Aloe felt bad for having reacted that strongly to the kid, Xochipilli, having seen the contents of the veritas, but some things should stay outside of the minds of people. Of any mind.

Even after being shouted at, Xochipilli dutifully obeyed him and broke one of the leaves on her hips for her. She hadn't purposely planted them there, but the silhouette they made was too amusing to remove it. A bit of vanity didn't harm.

She had to remove her stances otherwise the boy wouldn't have been able to even scratch her, so Xochipilli tore a veritas leaf and his hands soaked on the ink as she wanted to.

"Good job," Aloe patted the child on the head, and he handed her the leaf.

The contents on the leaf satisfied her.

Name: Xochipilli Ce Ozomahtli

Species: Human

Description: Male member of the human species, a species known for their ingenuity, high adaptive capabilities, and societal structure.

External Infusion: Longevous Perennity

Aloe smiled at the results. Longevous perennity did, indeed, work in humans. As she had only been able to test it on plants, she feared Aaliyah had lied to her on that fateful night. For some reason, Xochipilli was taken aback by her reaction.

Still, the contents of the veritas leaf raised some questions. Well, they had been raised way before she read the leaf, only now they were physicalized.

"Tell me, Xochipilli," Aloe stood up and removed her hand from the child's head. "Where do you come from? Your name is quite foreign to me, I have never heard of one like it before." Nor that surname convention.

"From beyond the ocean," he explained shyly, avoiding her eyes for some reason.

"Yes, you mentioned that before. But from where beyond the ocean?" The fact that he was saying he was beyond the ocean already weirded Aloe out. Beyond some sporadic islands, there was nothing out there, just an endless expanse of saltwater.

"A land called Tecolata," Xochipilli explained.

His accent was quite interesting when he said the name. He spoke Ydazi quite well, more with the faults of young age rather than of a strong accent, but for the first time, she experienced his accent – his language – with that name.

"I cannot say I've ever heard of it," Aloe said with a pensive gaze.

That seemed to disappoint Xochipilli. "But the people of this land have been at our lands for…"

"Yes?" She pressed the boy to continue.

"Well…" He blushed. "Not much, just a bit before I was born. Perhaps two decades ago?"

Aloe choked on her saliva and coughed at hearing that span of time.

"Are you alright, Aloe?" Xochipilli rushed to assist her, but the child was small and barely reached her crotch.

"I… yes," she added with a final cough. "The time you've mentioned has just startled me." The woman patted the kid with her vegetable hands.

Oh, great heavens! But she was panicking in her mind. Two decades? TWO DECADES? How long have I been in that nince-damned chasm? Oh, dunes. Oh, fuck!

The only reason why she wasn't screaming and holding her head whilst trembling on the ground in fetal position was because there was a child with her.

I… should have guessed time had gone by a bit already, she looked around at the established forest. A bit too much. This forest certainly looks older than two decades too.

Aloe took a deep breath. "Xochipilli, wouldn't you know what year we are in? In Ydazi calendar, I mean."

"I… do not, Aloe," he said with watery eyes. "Sorry…"

"Shh, don't cry," Aloe knelt and patted the child again. "I'm not mad at you, I'm just a bit… disoriented. I've been… away for a long time and I no longer know… when I'm living on."

Was that dream of a city real? Aloe had originally discarded the big building and the sprawling Selen as imaginative figments of a dream, but what if the absolute garbage of a man was having a dream close to reality? Still… how much has my notion of time been distorted? Nince-damned decades… She had been aware that the chasm had deprived her of the notion of time before she… gave in to insanity, but she had never expected that mental fog to last this much.

"Ehrm… Aloe?" The child asked shyly.

"Yes, Xochipilli?"

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"I… what… uhm…" He struggled for words, and after fighting for a bit he gave up and seemed to switch thoughts. "What did you do to me?"

"Oh, that." Meeting a person from a foreign and undiscovered land and becoming aware that she had been hiding in a hole for twenty years at best had made her completely forget about the external infusion. "I made you live longer," she mentioned casually, her mind still trapped in those other thoughts.

"You… what?" His voice was weak, but his tone reverent. "I knew you were on a goddess!"

"I… huh?" Aloe noticed what she had told him. Fuck, she kept to herself. Two decades in a cave and you forget how to keep your mouth shut… She mentally sighed, embarrassed at informing the child of his new perennial status. I should handle this. "Um, sure. But don't tell this to anyone nor the blessing I have gifted you. Understood?"

"Yes, goddess!" Xochipilli nodded enthusiastically.

"I told you before, call me Aloe." She said whilst prodding her forearm. It made her uncomfortable to be called a goddess. Only one other woman had been called like that, and she didn't want to be like her.

"Uh-yes!"

Xochipilli was quickly growing on him, even if she had only known him for five minutes, but something of the way he looked at her unsettled her. There was too much fervor in those red eyes.

"I said before that I want to go to the city," Aloe started. "But are you fine with it? I could accompany you first to another place if you are uncomfortable with that."

Her conscience wouldn't allow her to abandon a child in the forest, and she was already a few decades late, a handful of days wouldn't hurt her.

"I…" Xochipilli mumbled deep in thought.

Dunes, he's so small. She had noticed before, but the kid barely reached her hips, so he couldn't be that old. Wait. A horrifying realization startled her. Not as bad as knowing she had spent more time underground than above ground in her life, but still shocking.

As Xochipilli still pondered on his decision, Aloe walked to the man she had just killed. Seeing the headless corpse didn't make her feel anything. Perhaps a bit of shame for letting the child see such gruesome imagery but considering he had barely reacted and from his previous tale, he probably had seen worse already.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she stood on the feet of the corpse and saw how small the man had been.

No, she finally let herself admit it. He was not small, not now, not in the dream. I… am the big one.

She wasn't overtly massive, perhaps a bit over two meters after giving it some thought and second-hand eyeballing, but still quite the change from her previous petite self.

When has this change happened? The worst part was that she knew the answer, she had just forbidden herself from acknowledging it. Her thoughts had remained clouded in darkness for far too long. This body was just one of the many factors that portrayed her madness.

This has been what you've been wishing for all your life, Aloe… So why does it feel this awful? This change of size, and most importantly the fact that she had refused to acknowledge it, felt as if she had given up something very important.

But truth be told, she had given it up long before she forwent her flesh for plants.

"I… I've decided!" The boy announced, making her snap out of her thoughts. Out of her inner djinn's clutches. "I do want to follow you, go-Aloe!"

"That's comforting to hear," Aloe added with a smile. "But it's "I want to" not "I do want to"."

Xochipilli blushed at being corrected.

"Don't feel bad," she walked back to him and patted him again. "Your use of Ydazi is commendable for a child of your age, even more so when considering it's not your mother tongue."

Considering she was apparently now more than forty, enough so to be Xochipilli's mother, it was pathetic that she could only speak a single language. However, it wasn't like she had many opportunities to learn new ones when she had just spent more than half her life in a hole.

She let the child roam free and inspected the man's corpse. First, she took one of the veritas leaves from her hips and inked the corpse. She wasn't surprised to find that the ones she had used before had already been restored to their previous self.

Though the description she read did surprise her.

Name: Sayf Hadad

Species: Human

Description: Male member of the human species, a species known for their ingenuity, high adaptive capabilities, and societal structure.

Internal Infusion: Toughness

Whilst it made it harder for her to treat the deceased man as a pile of garbage after knowing its name, the information she found unsettled her.

He's not a Sultanzade, but he was donning toughness before he died. I could tell that much without the veritas. Has Aaliyah taught Nurture to non-Sultanzade? Hmm… It certainly didn't help that Aloe didn't recognize the surname of the man, he should have been surnamed after the city where he had been born, after all.

Aloe sighed and let those questions rest. She would get answers sooner or later, so there was no reason to stress herself over them. For now, she looted the man's corpse.

Once upon a time, she wouldn't have done such a thing. Disrespecting the dead was one of the greatest offenses a human could commit, but she couldn't care any longer. Not only had this man been such an infection on humanity as a whole that her act had only been that of a surgeon removing a wart, but she would need anything she could get her hands on.

Especially money.

The massive woman – you could say… built like a tree – was surprised by the contents of the man's wallet. Not only it was different from the ones she was acquainted with, but the shape and materials of the money were the ones that confused her most. He had papers of multiple colors and drawings in his wallet, and from the contents of the dream and the fact that the word drupnar was written on all the papers alongside numbers, she guessed from her banker knowledge that this was some form of bank notes, not dissimilar to a check.

He did have some drupnars on his person that she could recognize, though. But these were still different. They were coins like the ones she had known, but instead of copper and silver, they were nickel and copper. The order mattered for it seemed the copper drupnars were more valuable than the nickel ones. Her mind was already making up scenarios like "there must have been a silver shortage, and they switched to nickel", but she snapped out of them when Xochipilli walked next to her.

"You shouldn't watch, Xochipilli. It's not a pleasant sight." Aloe said with a hint of shame. She should have tried to kill the man away from his highly-impressionable and young eyes.

Instead of disgust, she saw embarrassment on the child's visage. "Can I ask you a thing?"

"You don't need to ask permission every time you want to ask something," she explained with a smile. "Curiosity is good, don't feel ashamed of it."

"I… I feel this type of curiosity is shameful…"

"Nonsense," Aloe shook her head, "speak up."

"Uhm…okay." Xochipilli refused to look at her, instead locking his eyes with the corpse's clothing. "Aloe are you, by any chance… naked?"

"Oh," Aloe found herself blushing the next moment.