Powers. Normal in every which way.
Prophecies. Perfectly fine.
Going into a tree like a recreation of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. Freakishly bizarre.
Just as Min Li had made contact, or so she had thought she had been about to do, her fist had sank into the tree. It was awfully odd. It felt like her fist was in a completely different realm. She didn’t have time to think exactly how she felt before the phenomenon occurred again.
Her fist. Then, her arm. Next, her whole body got sucked into the tree with a plop.
There she was after all her plans of glorious revenge being put in her place, or more factually true, the tree’s place. How the mighty have fallen, Min Li moaned.
She had not gutted the tree like a fish, but the tree had sank her into its gut.
Truly pondering on it, Min Li supposed that she should have made an educated guess from her last round in the boxing ring with the tree that such a thing could happen. But a mind set on revenge is a mind not thinking clearly. And when she had approached the tree, her mind was set on revenge.
The interaction between Min Li and the tree when she touched it was a little bit like a baby getting unwillingly pushed out of the comfort of the warm womb into the harsh environment of an uncaring world.
Even better yet, it was exactly if the process happened the other way round. Min Li felt that she had been accepted by the tree with a tug back into a womb. Whether this mother provided a caring womb or had no regard for the foreign child and provided only a cruel womb where she could only face troubles, she was yet to learn.
Despite having the inquisitive mind that Min Li was famous for around these parts, Min Li had closed her eyes on her plopping into the tree, and she was yet to open them up again.
Her thought process was as follows. She really didn’t feel like the inside of the tree was something she should have the privilege of seeing.
A tree also deserves privacy, she thought, and here I am invading its privacy to see things that are best covered.
Although a man appreciates his baby, he does not take his appreciation too far. He bides his time to see the fruits of the womb and does not instead peer over his wife’s legs to witness the glorious but slightly horrific sight of his baby leaving the womb.
Min Li was operating on the same thought process.
What she was doing was however, was trying to have a feel of what was around her.
She felt around. And she felt some more. And then she came to a conclusion. There was absolutely nothing around her.
That being said, Min Li would have admitted if anyone asked that the conclusion that she had come to was very unreliable. Her eyes had remained shut and she hadn’t walked around the tree to really know if there was anything else inside it. To make it even worse, she didn’t even know if she did have enough space to walk around inside the tree.
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Min Li worked on the simple scientific principle that the area inside a tree that wasn’t all that big, couldn’t be all that big. She knew that the tree was the infamous power tree or as she was now thinking something made to look like a tree, but surely simple physics could trump things like powers and imagination.
Someone help me. The tree’s bark has clearly poisoned me to the edge of insanity. I am speaking of a simple tree as if it contained powers beyond a human’s imagination.
Min Li was already fed up. She apologised mentally to Fenhua that she hadn’t listened to his wise words of warning and tried to figure out a way to leave the tree without opening her eyes.
There was only one way she could think of.
“Faithful tree I do beseech you let me out of your most cherished place. This is not good for both your image and mine. It is uncouth.”
With no answer to her only solution, Min Li started to panic.
Unfortunately, since evidence pointed to the tree not doing well with threats, when Min Li panicked it usually came out as anger and as it also did on this particular occasion.
“You ungodly fellow, you ungodly tree, release me from your shackles at once.”
So, you give me no answer.
CRACCCKKKKK.
Min Li had evidently grown comfortable too soon.
It seemed like an extremely strong gust of wind packing an awfully icy punch had slapped Min Li silly across the face.
Or at least that was what Min Li was trying to lead herself to believe. She didn’t want to contend with the thought that it was not the wind and rather someone or something that she knew nothing of, who had nearly permanently removed her jaw from her face.
Min Li whimpered in the dark.
If she didn’t stop worrying and threating, Min Li was half sure that soon enough warm liquid would run down her leg and the tree would try to eject her now pungent self out of tree. Although she was scared of staying inside the tree, Min Li didn’t want to go through the embarrassment such a scenario would leave her in.
At long last, something other than Min Li letting out whines occurred.
“YOU HAVE COME MY CHILD,” a familiar voice that Min Li recognised from her dreams rang out.
At first Min Li nearly jumped out of her skin. It was a miracle that not one of her eyelids had peeled themselves apart in fear of the sudden voice to survey the surroundings. Sheer grit had kept them closed.
Then, Min Li got to work.
“I rebuke you in the name of every fibre of my being.”
“YOU HAVE COME MY CHILD.”
The voice seemed that it was coming from nowhere in particular, but everywhere possible. Min Li determined that the right decision was for her not to open her eyes. She didn’t think that the voice was coming from a physical entity that she would be able to see.
“When I catch you, it will be off with your head and the heads of everybody in your immediate family and town. When I catch you, you will be off to the dungeons. I will feed you and your children to the lions limb by-”
“YOU HAVE COME MY CHILD.”
Min Li sighed. She had already known that her tactic wouldn’t work, she would have to cater it directly to the tree.
“I am going to be queen...”
Nothing.
“That means I am going to have the power to, if I so choose, employ the best metalworkers in the two, no- I may have access to the three kingdoms by the time I become the queen, -three kingdoms to make weapons suitable for chiselling your trunk and poking holes in your leaves.”
Still nothing.
“YOU HAVE COME MY CHILD.”
Min Li was speechless at the gall of the tree. Nothing seemed to deter it from it’s given lines.
The tree was as rebellious as tree’s come. It didn’t listen to one word from Min Li’s mouth. It simply had a job to do, to inform Min Li of her predicament and it never ventured away from that job.
“Who is your child? You cataclysmic failure. You complete nincompoop. You silly cockalorum. Your child will also be such-”
There was a tap on Min Li’s back.
Min Li fought her mouth trying to stop it from moving and giving the insults that half of her still wanted to deliver in horror.
“So now you stop?” A voice that was miles different to the booming cockalorum spoke.