Duu looked dubious when both Torun and Yoasen said they were ready to get up. And she couldn’t understand why they wanted to meet her grandfather so badly.

“I’m not even sure you’ll be able to talk to him,” said the moss-covered girl.

“We’d like to try, Duu,” said Yaosen, “You see, we’re on a very important mission from a long way away, and we think your grandfather can help us.”

“Well alright,” said Duu, “But don’t move too fast or you’ll break your twiggle-vines.”

Yaosen shot a look at Torun, who said, “She means stitches.”

Yaosen nodded.

The hollow that they had lived in for the last week did indeed belong to a living tree. The trunk was wide enough to fit the three of them plus a wolfboar comfortably, and still have plenty of width besides to have a healthy amount of wood and bark.

Unlike all of the pine forests they had seen since landing here, the glade that the mammoth tree presided over appeared to be a dense hardwood forest, full of oaks, maples, and many complementary shrubs, mosses, and vines in the understory. A healthy amount of sunlight shone through, unlike the pine forests they had come to associate with the Farwilds.

After a few minute’s walk, they halted and Duu turned to look at them expectantly.

Yaosen looked around, but this looked no different than the section of forest they had started in. And, more importantly, there was no one here. “So, your grandfather is…”

Duu looked up at a twenty foot tall oak reaching toward the dapple sunlight above.

“Your grandfather’s a tree, not a man?” That was Torun, rushing straight in.

“He was once,” said Duu, “He told me he died on that spot while he was watching the trees grow, and then he grew into a tree himself.”

Yaosen pointedly did not look at Torun, but the Meteor Knight leaned in anyway, conspiratorially. “That oak’s more than twenty years old,” Torun whispered, “If what the girl says is true, she’s never even met her grandfather.”

Yaosen ignored him. “How do you normally talk to your grandfather?” asked the monk.

Duu looked from Yaosen to Torun as if wondering if they were playing a prank on him. “You two are silly,” said the girl, demonstrating, “I sit here on the roots and close my eyes. How do you normally talk to a tree?”

“Um,” said Yaosen, “I’ve never actually talked to a tree before.”

The monk sat beside the girl and assumed the same posture.

“This is ridiculous,” said Torun, “I won’t feed into it.”

“I will,” snapped Yaosen, “Have you forgotten who warned us of Lu Gun.”

“Who?” said Duu, opening one eye.

“A giant white wolfboar with gold veins in his razorback and pine trees for tusks,” Yaosen said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Oh, him,” said Duu, and Yaosen gave Torun a pointed stare, before resuming the lotus pose.

“Fine!” said Torun, sitting beside them with a harrumph.

Three heartbeats passed.

“This is ridiculous. I’m going back to the hollow to rest.”

Duu gave Torun a puzzled look but Yaosen didn’t acknowledge the outburst.

A dozen heartbeats passed and then a dozen more.

By the end of the hour, the sunlight had shifted and it was getting cold in the shade.

Duu rose and said, “I guess he’s not here right now. It doesn’t always work. I’ll see you back at the hollow.”

Yaosen nodded but didn’t open his eyes. Torun was a warrior, used to action. To him determination looked like perpetual, unceasing motion, always moving forward, never stopping. Duu was a child; a wunderkind perhaps, but a child nonetheless.

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But Yaosen had spent years of his life in meditation. To many, it looked like the art of doing nothing. But to a monk of the Light Temple, this was a different type of battle.

It turned out to be a battle he lost, because once darkness fell, Yaosen gave up and rose to begin the slow walk back to the hollow. He found he at least felt refreshed, his wounds feeling as if they weren’t even there.

“Going so soon?” said the voice behind him, “But you’ve only just arrived.”

Yaosen spun to see an old man, dressed just like Duu, in thick layers of moss. The old man however, had sections of bark affixed to his green underlayer that seemed to suggest some sort of armor, and a strange mask of the same make that covered half of his face.

Yaosen looked to where his own body still sat before the tree. When he looked down at his spirit projection, he noticed his stomach was not injured, and he no longer shivered in the twilight chill. This matched everything he had read of the spirit world, and much of what he had seen in the dream with the mountain spirit.

“I… wasn’t sure if you’d come,” said Yaosen.

“I usually do, but my granddaughter rarely waits for me. The impatience of youth, I suppose.”

“So you are the girl’s grandfather.”

The mossy old man nodded.

“But you’re a spirit.”

The old man nodded again, and his expression suggested that he thought Yaosen was a bit simple.

“I’m sorry, oh spirit. Where I come from, spirits usually aren’t people who have died, but representation of the natural or the unseen world.”

“Sorry to shake your tree.”

“Do you mind if I ask, how did you…”

“Die? Or come back?”

“The latter.”

The old man shrugged. “I didn’t have much of a choice. The boy’s mother died in childbirth and his father broke a leg a dozen miles into a hunt. I couldn’t very well leave a babe with no one.”

“Does Duu know? About her parents?”

“She knows they’re dead, if that’s what you’re asking. But she doesn’t know what it was like to have them, so she doesn’t miss them. Not really. I’m all she’s ever known.”

“Forest spirit, may I ask you something?”

“You’ve done nothing but! Don’t see why you should stop now!”

“Is the girl a bender?”

“The girl can shape root and bark, vine and moss, if that’s what you’re asking. I always called us ‘treeshapers,’ but I suppose ‘treebender’ works just as well.”

The man must have been an advanced waterbender, but Yaosen wouldn’t dare correct a spirit. Instead he said, “But… how?”

“How do you firebend?”

“How do you know I’m a firebender?”

The old man just tapped his nose, an expression Yaosen hadn’t seen before.

“Well, there’s a lot of theory behind it, and many years of training, and there’s a hereditary element but that part’s not exact.”

“So you don’t know how, then?”

“Some say the lion turtles gifted us the element, but we learned to shape it by watching the dragons, and I suppose they learned from the sun.”

“Ohhh,” said the old man, “I see. You want to know how I learned to treebend. Why by watching the trees of course.”

“You mean you had no teacher?”

“As far as I know I was the first one to do it. Thing is, it wasn’t easy. I watched those trees grow for over thirty years. Clan all thought I was crazy and moved on without me. But the forest looked kindly on me. They reached their roots up and fed me, gave me water. The more I watched the more I knew how it was done. Water carries nutrients from the roots to the leaves and back.”

“So you are a waterbender.”

The old man scowled. “Call it what you like. It’s not like I invented it or anything.”

“Apologies, spirit of the forest. I only seek to understand. As far as I know, you’re the first to bend any element in the Farwilds.”

“‘Round here we just call it the forest.”

“So, it was Duu that saved us. Can Duu bend roots well enough to pull a grown man into a stream? Can she use them to carry us and a boar?”

The old man nodded slowly, “The secret to bending roots and bark, is that they’re stiff. If you want to move them faster’n they’re used to moving, you gotta do some breaking. Now the trick is to heal them just as fast as you break ‘em; grow new bark in the spaces where the old bark was. That’s what I keep tellin’ Duu but she’s just a kid. She doesn’t always notice the understory.”

The old man gave Yaosen a significant look.

“I… think I understand.”

Yaosen turned to go, then stopped. “Spirit of the Forest?”

“Hm?”

“I should warn you…”

The old man held up a hand, “I know all about your breakers coming up from the south. Don’t you worry about me none. Old roots run deep.”

Yaosen woke up abruptly, shivering and sore, facing the tree.

Now that he was back in his body, he could no longer see the spirit of the forest.

“That’s just it,” said Yaosen to the tree, “It doesn’t matter how deep your roots run, the Earthbreakers dig them all out.”

But, of course, there was no response from the tree.