Sounds of scratching rattled me awake. Mana nodes lit up the around me. A small node lit up beside me…and a small animal with a bushy tail was using my body like a backscratcher. I peered down at it, a yellow squirrel was ready to take a leek against my trunk…trunk?

  I grabbed a hold of myself. My makeshift leaves for arms were now the size of meter-long branches. A tight-pitched screech pierced the air, and the critter bounded away.

  The vision I so desperately craved since I arrived in Himavanta was here. I poked around my “eyes.” Of course, they weren’t eyes. The wound that the wolf gave me had healed and formed a tree hollow. My window into the world was through my first near-death experience.

  My world was a lot bigger than before. Not only my arms, but the roots beneath me had stretched throughout the entire meadow. I tried tracking how deep my taproot went, just pure darkness.

  “UAefblaiefjdsgafaiuwfaw,” mumbled an audience. Their voices rumbled through my roots beneath me. The earth was communing with me. A deeper focus and a larger mana sense were needed.

  And there I found it: hundreds of small glitters. Attached along my roots were strands of silk growth, running outwards to the forests beyond. Their voices were all hogging one transmitter. This might be what I need.

  I consciously took a breath. Pores that were only useful as a hair blower reached critical mass. Enough concentrated together in a single spot? I had the beginnings of speech.

  “H-hello?” I said. The guttural screech of a diseased invalid raged out from me. I need to fine-tune the details. While speaking as a person, your lips and tongue already moved to form basic pronunciation. Manually moving multiple pores for different vowels and consonants would drive me insane. Practice, more practice is needed.

  The voices below denied a reply. A speaking tree is enough of a surprise, I can’t expect everything else to be ready to speak. “Haunt, are you still there?” I asked, my worbled voice travelled through the empty meadow. The lion’s manes were still there, accompanied by new growths of lilacs and hydrangea.

  There were no mana signatures on me. How long was I unconscious for? Haunt, Vila? What happened to you guys?

  “Nest successfully disturbed. Hunt also disturbed, active hunting inefficient,” replied a monotone voice.

  The scurrying squirrel that managed to scurry a few meters away stood still in place…and collapsed to the ground. On top of it, specks of brackish mana appeared. They filled out the small, no, bigger body of an eight-legged…friend. Ain’t he a lot bigger now? Haunt had grown from the size of Vila to a small child. How long did that take him? Haunt dragged the slowly fading animal towards me.

  I finally glanced at him with my own eyes. A jumping spider the size of a terrier. He’s a living nightmare. His two fangs eclipsed the size of the squirrel he carried. Despite his size, without mana sense, it looked like a black hole was traversing the ground. Light did not escape from his glossy shell. Where his body ended and eyes began was a mystery to me.

  “Haunt, is that you? What happened when I fell asleep?--–” I stopped myself; I hadn’t asked the most important question yet. “Are you and Vila okay?”

  “Too many questions, let me feed first.” Flecks of mana were greedily vacuumed into him. Bundles of leaves blocked my view. After a few bated seconds, Haunt climbed onto one of my branches and laid down.

  “After you sleep, she took care of kids and gave them food. After they left, she fell to ground. Very tempting snack.”

  “…you didn’t eat her right?” I asked hesitantly.

  “No!” yelled Haunt. The sudden change in tone shocked me. The dead voice that was symbolic of Haunt’s indifference disappeared.

  “I’m sorry for doubting you.”

  “Friends don’t eat friends,” he muttered.

  “Well? Please continue.”

  “Two other bugs came and took her away. The purple lady was there.”

  My mind froze. “You let them get away?” I asked.

  “No other choice. Vila hurting from inside, they said know how to help. Took her deeper into the forest. Purple lady said many things. Wanted to kill you,” Haunt said. Vehyr treated Vila as a cherished sister, for her not to kill the cause of the whole mess was a stroke of luck. I’d have to personally apologize to her, too.

  “How long has it been since? We might be able to catch up to them! I need to apologize to her,” I said. I struggled to lift myself up. My roots began to tear from the strain. The taproot had dug meters deep into the dirt, I’d risk uprooting everything, days of progress to leave here.

  “It has been twenty winters,” he said dejectedly. My roots stopped shifting. The sound that echoed through the meadow was the occasional buzzing of insects.

  “Haunt, you stayed here for twenty years?”

  “You stayed silent and grew. I stayed and grew too. Hunt things to feed you…” Haunt’s voice trailed off. His meat snack was done. He proceeded to drop the carcass into a small hole that was dug next to me.

  How long did spiders live for? Did I miss out on everything? Would Vila even remember me? A branch gingerly reached towards Haunt. A long leg grasped the end. “Thank you for staying, Haunt…thank you for being alive,” I whispered.

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  “Sallix is friend,” he replied. Another root gingerly wrapped around Haunt’s body. A moment passed with neither of us speaking. “Why asleep for so long?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Nyla said it was because of how much damage I took.”

  “I thought you died. Collected food for you.”

  My mind was flooded with all the potential bugs and animals Haunt could have hunted. Ya know what, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. I gripped him tighter. “Thank you for helping me heal a lot faster.”

  “Had to keep friend alive.”

  Twenty years, how much has changed? “How long does your species live for Haunt?” I asked.

  “Until we die.”

  “Crazy statement Haunt, absolutely wild,” I sarcasted sarcastily.

  He squirmed out of my grip. “No, we die only when we are killed. Purple woman said spiders live forever with food. This why Mother ate my brothers, sisters,” he said.

  “Is she still alive?” I asked.

  “Not sure, if she gets too hungry she will consume herself.”

  “She sounds absolutely lovely,” I said.

  “She is terrifying,” Haunt corrected, “She eats terror-raptors whole.”

  “I hope we never meet her.”

  “Me too. She will use you to clean fang. I saw her one winter. Too busy sleeping to see me.” Having a dog-sized spider was enough nightmare fuel for one day. To meet one potentially the size of something bigger…

  I still expected a smaller third voice to chime in. “There’s a girl we should meet again though,” I said. The image of that painted smile she had on when healing me reappeared in my mind. She forsook so much for a plant like me.

  “She is annoying…” Haunt interjected, “But life without her is inefficient.”

  “Damn right. Haunt, you wouldn’t happen to remember which direction they took her would you?”

  “Of course. To where the sun rises,” he said, pointing a leg off into the distance.

  “Then we’re heading east then. Deep into the forest, where monsters live…where your mother lives Haunt. Are you really okay with that?” I asked.

  “One choice made, one path to follow.”

  “Then I won’t waste any more breaths, we’re leaving this place,” I replied.

  The sounds of hundreds of papers being torn thundered across the meadow. Root systems came undone, dirt rained down. Instead of controlling a few roots, it was now hundreds. I was a far cry from my days digging with a single root as an acorn. It was not a clean divorce, thousands of tiny root hairs that were barely clinging on to begin with were left in the soil.

  The final root, my taproot, struggled the most. It clawed the furthest underground, without it, I probably would have starved to death in the winter months. To finally wrench it apart, it took a concerted effort from Haunt’s webs and my schizophrenic shaking.

  With the last root taken out of the ground, I took one last look at the mana signatures. Thousands of blades of grass thrashed out, mana scattered like sand on a dune. All the flowers were ruined, it was as if an earthquake had passed through.

  “Terrible waste. I planted those,” Haunt complained.

  “What?! Why didn’t you say so sooner? I coulda avoided–”

  “I am sarcastic,” Haunt interrupted.

  “…Nice one.” I took in the surroundings one last time. I had lived in Himavanta for twenty years. Now it was time to explore it. Thunderous quakes roiled through the area.

  “Sound. No prey,” Haunt complained again.

  It is what it is. Let’s go. Hundreds of small roots began dragging me to my friend.

  **********

  The occasional bird chirping accompanied us, as we trudged through the forest floor. Haunt would swing side by side, taking a gander from views rapidly passing us. Luckily, no creatures came to assault us.

  After a few hours of travel, we came across an outcropping a few meters away. The trees shielded our view. The heavy breaths of a monstrous creature replaced any of the residual background noise. Haggard breaths, coupled with low-tuned roars, broke any semblance of peace these woodlands may have enjoyed.

  “Do you know what this is Haunt?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied, “Danger. Move away.”

  “I’m not the most stealthy tree out here, can you go scout it out?”

  “Reply,” he said, releasing his legs’ grip on me. He disappeared through the bushes. How did Haunt grow so much over the years? How many creatures did he have to hunt? To kill? I couldn’t fathom it, maybe it was good that I didn’t. An unbearable weight bore down on me, could I have waited that long if I was in his situation?

  “I’m sorry Haunt,” I whispered.

  He isn’t the only thing who can scout now. The voices that murmured in the ground when I first woke, I could tap into them again. One of my legs struck the ground, squirming until I touched upon thin fibres.

  “klbakwbrkwr?” asked the voices.

  “You’re mycelium, aren’t you? Doesn’t matter if you can’t directly speak to me. I know you guys talk with trees. Your network of fibres helps trees transfer nutrients with each other. You also let them know of threats, right?”

  The voices continued unabated.

  “Y’all are fun guys, wanna talk?”

  “kau;egb;aekbau?” they continued.

  “I just need to know what’s up ahead,” I asked, a few droplets of sap were willed through the root stuck in the ground. The rapid commotion of voices died down.

  An image was being painted in my mind. Faint. Warm. Fuzzy. Cloudy. Nothing bad so far. “So I’m fine with moving on ahead? No danger?” No more responses, would I have to bribe them again? Haunt reappeared on my branches. On the forest floor, the shade hid any possible signatures of his movement. However, mana senses still revealed him.

  “Go crazy with no friend?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about that, was trying to talk to the ground…don’t look at me like that I’m not crazy. What did you find anyway?” Haunt’s beady eyes were staring into my soul. Unnerving. But, it was comforting.

  “Do not know words to show. Weird,” he said. First the mycelium, now Haunt. Both were giving mixed signals on what we were dealing with. But, we weren’t in danger. With the information we have and the growth we’ve accomplished, we should be fine.

  “Let’s go forward then, the scouting I did showed some promise,” I said. A few more meters dragged through the understory and we cleared through the shrubbery. The monstrous breaths deepened as we grew near. Faint roars morphed into primordial grumbles. The ground shook behind the weight of these voices.

  One last wall of bushes blocked our few. I pushed through. I finally saw what had confused Haunt and made the fungus give off fuzzy feelings.

  “…Why is there a man squatting a tree trunk with a bear as his spotter?”

  ???