“No!” exclaimed Nerthus. “Cease that behavior at once! That is not for eating!”

Elijah broke out of his brief musings on elven beauty to see that in the couple of short minutes since the deer had passed through his summoned gate and into his grove, they’d made themselves at home. And considering they were voracious eaters with a taste for Elijah’s grove berries, the results were predictable.

And in truth, so was Nerthus’ obvious exasperation. The little tree spirit interposed himself between the stag and the nearest berry bush, but he was incapable of stopping the doe and the two fauns from dashing past to run unrestrained through the garden.

Elijah couldn’t help but chuckle a little at his friend’s antics.

But then Nerthus pleaded, “Please stop them!”

Elijah sighed. The deer hadn’t actually done any damage to the garden – yet – but he knew it wouldn’t be long before they did. So, he stepped forward and grabbed the stag’s antlers.

“No.”

The deer tried to pull away, but Elijah wouldn’t allow it. His grip was like iron, and as he stared the guardian in the eyes, he said, “If you don’t control yourself, I will take you back. Your children and mate will be in danger. Do you understand?”

Elijah wasn’t sure if the creature could comprehend the words, but the meaning behind them definitely got through. Sure, the powerful stag could pretend he was just some ordinary deer, but Elijah knew differently. He was an intelligent creature that could understand far more than he let on.

Or that was what Elijah was banking on.

If the deer proved uncontrollable, he would gather them up and take them across the strait. It would not be a comfortable trip, and Elijah wasn’t certain how he would accomplish the feat, but he wasn’t willing to let the creatures ruin all of Nerthus’ hard work.

He released the deer’s crystalline antler, then pointed off into the nearby forest. “Go,” he said. “And take your family with you. There are no predators here. No danger. You’ll be safe.”

The stag cocked his head to the side, then, miraculously, let out what sounded like a high-pitched bark combined with the bleating of a sheep. The other three deer – the fauns and the doe – immediately stopped in their tracks, then jerked their heads around to the patriarch. When he had their attention, he turned and bounded off into the forest. His family followed.

Elijah let out a sigh of relief as he monitored their passage through the island’s forest. They were not native to the thick forest, but they made their way through the dense undergrowth remarkably well. More importantly, they didn’t even look back at the grove, which told Elijah that they understood that it was off-limits.

“Thank you,” Nerthus said. “I did not want to be forced to hurt such magnificent creatures.”

“You think you could?” Elijah asked. Until then, Nerthus had never displayed any combat capability.

“Of course. In this grove, I could defeat them with little difficulty,” he answered. “I am to a normal guardian as you are to other humans.”

“Are you a guardian, too?” Elijah asked, realizing that he had no idea how to classify the tree spirit.

“I am the tree. In most ways, I am a combination of natural treasure and guardian. My species lives in harmony with an ancestral tree, which means that as it grows stronger, so do I. We are one, and in most ways that matter.”

“What species are you? What do your people call themselves?” Elijah asked, realizing once again that he hadn’t really treated Nerthus as a friend. Rather, he’d treated the tree spirit as a means to an end. Sometimes, that end was information, and at others, it was tending to Elijah’s grove. And while Nerthus had certainly never complained, Elijah knew he’d been a bad friend.

“I am a spryggent.”

“Uh…”

“Spryggents are the offspring of hamadryads and dryads,” Nerthus responded. “I remained dormant in this tree until my parents sent me here in the hopes that we could take root.”

“Do you miss them?”

“I never knew them. But I know more of them than I could ever quantify. While dormant, I was connected to them, and I saw through their eyes,” Nerthus stated. “I was only barely aware, but much of that knowledge remains with me. I was separated from them when they sent me here, but the memories remain.”

“I see,” Elijah said. However, even though he understood Nerthus’ words, he was not certain that he truly grasped the spryggent’s full meaning. He simply didn’t have the context for full comprehension. Still, he felt the necessity to say, “Well, you’re my family now.”

And he meant it, too. Nerthus wasn’t just the person who tended his grove. Nor was he simply a friend. They were connected in an inextricable way, and over the years of their companionship, they’d grown into something far deeper than mere friendship.

“Thank you. I…I do not know how to respond to that.”

“It’s okay. I just wanted you to know,” Elijah said. “But this conversation does remind me of a couple of questions I had. I’ve told you about the bear guardian I met, right?”

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“You have,” Nerthus said, gesturing to Elijah’s cloak. “You wear its pelt.’

“Oh. Right. Well, I ran into another one,” he said. “An alligator whose natural treasure had been harvested. It was protecting a family instead.”

“Interesting. Guardians are powerfully nature-attuned creatures,” the spryggent explained. “Because of that, they are strong. I don’t know how the system chooses them to come to a new world, but it’s always consensual. They have to agree, and when they do, they come to a new planet with a natural treasure. The panther who came to this island was paired with this tree, for instance.”

“Where do you fit into that?”

“I am part of the tree, and it is part of me.”

That was as good of an explanation as he was likely to get, largely because it seemed that Nerthus didn’t entirely understand the distinction. To him, he and the tree were so intertwined that he likely wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began. So, Elijah moved on to the topic he’d most wanted to address.

“What about the deer I brought here?” Elijah asked. Then, he explained the way Roots of the World Tree worked. “They can’t guard their natural treasure from here, right?”

“From what I understand, your circle will provide adequate protection. The moment you finished it, the connection between guardian and treasure was severed,” Nerthus stated. “In a way. It is complex. A guardian can exist without its treasure, but it is rare. Normally, they would die to protect it. In return, it strengthens them.”

“I see,” Elijah said. “What about the others?”

“Others?”

“The other animals that are as powerful as guardians, but they’re not of this world,” Elijah explained.

“Ah. The estranged.”

“That sounds ominous,” Elijah said.

“It is. Sometimes, creatures from other worlds are accidentally imported into newly touched planets,” Nerthus said. “Many times, they are incompatible with the environment, and as a result, they die in agony. But other times, they flourish.”

“Why, though? Is the system prone to mistakes?”

“Not as such. When this planet was touched by the World Tree, it was forcibly expanded. That, in turn, randomized the terrain,” Nerthus explained. “But that mass came from other planets, usually ones that were doomed to be overrun by Voxx and dragged into the void. The World Tree saved them, but in doing so, it doomed some to a short life in an environment for which they were ill-suited.”

Elijah nodded. So, basically, creatures like the hydra or the sovereign spider were rescues. Unsuited additions to the newly touched world. That explained why they felt so out of place. In many ways, it was sad. The creatures had never asked to be relocated, after all. Even if being moved to Earth had saved them, it had to be difficult for those creatures to adjust.

But it also brought to mind another issue.

“Are any of them invasive?” he asked. History was full of species that had been introduced to new ecosystems only to take over.

“Some,” Nerthus answered. “It is yet one more danger of a newly touched world.”

“Fantastic,” Elijah said with a shake of his head. It didn’t really change anything, though. He asked, “So, anything happening here? How is the grove?”

After that, he received a long and enthusiastic explanation of Nerthus’ efforts and plans regarding the grove. Elijah nodded along, and though he enjoyed horticulture as much as the next guy, he didn’t think anyone liked it as much as Nerthus. Still, he owed it to the spryggent to at least listen.

So, that was how Elijah spent the next twenty minutes until he remembered another topic. “Oh,” he said, rummaging in his pack. “I got something else that might interest you. Hold on a sec while I find it. Ah, here it is.”

Then, he retrieved the Miracle Seed he’d gotten for closing the most recent minor dimensional rift.

“That is a Miracle Seed!”

“I know,” Elijah said, tossing the walnut-sized seed up and down in his palm. Nerthus’ eyes never left it. “What’s it do?”

“It will become whatever you want it to be,” Nerthus answered.

“Uh…”

“Within reason.”

“There it is,” Elijah said. “You have a better explanation?”

Nerthus did, and he was more than happy to talk about it. As it turned out, the Miracle Seed was capable of becoming any sort of plant native to the world where it had originated. That didn’t sound particularly exciting, but Nerthus pointed out two things that changed that. First, many plants on Earth had been transformed by the injection of ethera that came with the touch of the World Tree. As a result, they had developed a host of interesting characteristics, from new defense mechanisms to actual mobility.

That was interesting enough, but the second part was what really excited Elijah. The plant that grew from the miracle seed was absolutely natural, meaning that reproduction was not only possible, but almost inevitable. So, one plant could become many, many more – especially with Elijah’s influence.

The possibilities were endless.

Yet, there was one thing he wanted more than anything else.

“You think it could be a coffee plant?”

“It can be anything.”

Elijah squatted. There were probably better uses of the Miracle Seed. He’d considered trying to grow a briar wall for Ironshore. There were plenty of vegetables that would probably be useful as well. However, the fact was that Ironshore wasn’t really his responsibility. Sure, he’d planted the ancestral tree seed there, but that was more symbolic of their alliance than anything else. Ironshore needed to care for itself because, if they continued to lean on him, then they’d never grow into their own strength.

As for vegetables – while that would be helpful, he was honest enough with himself to recognize that he’d never get as much use out of a vegetable garden as he did out of some coffee.

On top of that – and almost as if he was trying to justify what he’d already decided to do – Elijah considered the fact that there were a host of medicinal uses for teas. Surely coffee would be the same way, especially with the benefit of being cultivated within his grove.

“I think we need about a twenty-by-twenty-foot space,” Elijah said.

Upon hearing what Elijah had planned, Nerthus grew even more excited. He claimed to have the perfect location, as well, and he quickly led Elijah to the other side of the grove where there was about fifty square feet of open land. Nerthus said that he’d had another project in mind for that area, but the cultivation of a Miracle Seed was far more exciting.

So, they spent the rest of the afternoon marking out the planting grid before Elijah dug a hole and planted the seed. That gave him a prompt:

You have planted a Miracle Seed. Please choose which plant you would like to grow.

After that, Elijah saw an overwhelming deluge of choices. Some of them, like an apple tree, were sorely tempting, but he had his plan. So, he arduously searched through the list until he found the one he wanted:

You have chosen coffea arabica.

After that, Elijah felt – through One with Nature – the seed transform and begin to sprout. Fortunately, the Miracle Seed was as good as its name suggested, and in seconds, the stalk broke through the surface of the rich soil, and the root system began to develop. By the time it stopped, the plant was around six inches tall.

“Nice,” Elijah said, summoning Healing Rain and flaring Nature’s Bounty. “I know what I’m doing until my cooldown resets.”