“What’s up everyone, thanks for joining us. Today we got an MTV Cribs special, let me welcome you all to my crib. I call it the Tree House.”

“Provisional title, of course.”

Licht had been gracefully plopped down on the top of a tree by the Giving Tree’s roots. Licht might have recognized the tree he was situated on as a Shagbark Hickory were it not for the large luminous bulbs extending from the branches. It seemed the trend in this forest was to dabble in bioluminescence.

The problem was, despite how sturdy the hickory seemed to be, Licht’s metallic body proved too heavy to be supported by the meek upper layer of leaves. He soon began sinking.

Licht spun his spherical body, pulling at the treetop with his withe limbs in an attempt to turn himself over. The majority of this work only went to further sinking himself into the leafy treetop. Digging his way ever further from sunlight.

“Alright, uh, what we got here is the front landing pad. Of course, all my green and leafy fixtures accounted for haha, oh shit that’s far down. Oh, and there’s Bob. Bob! Say hi to the camera, Bob!”

A hundred feet away or so on the opposite side of the tree a squirrel sat on one of the branches. Its beady black orbs watched as a moss-covered ball slowly dropped through the levels of the tree.

“Alright, don’t mind Bob, he’s a little camera shy. What do we have next, ah, of course! The light show, as I like to call it!”

Licht finally managed to wrap his arms around something, only now able to start to slow his fall. He frantically cradled a thin branch as he slid downwards, narrating on the iridescent tree bulbs hanging all around him.

“Now, my viewers know I’m an art guy, and it’s true. I like to keep these here, these uh, actually I don’t know what they’re called. Sort of a je ne sais quoi if you guys know what I mean. Haha, I like to keep it classy here.”

Sort of sputtering in a half humorous, half panicked tone he thought aloud. He had no idea what the glowing tree bulbs were called, as there was no close equivalent from Earth to compare them to.

As Licht was watching the dangling glowing bulbs, his withe tendrils had formed the shape of a basket handle above his body and were carrying him down the sloping branches like a zipline. Suddenly, the ride jolted. His arms had hit a snag.

“Woah!”

The loss of momentum caused Licht to bounce around, slamming his orb up into the branch. He tried to fix the situation by pushing himself over the hump in the branch, which only caused him to slide down the tree faster.

“Oh c’mon! I just got here!”

…

Not thirty seconds after being graciously deposited at the top of the tree did Licht find himself amongst the weeds once more. If Licht had proper hands, he would be pulling his hair out in frustration. Of course, he would need some hair for that to work as well.

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“Fuck me! Just when I had such a good thing going.”

The fall had been abrupt. As soon as he started sliding down the tree he gave up any stake in controlling his descent. He soon hit the main trunk of the tree, which was as large as a small building’s face to him, and immediately dropped. The sudden landing hadn’t hurt him, but it still stung to have lost such a prestigious starting position.

“And I bet I could have benefitted from being that high up too. Dang, what a shame.”

He could have had the high ground! Anakins everywhere were surely nodding their head with understanding of his plight.

He imagined being able to bury himself inside the tree, using the top of it as an entrance point. Actually, that gave him an idea.

“Let’s see if I can convince it to let me back up?”

[Wooden Commune]

His immediate surroundings once again vanished into darkness. The effect was more pronounced this time however, as he had gotten quite used to the ‘omnivision’ that his evolution had given him.

“Um, hello?”

Like the other times he had used the skill, the tree in front of him and himself were the only visible things. Although this time it didn’t give Licht the same feeling as the Giving Tree had. It appeared more of a muted color in the skill’s vision that the Giving Tree had. Licht attempted to reach out in communication with the hickory, but he got no response.

“Hello? Big tree? Hickory? I’d like to get to the top of your body again, if you are able to help me?”

Licht believed that the tree would be able to do at least something. The plant life in this forest seemed to be unusually active, in terms of his standards. Having met a group of flowers that followed him around threateningly with their faces extended and a gigantic carnivorous tree, Licht felt that the tree in front of him should at least be able to wave a branch or something. Surely?

Turns out no. Licht spent the rest of his bank of AF waiting for the tree to respond. As the skill died, Licht came to terms with the fact that he just sincerely waited on a tree to respond to his questions.

“Well that’s kind of embarrassing. You were just a regular tree this whole time? Those exist in this forest!? I pretty much expected all the trees in this region at least to be the kind that moved. Maybe that’s why you’re not under the umbrella of Giving Tree?”

It would make sense, given the clearly generous personality that the Giving Tree had displayed, that it was raising the trees underneath it to be intelligent like itself. Or perhaps it was failing at its attempts?

“Maybe that was why it was so excited to see me? I doubt everyone it meets gets a free drop of whatever that was.”

He figured that the drop had likely been directly responsible for unlocking the Virtue of Branch, but he still didn’t know what that would do for him.

“Actually, do plants in this world raise their young directly? Maybe gaining intelligence is their version of reaching a mature stage.”

It was unnatural how many questions Licht had about his environment. It was almost as if he had been transported back into his youth. His last few years of being in the hospital had dulled his curiosity to a non-existent state, but even so he shouldn’t have regained his curiosity immediately. Curiosity was tied to his mindset, such a thing shouldn’t have been changed just because he was in a new situation.

Licht put those questions at the back of his mind and focused on getting back up the tree once more.

“Well I doubt I can roll up its trunk very easily, my appendages are only good for light grabbing, they aren’t sticky. Not to mention I don’t want to test if they can hold my body weight for that long…”