Oasis

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on a blasted landscape of rock and desert scrub; Ellen's using a tin-walled shack's door for the Milliways trip. Nearby a two-headed cow is contentedly chewing on a low, scrubby bush. One head lifts to get a better look at the new arrivals. The other one continues eating.

"That's Shiphrah and Puah," Ellen says, "my riding Brahmin. We're not far from Oasis- the path is through that rock formation up ahead."

Comments

[jack_inthegreen]

Jack reaches out to touch the little cluster.

They stand up a little straighter.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"There's more like that as we go," says Ellen, and indeed there are- the little proto-bushes in one place, a haze of grass in another, some kind of climbing twisting vine hiding in a cleft in the rock wall to the left. "Some of these weren't here when I came last time. Leaf Mother Laurel's liniment is really speeding up Harold's growth."

[jack_inthegreen]

"Good," Jack murmurs, and he everything he can reach as they walk. "This feels better."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen smiles at that. Dogmeat darts out past the cow and after something small and scurrying- "Ground squirrel," Ellen murmurs. "They're smaller than mole rats, so you don't see them much unless you're hunting or trapping them. You get a lot of them around here."

Almost anyone with a nose to speak of could catch the difference in the air now, this close to their destination.

[jack_inthegreen]

Jack tilts up his head and sniffs. "Growing things."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods. "Just this way-"

The path turns, and ahead there are trees- real ones, at least fifteen or twenty years old. True, they're mostly behind a gated barricade, but they're tall enough to see over the top of said barricade.

A young woman, maybe a few years older than Ellen, pokes her head over the top. She's blonde, and wears some kind of rough-woven hooded garment. "Oh," she says, "hello, Outsider. Is this the new visitor you spoke of when you came here last?"

[jack_inthegreen]

Jack beams at the trees, taking them in with delight.

"I'm Jack," he tells the woman.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The woman nods. "Branchtender Maple," she says by way of introduction. "Just a moment, and I'll open the gates for you."

She disappears behind the wall. Ellen murmurs, "She may be a little standoffish. She's always been afraid of things going wrong if the outside world found out about this place, from what the others tell me."

[jack_inthegreen]

"If this works, it won't matter," Jack murmurs in reply.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That's more or less my feeling," Ellen says as the door opens. Maple gestures the two new arrivals inside.

Beyond is not only a place of trees, but of every other kind of plant one could reasonably expect to grow in this part of the old country, and maybe a few other kinds besides. It is, after all, post-nuclear. Mutated growing things are still growing things. Even someone with only the senses of a particularly attentive human could feel the presence of living things here- in the ground, below it, and all around. And there are birds, too, although they're more heard than seen.

"If you'll wait here," says Maple, "I'll go and fetch Leaf Mother Laurel and Tree Father Birch. They'd like to meet you."

[jack_inthegreen]

"Yes, of course," though Jack is already going to the nearest tree to lay his hand on it, get to know it.

The rustling in the little grove increases because of his presence. They want to say hello.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Maple nods and darts off, disappearing somewhere among the branches to the left, beyond the gazebo that appears to be the grove's only building. Not long after she returns, with a dark-skinned woman and a tan-skinned man in tow. The two are in their fifties, perhaps a little older, and are dressed in rough robes similar to Maple's.

[jack_inthegreen]

Now, Jack hasn't been a commonly worshiped god for many centuries. The tribes who knew him first have long since disappeared, absorbed into invading forces or neighboring tribes or died out, and even the stonemasons who carved his face into churches didn't know his name.

And he doesn't like to pull rank around mortals. It's tacky.

Still, this is important. This is a whole world that needs his touch and care.

So when the others return, the man they find is not quite the unassuming gardener who left Milliways with Ellen. He's a little taller and his voice is a little deeper and more resonant, and the many centuries he's seen are visible in his eyes.

"Hello," he says. "I am the Green Man."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Now, understand, the Treeminders have been in this valley and fixated on Harold for quite some time. The sight of a tree that could speak like a man was enough to sway them to Harold's worship as a god of growing things in the blink of an eye.

The sight of the real thing is another thing altogether, and leaves the three arrivals speechless. It's some time before the man clears his throat and speaks.

"Welcome, sir," he finally says, his voice just a little shaky. "I am Tree Father Birch, and this is my wife, Leaf Mother Laurel. We... knew we had a guest coming, but no one told us of your nature."

[jack_inthegreen]

"Best that way, don't you think?" Jack says calmly.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Tree Father Birch, Leaf Mother Laurel." He gazes from one to the other.

"I'd like to see Harold as soon as possible."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Birch exchanges a look with Laurel for a moment before looking back to Jack. "I... normally we have a ceremony for new arrivals," he says uncertainly. "To ensure that they don't bring anything with them into His enclosure that might do Him harm."

Ellen is doing her best to keep a polite, straight face. Especially since there are plants visibly bending in Jack's direction.

[jack_inthegreen]

"If you insist," says Jack.

He glances at Ellen and winks.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh good," says Birch. "I mean- thank you, Green Man."

Leaf Mother Laurel just shakes her head as Birch and Maple call the others over. "I doubt there's any need for such a thing today," she murmurs. "Forgive my husband. He means well."

[jack_inthegreen]

"I don't bring anything that harm Harold," Jack says. "I bring gifts for the land. "It's crying out to me desperately."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Laurel nods. "I hear it too," she says. "But my husband is as stubborn a man as I've ever met, and if this puts his mind at ease, it's easier than arguing."

Not to mention that it appears to offer an opportunity for all the Treeminders to be brought into Jack's presence, since people are coming out of the grove now and stopping, one and all, to stare. Including the eldest of the group, who gives the appearance of being blind- and the youngest, a dark-skinned child of perhaps eight or nine.

"This shouldn't take long," Ellen murmurs. "They're going to pray, and then there'll be the sap to drink- am I right, Leaf Mother?"

Laurel nods, and gestures towards the gazebo, which has a stump at its center. Birch is busily mixing something in the basin formed by the top of the trunk.

[jack_inthegreen]

"That's my thought as well," Jack tells Laurel. He looks around at the other Treeminders, faintly smiling.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The looks on the others' faces are mixtures of awe and confusion, except for the small child. She's busy looking back and forth between Jack and Laurel. Eventually she says, "But he's already-"

"Hush, child," says Laurel. "Let's just get this over with."

Tree Father Birch turns and beckons to Jack, indicating the bowl in front of him. The stuff inside is thick and runny, and smells of a dozen different kinds of green plants with a distinctly piney overtone. A human who consumed the stuff would be knocked unconscious in moments, for certain- not for long, and it would do them little harm.

It is extremely unlikely that this is the case here.

[jack_inthegreen]

Jack takes the bowl, gives another amused look to Ellen, and drinks.

It causes him to sneeze.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen hides her snicker behind one hand. Probably just as well, as Tree Father Birch is announcing, "We will now recite the blessing to ward off any harm the Outsider may be carrying before he proceeds to the Grove."

Laurel sighs, but lifts her voice anyway. "I bid you depart, agents of destruction, through the power of His divine will." The look she gives Jack indicates that she's reasonably certain where the divine will lies today.

Another man, thin of face and nervous of bearing, steps forward. "Leave our homes and bodies immediately; live no longer in them, but pass over into places where you can harm no one."

The next man who speaks is perhaps twenty-six or so, by the look of him, and shaven-headed. He announces, "In the name of His Frondescence, I call His wrath upon you, so that, wherever you may go, you bear it with you..."

"...and, diminishing from day to day, you may disappear," says the elderly blind woman. "Except where you serve the health and good purposes of mankind, may no trace of you be found."

(Ellen briefly covers her face with one hand at that.)

The child doesn't seem to want to speak, but Birch gestures to her to step forward. She finally says, "All this may He be so good as to grant us, who is to come to judge the living and the dead, and the world by His verdure."

"Amen," say the others, and Ellen relaxes. Hopefully Birch isn't going to insist on anything else today.

[jack_inthegreen]

Jack keeps his expression solemn and does not mention that his wrath usually has more pressing matters than germs to attend to.

His Frondescence, though. The kids will have a good laugh at that.