowling between the trees in constant sinuous motion, a shadow stretching the wrong way towards the sun. I need to figure out a way to keep it from coming out when there's people from the village nearby, because I'm pretty sure it'll affect them the same way my limbs do.

I can't believe you want to keep an Entity around like... like some sort of pet! We should be figuring out how to get rid of it!

"It's not attacking us, Box. Didn't you say I'm its anchor?"

The Entity pounces at a falling leaf, trapping it between its front two paws. It bats the leaf back and forth, then flicks its head up in an aloof gesture and struts towards me, arching its back beneath my hand. I rub the fine black fur and it lets loose another rumbling purr.

"You're just mad because it lets me pet it."

...this is the worst tutorial. Well, the good news is, we can regrow the trees. The bad news is, if I use them to replenish biomass, that reality is going to have to go somewhere. The horrible news-

A shadowed paw bats the top of Box's frame, shaking it up and down. A concept flares to life in my mind.

feed me

-is that we now have a cat.

naptime

The Entity curls up in my moving shadow and shrinks in on itself until it disappears. I continue my brisk walk home.

"I think I know where the reality can go. I'm going to name it Pete."