Logging into the account wasn’t an issue because of course Emika, as always, had used the same password she had thought of back when she was twelve. After a few clicks to navigate through her dashboard, Melisande’s message on Emika’s public profile page turned out to be…

Welcome to the forum! If u need help, let me know!

… And that was it.

Emika wasn’t sure what she had expected. She frowned and pressed herself deeper into her cushion, puzzled about why she of all people would receive such a message from a stranger.

Still, now that she was logged in, she decided to poke around a bit. For one, she noticed this user had sent her the message almost immediately after Emika had signed up to the site. Also, Melisande was sending out similar welcome messages to all new users signing up on the forum fully around the clock; she’d issued almost a dozen such welcomes to users these past few days. In total, Melisande had over seven thousand postings on the forum and seemed to be an incredibly active user.

The other thing Emika noticed as she was going through her details was that Melisande apparently didn’t live that far away. While Emika herself lived in a small rural town, her general surroundings sported a good portion of the country’s population, so it wasn’t too unusual, but it did cause her to be slightly more interested in that user.

Out of politeness, Emika decided to answer, especially because none of those other people had done so thus far.

Thank you very much. Sorry I answered so late. I was having issues with my phone.

Emika pressed on ‘send’ and started reading through her message again, just to make sure that there were no errors in it and that it had come through correctly. Before she could even finish, the notification dot lit up again. Unbelievably, Melisande had already responded with: lmao dw ab it. hope you’ll have a nice time here c:

For a second, Emika just stared at the words, trying to decipher what they even meant. All she was ever online for were business emails.

That was a very fast reply. You have so many posts, too. Are you an employee of the site?, Emika asked.

Again, an almost immediate response: lol no i’m just bored all day. btw what brought you to this site? did you see something weird? if so pls tell me all about it i loooove hearing strange stories!! oh but feel free to dm if you don’t feel comfortable talking ab it in public

How presumptuous, thought Emika. Then again, it’s not like she was wrong…

For a second, Emika seriously contemplated just going for it and sending that Melisande person a whole essay about what had happened to her… It would all be anonymous anyway, right? And worst case, she could just say she made it all up.

On the other hand, Emika was too tired to write so much, especially on a phone. Sending a message explaining it all would take hours… And the sun was starting to rise. In the end, she decided to put the phone away to fall asleep before the light would make it much harder.

Today had been a good day. She didn’t have to worry about intruders anymore from now on, and she finally had a phone, which opened up a great range of possibilities.

She stretched, and felt her joints crack suspiciously like strained wooden branches. Then, she let herself fall back into her cushion, and for the first time in days, got a few hours of actual rest.

When Emika woke up, out of all the options open to her now, the first thing she did was take Lester’s phone and send a private message to Melisande.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

You are right, it’s not something I’d want to talk about in public.

As Emika was about to put the phone back, she saw that she had already received a reply. Startled, she opened the notification, and the message read: yeah, that’s totally understandable, there’s so much stuff i wouldn’t wanna talk about in the open either.. or am not allowed to

Like what?, Emika asked.

you first, cutie

Emika gulped at that reply and turned a little red. Was that person flirting with her? After a bit of thinking, she wrote: Something really bad happened a few days ago. I’m not sure I even understand it well enough to process it. It’s not something that can be… explained. I’m not sure what to do.

For a second she wondered if she was scaring Melisande off by unloading dark stuff, but before that fear could really materialise, the answer read: damn that sounds tough.. idk if i can be of much help but if you wanna talk ab it let me know. i’ll be here. i hope i didnt overwhelm you with my first messages… most ppl come here with, u kno, fun lil stories that im trynna pull out of them haha

You didn’t overwhelm me, no worries. I am good with people who are very direct and open. And thank you for your offer to talk. After writing that message, Emika immediately added a new message saying: Cutie.

With that, she got up from bed and went to the kitchen to have her breakfast bowl of cereal — by now, she was eating them with tap water, since her oat milk had gone out.

The next few days went by so quickly, Emika barely noticed. She unintentionally spent most of her time chatting with Melisande. Their conversations didn’t have much substance, but made her feel a lot better, so she could barely keep herself from her phone.

It seemed that Melisande was aware that Emika was going through a rough patch, and so she tried to cheer her up. Emika on the other side sought refuge somewhere that had nothing to do with her current personal situation. Apart from that, she took care of her trees and ordered some things online that would help her out in the long run, like a new phone and food. She just left the gate open and told deliverers to place the packages inside her garden so that she could receive the items contact-free.

At the same time, Emika started to tie up some loose ends. She began researching if there were some places she could run off to if she had to leave her home. It didn’t take her long to give up, and instead she used her time to apologise to her customers and other business related people about the delays and cancelled all ongoing projects and orders, together with sending refunds. She really didn’t want to get into a situation where people she barely knew started worrying about her or getting her in trouble for not upholding contracts.

As for her growth; cutting it back became more and more of a hassle, so she stopped, and instead tried to find ways to deal with it in her everyday life. By now, it wasn’t painful any more; the area around where the wood exited her skin was numb and didn’t bleed. The branches spiralled around her arm towards her elbow, and some smaller branches retraced her fingers in the air above them.

The growth was definitely aesthetically pleasing; she loved the deadwood parts, and junipers were her favourite plant to use for bonsai trees. The things that were annoying about it were how it made it harder for her to put on clothes, do household-chores and work on trees.

Also, she wondered what she was eventually going to do about the weight. For now, it was fine. The branches weren’t very thick, and while she certainly felt the added mass, she could still move her arm well. But, if it kept growing like that, wouldn’t there come a day when it would become tricky to move?

One day during the next week, as she was just wiring some branches after cutting a material tree she had initially gotten for an exhibition, she heard Lester’s phone vibrate. She half expected it to be another message from Melisande, but when she opened it, she just stared at it for a few seconds, completely puzzled. She had never seen an alert like this before.

The notification read:

Spatial distortion detected.

When she clicked it, she was brought to a map app that showed a location a few kilometres away, with the added line of: “High likelihood of being caused by a Well of Abstraction.”

If Emika had understood Lester’s notes correctly, these types of notifications were linked to his investigations pertaining to that ‘Revenant’ he had talked about. In other words: Could this notification show the current whereabouts of that creature, or something connected to it…?

That said, she had never heard of the phrase ‘Well of Abstraction’, and it hadn’t been mentioned in Lester’s notes either… Well, in that case, it was time to check it out.