13 Chapter 13: Tree Friends

The soft crunch of twigs beneath our feet as we make our way into the forest is oddly soothing. In fact this entire forest feels like a nice warm bath when I walk into it. I can almost feel how the trees are aligned in the earth, how their root systems make a complex road map on the surrounding earth. I feel at one with this place and my entire bearing is easier.

What I think is slightly strange is how much trouble Maya seems to be having making her way through the forest. Her clothing keeps getting caught on errant branches, and thorns. While this did allow me a few very good views, I'm shocked that I didn't have the same problems. 'Must be a druid thing' I think to myself and shrug the situation off.

I grab Mayas hand as I can feel the clearing near us. My heart rate increases slightly as I enter the barren clearing that appeared in. "Hey tree friends!" I yell loudly a smile planted firmly on my face. There is only silence for several minutes, but this won't be like last time. From my knowledge of nature there are a few tidbits about Treants and most of those all state that they speak incredibly slowly.

I turn to Maya who is looking at me as if her husband might be a tiny bit insane. Which I feel is probably fair given the circumstances. I start to blush a bit as the silence drags on for more than 5 minutes. 'Could I have forgotten where it was? No! This is the place I'm sure of it!' I yell at myself for a bit before I can hear to the deep rumbling voice of my tree friends.

"Hello, little sapling." I can feel their voices deep in my chest. A deep powerful bass note that thrums with an ancient life force. Even the sound of the voice begets its incomprehensible agelessness. I turn to Maya with pride that I wasn't completely crazy, however she is merely staring at me.

"Did you hear them Maya?" I ask. She turns her head around looking everywhere, "Hear what? Are we under attack?!" She seems to be reaching for an item hidden in the folds of her dress, it was proper for a lady to walk around visibly armed you see. "No it's my tree friends! They just said hi....couldn't you hear them?" Maya's eyebrows raise in shock and she stutters slightly, "Do you mean Treants! How can you talk to them? They have refused to talk to anyone for 30,000 years! This is unbeleivable!" I'm taken aback at her explosion of information.

"Hey trees is that true?" I ask simply, and wait patiently for them to respond. "It's not that I don't trust you honey, but I wanna know how they feel about things too." I say attempting to placate the rage I can see growing on my wife's face. While it doesn't seem to help much it does stave off her anger until the trees can speak again.

"Little sapling, we did indeed lose contact with your kind. We did not chose this, but it was the humans who forced our hand. When they attacked with fire and steal, we were able to fight back...at first. It wasn't until the vile humans acquired magic, that we had to start limiting our exposure. It is too much of a risk. Those vile people want our living wood, and souls to further their vile arcane arts."

I shiver from the booming voice of the trees in my mind. The powerful bass causes my heart to shake every time I hear it, not from any kind of fear. It's more like it matches the exact frequency to make my bones vibrate with every word the trees utter. I can't see any sort of mouth, and the sound seems to be coming from everywhere all at once. It's very disconcerting.

I place my chin in my hand to think this over a bit. If what they are saying is true, then I really doubt these Ents would be contract beasts very easily, and I don't really wanna fight something that helped me for no reason before..."Hey tree friends I need a contract beast for my druidic forest...Any suggestions?" I lean over to Maya and whisper softly, "Who better to ask about trees then other trees?" She giggles softly at what I said but still seems lost. "You can hear me when I talk to them..right?" She shakes hear head softly, "No, you just seem to make the sounds of leaves shaking and branches moving when you open your mouth."

I'm stunned, I'm not even speaking a language now? How could that...Knowledge:Language! That has to be it! Does that give me all that languages! This could be an incredible gift!

"Well little sapling, a Druids forest is quite the unique thing to make let us think hm...." Their voices slowly trailed off into the air and just stood their waiting with Maya, for a while. Then a bit longer, and longer still...Okay those fucking trees are taking way to god damn long. "Ahem, Tree friends have you come to a decision?" I ask the trees and Maya is still looking at me like I'm crazy. I mean, I suppose I can understand it. I am just screaming at some trees, but they talk I swear!

"Little sapling....We would suggest you try and capture a sun cat, or a moon dog. Both would be able to defend and grow your forest. " Their booming voices reverberate through me again. "Okay trees, so a sun cat, or a moon dog. Got it!"

With that I start wandering a bit further away from them and pull Maya in close to me to whisper, "Do you have any god damn idea what a sun cat is?" Maya blinks twice in surprise, but simply nods her assent. "Great, do you think we might be able to find one around her?" She once more looks at me oddly, "Well, yeah I guess we can..."

Awesome! One thing down, now how to locate one. "Okay Maya any hints on how we can find one?"

"It shouldn't be too hard really, they are quite common. I'm pretty sure Daddy has at least 4 around the manor just catching dark mice. However, the problem is more...um...Husband I need to ask you something okay?"

I'm a bit suprised that she looks so serious but I nod once. "Of course wife, feel free to ask me anything!"

She blushes slightly, "When you were fighting Marvin I noticed that you don't seem to be very well...Trained...what's your level?"

Ah yes, that would make sense. I've never really fought before so it makes sense that someone with an eye for it would be able to see through me almost instantly. "Don't worry wife, when I fought fatty I was able to level up, I'm level 2 now!"

"WHAT! How, are you alive?!" Um...what? "I was level 10 at age six!"

Oh, I done fucked up didn't I? "Oh, well there are some special.....Druid reasons that my level is so low! You see we can't actually level up without getting these beasts in our forest!" I nod and try to hid the blush that's on my face. Please buy this lie, please!

"Well...Okay, you just stay close husband!" She nods, but doesn't seem to quite buy my excuses. She steps closer to me and I can feel her trying to block the front of my body, with her small lithe form. As a man I should probably find this humiliating, but who are we kidding. If levels work how Maya explained it then I'm pretty sure a stiff breeze would have killed me.

Well, since she has the skills...

I draw closer to Maya and place my head on her shoulder next to her ear and kiss her cheek softly, "Honey I need a small favor."