It's early afternoon when something draws my attention away from the textile arts. "Amelia, can you stop the horse?" I ask while staring at the woods to the west. My eyes are drawn that way even though I have no idea what's calling out to me.

"What's up?" She slows Storm to a stop.

"I... don't know." I slide off the horse and walk un-erringly into the woods, the undergrowth parting to clear a path for me.

"Sorrel!?" Amelia calls out in alarm. "Apricot! Wake up! Something's wrong with Sorrel." I know I should go back and reassure her, but the draw of whatever it is, is just too strong.

"Hmm? Oh, what is that?" I can just hear Apricot's voice go from sleepy to shocked.

"Not you too." Amelia's panicked cry snap me out of it.

"I'm... okay." I shout and try to head back, but find that my feet won't obey me, my body wants what's out there too much to listen to my commands. "There's something... some sort of power out there that's drawing me to it." I explain as the catch me up.

"It's nature magic." Apricot Confirms. "Strong nature magic." It seems Amelia's cry worked on her too, and that this... whatever it is doesn't have as strong a pull on her.

"I'm sorry for scaring you, but my body just moved on its own." I struggle just to look at the water mage instead of off into the woods. "Even now my legs won't listen to me."

"Are you okay?" She's gotten her panic under control, but she's still clearly worried. "Is it dangerous? Some type of magical monster that preys on Plantkin?"

"No." Apricot shakes her head and strokes Amelia's cheek. "I think I've seen this before, though never quite this strong. It should be safe, but let me fly ahead. Can you do that Sorrel?" She asks when my attention gets drawn to the west again.

"Yeah... I think." I wrench my attention back to Amelia. "Can you keep me distracted?" She answers with a smirk and opens another button on her top. "Mmm. Not what I was going for, but that definitely works." I lick my lips and find that I can actually take a step towards her.

Apricot meanwhile, just rolls her eyes and flies off to investigate. I force my eyes not to follow her, afraid that Amelia will get upset and button back up if I look away.

"It's safe." Apricot says with a laugh when she rejoins us a moment later to see Amelia leading me by the 'nose'. She's pushing up her breasts and giggling as I track her every movement. Keeping just out of reach while I fight to chase after her. "You're going to like this Sorrel, though maybe not as much as these." Apricot lands in Amelia's cleavage again.

"Nnh, boobies." I cry when the blonde buttons back up.

"You can play with them later." She laughs. "Now, that Apricot says it's safe, I want to see what this thing is."

"Promise?" I call over my shoulder as my feet resume their trek.

"Yes, you goof." She smiles and follows in my wake. "And would you quit squirming around in there, your wings are ticklish"

I try to keep my focus on the two beauties, but the pull gets stronger with every step. Soon, I can't even look back anymore, and it's everything I can do not to just break into a run. Fortunately, the source of this strange magnetism soon shows itself.

A majestic oak towers over its neighbors as waves of mana pour off of it. It looks to have been thunderstruck in a recent storm, but unlike the miserable example I found yesterday that was barely clinging to life. This one seems to have been energized by the attack from the heavens.

My body, moving on its own, places a hand over the charred scar. The tree seems to shudder as I slide my hand down its wound. Then, I'm sure of it, the oak does shudder. And, not just that; it starts to shrink in on itself, its bark smoothing out as I run my hands and vines over its rough exterior.

Soon, or at least what feels like soon for me, I'm holding a pale wooden staff in my hands. A jagged black scar runs the whole of its two-meter length but is as smoothly polished as the rest of the surface. And, where the tree used to stand, there is now only a small sapling.

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"Thank you, friend." I plant the butt of my new staff in the ground and channel nature mana into the sapling. It quickly grows up to half of its former glory, but I can tell that it will soon tower over not just its neighbors but the whole woods.

Checking the suns position in the sky, I see that an hour or two have gone by while I was communing with nature. Looking around, I spot Amelia napping in the shade with a book clutched protectively in her hands.

"You know? If you wanted to play with your staff, all you had to do was say something." Apricot's joke gets a barking *Ding* of a laugh from the goddess of bawdy jokes. "But seriously, what was that?"

"You think I know?" I snort. "Best guess is that it's some sort of Plantkin thing that I never learned about because I was raised by humans." I notice then that I've shifted back into my natural form, and that my pants are barely clinging to me. Shifting back to human, but leaving my petal-like 'hair' and the tendrils on my arms, I find that my staff shifts with me. Its length and diameter fitting me perfectly.

"Neat trick." The pixie alights on the tip of the living wood. "I didn't even feel any mana fluctuations from it."

"You can't feel this?" My eyes widen.

"What do you mean?" She tilts her head quizzically.

"This... this..." It really needs a name. "Blackthorne! It contains all the power the tree once held." I run a finger along the blemish that makes it all the more beautiful. "I can feel it coursing into me."

"Really?" Her eyes seem to sparkle and glow as she peers at my new partner. "I can't see anything, it just looks like any other stick to me."

"Mhm?" Amelia's murmur interrupts us. "You all done?" She asks and wipes a bit of drool from her chin.

"Yeah." I smile down at the sleepy little cutie. "Sorry to make you wait." I sling Blackthorne onto my back and morph my clothing to hold it in place. "But, you know how it is? Sometimes you just can't keep your hands off your wood." *Ding* "Snerk." Temmie and Apricot laugh, but Amelia just rolls her eyes and stretches out a hand for me to help her up.

"Well, if you're done playing with your... 'wood', can we get going?" She starts heading back down the path I made on our way here. "Aunt Carmen and I may not get along very well, but I'd rather not see her suffer any longer than necessary."

"Of course." I quickly catch her up and wrap my arms, all four of them, around her from behind. "And, thank you for being understanding about this, it was some weird Plantkin nature mage thing that I'd never experienced before."

"It's alright." She pats my arm. "You clearly didn't have much control over it, not if these could barely distract you." She sticks out her chest only to have a pixie dive-bomb her cleavage again. "Would you quit that, I already told you it tickles."

"Mhm. But it's so much fun making you squirm." Apricot counters, but settles down.

"Hey, Stormie." I greet the horse that's stretching out his lead trying to eat the rest of a shrub that he mostly devoured after Amelia tied him to a tree. "Oh, you poor baby. Do you want an apple?" He quickly forgets about the bush and nuzzles against me after eating the treat.

"I know it's just your nature magic, but I'm totally jealous of you right now." Amelia confesses. "He's never been that sweet for anyone."

"Oh, he's just a big ol' baby, he is." I baby talk at the horse while scratching that one spot behind his ears that he loves to have scratched.

Mounting up, we head back up the road for the last stretch to Northwood. I start back in on Apricot's dress, and can instantly feel the difference that Blackthorne makes. I'm able to tighten up the weave and go much faster. So, by the time we can see the walls of Northwood, I've got more than enough fabric to make Apricot a new dress.

"Well, I don't know how your aunt will feel, but I'm more than happy we took that little detour." Apricot shifts to human size and dons her new dress. She's about to proceed on foot when I hop off the horse and lift her into my spot.

"You'll tear up your feet walking around barefoot like that." I warn her. "Let me turn the rest of this fabric into some slippers for you, and we'll get you something sturdier in town."

"Thanks, I didn't even think of that." She smiles down at me as I shape her new footwear. "You lunkers sure do have it rough sometimes. Eee, that tickles." She squirms as I brush the dirt off her feet.

"Sorry." I apologize and give her toes a quick kiss before slipping on her new slippers. "And yes, I'll make you some clothes too." I tell Amelia when I catch her fingering the soft fabric with a look of longing on her face.

"Thank you, I just wish we had some dyes. Bright white everything is a little too eye-catching for my tastes." She sets Storm to moving again but keeps one hand playing with the hem of Apricot's skirt. "We won't be able to get our hands on any until we reach Riverton."

"Maybe not." I dodge into the woods and cut a salmon-colored growth from a fir tree. "I'm pretty sure that this is velvet-top fungus, so I just need some ammonia, iron and copper pots, and I can get orange, deep green, and rust-red dyes. Or, yellow if I use saltwater, but yellow is easy to get elsewhere. In fact, we've gone past pretty much a whole rainbow of mushroom dyes."

"Any blue?" She asks hopefully.

"There should be." I hedge. There's a large variety in these wood, but a lot of mushrooms look the same. "But, even if I can't find the right mushroom. I think I saw some woad near the brook where I met Apricot, and I'll just need a little soda ash for that."

"Where you a dyer before you came here?" She asks with a giddy smile at the thought of a walking clothes factory, a.k.a. me.

"No, I studied plants." I laugh and wave the tendrils on my arm about. "I had a strong interest in fungi too since they're closely linked." I gesture at a tree covered in bracket fungi.

***