“We don’t know what killed him.”

Those were the uncaring words of the elder who had attended the scene of the untimely passing of Dariens’ grandfather. It was late at night now, and even the tree itself wrapped its boughs a little tighter as if to comfort the occupants inside this small village in the forest. “We don’t know why he died. He was a millennia-old, and apart from a few old war wounds that healed well, he should have continued to live indefinitely.”

“Don’t tell me the reasons he didn’t die, tell me the reasons he did!” Darriens’ father, Garrus said with a primal growl. No one is taking this well, and Darrien had had Marielle practically attached to him ever since the evening. He didn’t mind it though–she’d always looked up to Grandpa, with his regale of old war stories and of far-away lands that he visited in his youth. Grandpa had seen the world change over a thousand years, from small villages to cities to an industrial and technological revolution.

And now his journey has ended. “I want an autopsy. Find out what killed him. Whether it was foul play, cancer, an act of divinity–I don’t care what it was, I want an answer,” Garrus barked at the attending doctor who had been far, far too late to do anything by the time he rushed to the scene earlier. Garrus stormed out of the room, and Darien felt useless--everyone was crying, in disbelief, and everyone was now in a foul mood.

“Why do you think he died?” Marielle turns to her elder brother, who looks out the window where the spectacle is being slowly cleaned up. An emergency response team had taken his grandfather to the nearby clinic, where they would be likely to break with their usual traditions of leaving a body intact between death and when they were returned to the forest.

In a nutshell, left to wild animals to be eaten. Darien hated that ancient custom, it felt barbaric. While it ensured the animals got fed and were just part of the circle of life, leaving carcasses of people he knew just felt unsettling. And almost barbaric.

Elves were not all dainty and professional or as sophisticated as the rest of the world made them out to be. He looks at Marielle holding onto his arm, who is gazing at the floor with a sullen expression. “I don’t know, Marielle,” he answered after a second and ran his fingers through her hair–it had become a bit of a tangled mess since the evening. “There’s a lot of reasons people can die in the world with no outward signs. I’ll tell you this much though. Immortality is a myth. We don’t live forever. Not in the way everyone claims we do–after thousands of years, can you imagine just…remembering all of that? To watch a civilization begin, rise, peak, fall, and another one rise and fall again, and meanwhile, you’re just watching it all happen. How dejected, how detached must that feel, and never really age a day?”

“It sounds like immortality is a joke, is what it sounds like,” she says with a bitter laugh. But, it at least gets her out of the despondent mood she’s been in since earlier. “Will they really cut him up and…try to figure it out?”

“It’s not quite like that,” he assured her. “I won’t try to gross you out, but I have a medical friend–Missy, and she would do things like this in her school.”

“You mean your girlfriend?” she says with a light smile. He nodded.

“Yes. What Missy would do is they would examine your grandfather, and look for any outward signs of injury or illness. The body can leave a lot of clues when it dies that can tell you how they died, if you know where to look. They’ll also look at his daily habits, infer his activities of the day, and then they’ll do an incision to…look inside, and take samples.”

“Ew. grandpa being cut up like a fish at the market,” she says with a twist of her face and sticking her tongue out. He shook his head and gave her a reassuring wave.

“No, it’s not like that. They examine the organs, to see if there’s anything unusual about them. Internal diseases don’t always leave outward signs, sometimes there’s clues on the inside or the blood work, or um…well, other fluids.”

“Ew. Not really happy grandpa dead, but glad he didn’t hear us talking about that,” she groans. “So they do that?”

“Then they write a report to note what they found and then submit it with a possible cause of death. But, you don’t worry about that, they will do it with the utmost respect for him, you have my word. I wouldn’t want any less for anyone, because he’ll be returned to the world.” It’s still a somber moment, Darien thinks with an inward sigh. “I still don’t like the idea of just…leaving bones out there. The humans and dwarves return their fallen to the earth from whence we came, and in a way, they’re returning to–just to maybe smaller things like worms and bugs. I know it sounds gross, but it’s just the circle of life,” he adds on a final note. She wraps her arm around his tighter and tries not to sob.

“I still can’t believe he’s gone. There’s nothing we could have done?”

“No. I don’t think anyone could have known. We should head home, I saw Dad storm off, and he looked like he was in a mood that I would rather avoid for the time being. C’mon, let’s work our way back.”

The walk back to the house isn’t less dour, and he gazes up at the colossus trees blocking the view of the starlit night. Marielle refuses to leave his side, and he doesn’t blame her–it’s funny, them being the two youngest siblings out of seven, and she’s always wanted to stay close to him. He’d been too old to play when she’d had the notion of needing a playmate, but she had been fascinated with his science studies of the trees and his research.

Why were the trees turning early? That thought has been nagging him ever since, and he still didn’t have an answer. The easiest explanation was that the trees had a large variance spread when they started turning colors as the fall approached, but this seemed quite early. Maybe it was a dying specimen? But of what?

A thought resonates with him. Whose tree was it that was turning color? It’s an abstract idea–every Wildling would eventually come of age and cultivate a single colossus tree at some point in their life. It was an ancient tradition going back thousands of years. Most of the time, they did their thing, watched over it for a few years intermittently, then keepers would take over. It ensured that everyone kept balance with the world by cultivating it and nurturing it to greatness, in a sense. A piece of themselves would grow with the tree, or so the old saying went.

“You keep gazing up. What is it?”

Darien tries to give a reassuring smile when he glances down at his sister. “Ah, just wondering if the trees have been here so long, they’ve seen the stars themselves change. No one knows how old some of the oldest ones are. No one will even let us study them, they’re too sacred. After a while, even the bark toughens up so that no flame or parasite can ever threaten them. Ah, listen to me. Honestly, I’m just trying to find something to focus on. You know?”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“At least you’re honest about it. The rest of our siblings are so stuck up. I hate being the youngest, no one takes us seriously,” She says with a huff. “Well, Grandpa did. Oh Darien, sorry, that just…came out wrong.”

“I know, it’s an adjustment–going from what is, to…what was. I’ll miss him too. Let’s just get home. I get this feeling it’s not going to be a restful night.”

Indeed it wasn’t. By the time they got back to the tree fortress, Darien could hear arguing inside, and he picked up the pace a little bit. Father sounded quite upset, but he couldn’t make out the exact words. The trees did a pretty good job of muffling the specifics, even the sound was audible.

Mysterious trees. It was like every time one secret was revealed, two more popped up. “Darien puts a hand up to stop his sister, and he leans in, and winces when his elongated ear brushes up on the door. The humans didn’t have this issue, he thinks in a moment of biting wit, and he listens in.

“What do you mean the request was denied? I demand an investigation, people don’t die for no reason!”

“It also violates our customs.”

“Right, the ‘customs’ you keep using to shield us from having to make hard choices or making progress in an increasingly technological world that might leave us behind. My father’s body isn’t cold, and you want to just…throw him to the pantheras already?!”

“This is not out of alignment with the practices by the alderman–”

“Just get out. I’ll deal with your alderman first thing in the morning.”

“I’ve got a notification to begin the process at dawn–”

“Not if I’ve got a say in it, Reginald.” A burly man with dark hair and a beard nearly bulldozes Darien and Marielle as he storms out past the double doors, and the tree almost sways agitatedly at his departure. Earning the ire of the tree itself takes quite an effort, and even Darien with all his training doesn’t have a firm understanding of the nature of how the tree reacts to stimuli, not with high fidelity like that.

“Problem, Dad?” Darien asks his long-haired father, and his hazel eyes are bloodshot, and filled with grief, and more than that, disbelief. A death like this hasn’t shaken the community for some time–and the last one had been a rare heart defect that had ultimately caught up with a man who had just entered his prime, many years ago. His father tenses his hands like he wants to hit something, but Dariens’ mother, all auburn red hair, puts a reassuring hand on his back, and the other holds his arm gently.

“Darien, there’s just some…well, some disagreement on what the proper procedure is–”

“--They’ll throw him to the predators to be picked clean bones by noontime tomorrow,” Garrus, his father says with a snarl. “Antiquated, useless procedures! We’re all supposed to tend to a colossus tree for decades, now that’s just handed out as some chore to other less prestigious families or those unlucky to be born to the wrong circumstances. Just like we don’t take technology beyond a certain level. Stupid, wrong-headed–”

“Garrus.” His mother tries to offer a soft word without veering too sternly. “There’s nothing we can do right now. Please, come to bed. We will do everything we can at the first thing in the morning. Barnstorming across the town when you’re upset isn’t going to change matters. They’re not going to your father from you without the proper rites.”

“Elaine, they’re just…moving too fast.” That weariness creeps into his face, and he might bursts into tears again. “Darien, you didn’t see anything unusual about your grandad, did you today?” He shook his head–it had been a rather routine affair, if a little droll and uninteresting to him until the tragedy.

“No. And that’s what worries me. We missed something.” A thought crops up, again with the trees. “Where is grandad’s seedling?”

“Why?”

“There’s something I want to check.” Darien knew the trees could tell tales about those that cultivated and helped them grow. It was a tradition from the old days just like his father had said just a moment ago, and something deep-rooted–if the pun can be allowed–in his mind. “I wanted to check some things. I know the elders had stronger bonds with their seedling trees…and it’s worth a try. I have some magical equipment that might tell me something.”

“It’s deep in the forest. Far beyond the sentry range, deep in the wilds, “Elaine explains, and Marielle stamps her feet.

“So what? It’s just a walk through the woods! Darien here can make it, and I’d want to do it for Grandad too!” she says and tries to puff herself up. He tries to fight back a laugh, but she still glares at him in the moment of losing his composure. “Hey, when’s the last time you took a walk through the deep woods anyway?”

“A few months ago, part of my research. But–I’d need an exact location, did Grandad have a Waystone?” he asks. His mother looks blank for a second, but his father slowly nods his head.

“In his study. We can get it tomorrow. We have to go make sure the Aldarman doesn’t leave my father a pile of bleached bones in the wilds tomorrow. I want answers,” he says with distaste. He’s eventually convinced by his wife to climb the nested boughs up to the second floor, and Darien notes his other siblings are likely already in bed.

“Darien, what if they just chuck him to the monsters like a slab of meat?” Marielle asks suddenly. “Sorry, not sorry, that’s what they’re gonna do!”

“That’s not going to happen. Right, wrong, or old ways, they’ll have to wait for my father–”

“But they won’t! It’s like they don’t care!” she fumes. She taps her fingers on her chin for a moment, then pulls at one of her long ears for a second. Then her face goes bright. “Um, hey, could we go see Missy?”

“I’d rather not. I already missed seeing her on account of the party. But why?”

“We're gonna go root around in Grandad and get answers. Um, eww, I mean he’s dead but we need answers too, right?” She scrunches up her face as if her own suggestion bothers her. Darien sucks in a deep breath.

If they wait until tomorrow, that very well could happen. Traditions were followed until they were inconvenient–especially lately, he ponders before running his hand over the bridge of his nose. He knows what he’s going to have to do, and it is going to suck, no matter which way he goes about this.

He’s about to perform an autopsy on his Grandad, with a serious bias of understanding the root causes of his demise, and he’s going to need Missy to get him into the morgue to assist him in it. He had taken some medical classes on Wildlings as part of his arbology due to the intrinsic link between elf and tree, but this…this was going above his expertise.

Missy might be performing two autopsies tonight.