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Cultivating Plants
Book 5: 6. Disciple

Book 5: 6. Disciple

"Morning, sleepyhead~" Aloe booped Xochipilli on the nose once she noticed the child was waking up.

"M-morning?" He looked around in confusion before assimilating where he was. She didn't blame the boy for thinking all the past events had been a bad dream, she had thought that more than once.

Wished that were the case more than once.

"Lemme help you getting out," Aloe carefully undid the wrapping of the Cottonpull's sack and freed Xochipilli from its clutches. All the cotton that he had used as bed now flew free disappearing into the foliage and out to the heavens.

"Is that fine?" He asked shyly.

"What's fine?"

"The cotton," the boy elaborated. "Isn't it expensive?"

"No, not really?" Aloe tilted her head in confusion. "Heavens know how much I could make before I even become tired."

"I see…" Xochipilli's eyes unfocused out of ponderation.

"Now, now. Stop thinking and have breakfast," she pushed a bowl into him. Xochipilli sheepishly grabbed it and looked at the whitish soup inside. "It's not much but it's the only thing I could offer you. At least it should fill you up and give you strength."

"It's more than enough!" He looked back up at her. "But what is it?"

Xochipilli made that face that all children made, that face of not wanting to eat anything yucky. So much for reverence, eh? It seems not even a 'goddess' can avoid children making that expression.

"Mushroom soup," she explained. "Whilst it's not bad, it also doesn't taste like anything, so don't worry about being awful. But feel free to call it so, my sense of taste died a long time ago."

"I would never say such things!" Xochipilli protested and drank from the bowl without thinking twice.

Aloe was thankful that he didn't question where she had gotten it from. Because she had forgotten to store her saucepan on the Slowtide, she had to improvise a bit to get a container that could hold water. In this case, she had grown a Heartgrowth that imitated a cranium and molded it a bit so there weren't sockets for the eyes.

Quite the nifty hack, but surely the child wouldn't appreciate drinking from a skull, even if it was made out of bark.

Making the soup itself had been simple as, like the bowl, she produced all the necessary ingredients. Flourishing Spring for the water, Radiating Undergrowth for the mushrooms, and Blossomflame for the fire to cook it.

Whether she wanted it or not, Aloe had become quite the multi-use tool.

Xochipilli's eyes closed and his nose wrinkled as he drank the whole stew in one lengthy gulp.

"So, how was it?" Aloe asked with one hand supporting her chin, looking at the boy with amusement.

"Mm," he cringed a bit, "…tasteless."

"I guess as much," the cultivator shrugged. "I can't barely remember the taste; it has been so long since I have eaten…" Her eyes were lost to the canopies of the trees as she looked upwards. Even if she was donning recovery, her body still benefited from increased agility, making her able to tilt her head ninety degrees backward no matter if she had bark for skin.

"Then why don't you eat?"

"Huh?" Her sight instantly locked into the child, not unlike an owl.

"I… uh…" Xochipilli played with the tips of his fingers as he looked at her thighs. "If you haven't eaten… why don't you eat? Aren't you hungry?"

"Oh?" Aloe chuckled at the boy's worry. "Fret not, Xochipilli, I'm perfectly fine. I just don't eat because I don't need it, sunlight is more than enough for my body to keep moving." Recovery makes it too efficient to get energy out of sunlight. Radiation too…

"I see…" He once again lost in thought. She flicked her finger at his forehead. "Ow!"

"Stop doing that, you are going to become permanently cross-eyed if you keep doing it."

"Yes…" The scolded child rubbed his forehead in submission.

"Good," Aloe puffed her chest in victory.

It was a bit childish, but she always wanted to teach a lesson to a kid. In the good sense, not in the… Aaliyah sense.

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"Well," she continued, "now that you've eaten, we should get going again."

The vegetable woman stood up, picked up the Cottonpull's sack, dusted it, and finally wore it like the makeshift dress it was born to be.

Wordlessly, Xochipilli nodded, and they got going. She left the cranium bowl on top of the extinguished campfire, maybe with a bit of luck a lost traveler would find it and it would make their day a bit better.

It was commendable that the child could keep walking for hours, Aloe certainly wouldn't have been able to do that at his age, but as time passed, the greater her frustration became. It irked her to no end that the child showed no exhaustion. If Xochipilli had been a cultivator like her it wouldn't have been a problem, but he was a normal child, and the trip was exhausting him.

She could feel his vitality slowly dwindling.

There was only one way to use one's vitality without Infusion, Evolution, the flowing stance, or getting hurt, and that was pushing the body to its limits. Xochipilli may not be portraying exhaustion and projecting strength, but his reserves betrayed him. He was pushing himself so much that his vitality was vanishing.

This couldn't keep going.

With a groan, Aloe picked up Xochipilli from the collar of his shirt and placed him on her shoulders. She tied the Aloe Veritas on her head like a cocoon – not unlike a top knot – so the leaves wouldn't bother the child.

"Oh!" Xochipilli expressed his amazement as he rode her shoulders.

"Everything fine up there?"

"Yes!" He energetically bounced on her shoulders.

Aloe would have scolded the child for thrashing around so frenetically, probably murmuring something about making her lose her balance, but the truth was, nothing Xochipilli did could affect her. She was but a moving forest, not even a charging dweller could topple her to the ground, much less a happy kid.

"It's so tall!" Aloe couldn't help but smile at Xochipilli's contents. Her increase in size had been so gradual that she hadn't noticed it, so even though she had been around his size once upon a time, Aloe hadn't been able to enjoy her newfound height.

"Is it fun to be this high up?"

"Yesh!" The child was so ecstatic that part of his foreign accent filtered through.

They continued slowly walking through the forest without much haste. Now that Xochipilli was on top of her she could have at least jogged a bit, but her paranoia and insecurities were greater than her vitality. What if she went so fast that she killed him? She couldn't allow herself to hurt the first person she had managed to speak with in ages, let alone kill him.

Humans were so fragile.

"Uhm… Aloe?" Xochipilli's voice made her stop her trail of thought.

"Yes?" She stopped and turned to look at him, though she kept her head turned to a minimum to not scare him. It would have been completely possible for her to turn her head one-hundred and eighty degrees after all. "Is there something wrong? Are you uncomfortable?"

"No, not at all," he shook his head in negation. "But I was wondering…"

"Yes?" Aloe enticed him to continue talking as his voice died out.

"Well… could you teach me your magic?"

"Hmm…" The cultivator grabbed the child from his waist and placed him on the ground as she continued humming deep in thought.

There were positives and negatives to sharing her knowledge with Xochipilli. If she were to teach him and trust him, then she could finally get infused with longevous perennity, but most importantly, she could obtain a second stance. Of course, if he were to betray her, then she would be arming a child with knowledge that no living being should possess.

What would win? Her paranoia or her desire?

Both were powerful emotions, but she knew better than being led by any at any given time.

Xochipilli looked at her with expectation.

"I guess I could teach you simple tricks for starters…" Aloe gave out to those childish eyes full of dreams. "You could be my… disciple."

"Yesh!" The boy jumped on the spot with overwhelming glee, his accent once again very notable.

"But first, I must ask you a question."

"Anything!" Xochipilli glared at her with giddiness and unrelenting faith.

"Do you know what vitality is?" The child nodded repeatedly and hastily. "Okay, then for the next step. Do you know how to sense it?"

Now Xochipilli deflated and slowly shook his head. Aloe did her best to not burst out laughing at the quick change in behavior, doing so would break the child's heart, even if she really wanted to let out a chuckle.

"That may be problematic, it is the most important step…" And the most dangerous.

Aloe still remembered how she had unlocked her sense of vitality many years ago. In a way, this journey of debauchery started there as she was forced to go naked into the desert far away from any other signs of life. The sand burned her soles and calves, the sun lacerated her back, and she slowly died from heat, hunger, and most notably, dehydration.

It had taken nearly her death to sense the vitality of a small seed.

That and the lack of more life, she noted. I don't want to lead Xochipilli to near death, and even if I were disposed to do so, how would isolate him from other living beings in the middle of a forest?

"Uhm…" Xochipilli sheepishly mussed something, but the sound died in his mouth before he could even form a word.

"What is it, Xochipilli? Speak up," she said. "I'm not mad at you if that's what's gnawing you."

"I've heard from the slavers that there's uhm… a pill? Yes, a pill to awaken one's vitality." Those memories hadn't been exactly pleasing considering how much he was struggling to speak.

"A pill, I see," Aloe patted his head to comfort him. It wasn't the first time she had heard of these pills. They both appeared in the slaver's dream and there were some on his corpse. She wasn't fully sure what they did, and she had no way of identifying them, but they were in her possession inside the Slowtide. "Well, let's look out for that pill once we reach the city, shall we?"

Xochipilli looked up after Aloe spoke those words. It took him a second to process them then his eyes opened like plates. "Yesh!"

"For now, let us get going." Aloe removed her hand from his head and instead gave him his hand to hold it. "We should be close to the city; I'm hearing things already."

She wasn't hearing them anywhere close, a few kilometers away, but that wasn't much of a distance. Guiding herself through the miscellaneous noise, Aloe and Xochipilli walked to where she expected to find the city, and after a few hours, she was surprised by what she saw.

Columns of smoke. Myriads of buildings as tall as towers next to each other. More vitality signals and more potent than she had ever felt. And beyond all else, a city as big if not more than Asina itself.

They had made it to Selen, and the sight scared her.