Emika Grows

“What the hell are you doing here? I thought we had this, like, unspoken mutual agreement to leave each other alone from now on?” Emika halted right in front of the ring and stared it down. “If you cause me any trouble, I will feed myself to you whole and claw my way back from inside, you understand?!”

She lost balance while trying to intimidate the Well and almost fell over. It was truly time for bed. 

Meanwhile, the thing just sat there, not really doing anything. Hopefully it hadn’t made a mess coming here. On the other hand, there was really nothing she could do about it anymore.

“Fine. Please don’t hurt anyone. Please don’t cause me trouble. In return, I will feed you. Is that alright?”

Without even waiting for an answer, Emika snapped off part of her growth and threw it into the Well’s mouth. She watched it fall inside, and the ring lowered itself a little, as if the creature was putting its head on the grass.

With her heart beating hard in her chest — from anger, sleepiness, or hunger, she didn’t know, but it probably wasn’t fear — she turned around and entered her home. Not even bothering to make it to her bedroom, she instead simply crashed on the couch in full clothes.

She was woken up basically immediately by her doorbell ringing.

Groggily picking up the phone, it became evident that ‘immediately’ truly meant 12 hours and judging from the latest message she’d received from “Love” on Lester’s phone, this must be him, coming to pick up that very phone. With a groan and the sounds of a falling tree, she slowly sat up on her sofa.

It cracked under her weight, snapping in two. What the hell was that?  

A little inspection showed that she must have been just too heavy for this piece of furniture. The supporting plates had been ripped apart. But… how?

The doorbell rang again. She ran out, somewhat careful to only walk on spots she figured would support high mass.

She opened the gate and indeed found sweating Lester on the other side. “Good afternoon,” he said with a forced smile, and the hand he used to wave at her fell to dust right at that moment.

“Hello,” Emika replied. “Please come inside.”

Lester hesitated. For a few seconds, his eyes wandered over Emika’s body. Or, to be more precise, they seemed to wander over what wasn’t Emika’s body — looking over herself, she noticed now that she was spun in growths of all sizes, emanating from all parts of her body, like she was the soil of many smaller and larger juniper trees that just bloomed out from her.

It explained some of her newfound weight, but still, even though there seemed to be almost more volume in growths than there was in her original body, that wasn’t enough to snap a strong piece of furniture in half, right?

“Don’t worry, I won’t harm you. The truth is, I just got the new phone and went to bed, I haven’t had time to transfer my data from any backups or that sort. I’ll do that now while we chat? I do have some questions.”

Lester made a step back, but nodded. “Okay, yes, sure. That sounds amazing. I can’t wait.”

Emika opened the gate as wide as she could, then tried to turn around to give him as much space as possible. However, in turning, she lost balance again, and crashed down onto the ground.

“Fuck,” she blurted out, trying to pick herself back up. “Oh my god. I forgot to eat. I’m so dizzy.”

“… Is it better if I come back another time? Tomorrow, maybe? Y-you could just leave me the phone by the gate then?”

Emika had by now supported herself back into a sitting position. “Let’s just do it now, since you are here already.”

Lester gulped. “Well, okay. You know, I would offer to make you food if I wasn’t somewhat worried about becoming said food,” he explained, but he still entered, making as much of a circle around Emika as he could while overtaking her. “I can answer your questions. Least I can do. Considering your… predicament. Yes, yes. My wife knows I’m here.” He added that last part with a grave look on his face, almost as if to check out Emika’s reaction.

She didn’t care and instead rose up, so they could make their way to the kitchen. Lester, of course knowing where it was, led the way. Emika trailed behind slowly — the new weights on her body made her wonky, plus she didn’t want to destroy the floors, and her head was spinning. What a great morning. Or rather, afternoon… Her sleep schedule was completely destroyed now too. She just wanted to go to bed.

In the kitchen, Emika poured herself a bowl of cereal, then sifted through it with her spoon for five minutes, with Lester becoming increasingly agitated as time went on.

“W-What are you doing…?” Lester eventually managed to spell out.

“Oh. I’m just making sure I don’t end up chomping down on a cute maybug or something. It almost happened a while ago.”

“… But maybugs aren’t a food pest?”

“Well, it was what it was” she replied to his confusion.

“Maybe the bug was already in your bowl before you poured anything in? Or it fell in from your growth? Those must be a breeding ground for insects, right?”

“You know, those aren’t the mysteries I want you to solve for me, right?” Emika chided between spoonfuls, “Anyway, there is something I need to know.”

Lester nodded anxiously.

“I will have to lay some groundwork, though. First off, you said you were investigating that Revenant. And you said that the Revenant was also a plant type creature, just like me.”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

“Okay, and you had a list of magical appearances similar to that Revenant on your phone.”

“That’s right,” he nodded, speaking rather quickly. “I’m in touch with a divination witch. She checks the surroundings for beings with that same type of magic, yes. Regrettably, it’s not easy to use divination to find a specific, very strong being. So we’re left to blanket checks.”

Huh, that was interesting. Emika would have thought that it was easier to find a strong being than a weaker one. Disregarding that, she said, “And one of those blanket checks flagged a Well of Abstraction.”

“W—” Lester started, “How did you know? Oh, did the note say?”

“I went there.”

“What? You—”

“Don’t derail from my question!” Emika cut in impassively, accidentally spitting out a bit of cereal.

“Your— With all due respect, I’m sorry to point out, but you haven’t asked one yet!”

Oh, right. She hadn’t. The bed was still yelling for her. “Yeah, so my question is, what the hell does a Well of Abstraction have to do with plants? It doesn’t seem plant-like at all.”

Lester issued a drawn-out “Oh!” and then he simply said, with a shrug, “That’s just because those things are based on the same branch of magic. Revenants, you, and Wells of Abstraction.”

“How?” Emika asked in perplexion, and slight annoyance when she realized how much sand Lester had shed on her floor by now. “What branch of magic would that be?”

“Dimensional magic,” he replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Don’t ask me for the details, I’m not a scholar. Plant magic used to be its own branch, until some advancements in magical science have proven it to be part of dimensional magic.”

Emika really hated this. How was it that every single time she gained new information about herself and her curse, it seemed to make everything just more confusing and ridiculous? Dimensional magic? She had never heard of that before.

“So you are saying these growths come from another dimension?”

“What?” Lester spat out. “No way! What are you talking about? This is not at all in any way connected to the pop culture meaning of dimensions. You do realise magical scholars take themselves seriously, right?” He seemed to notice he was stepping out of line, so a bit more quietly, he added, “No, we are simply talking about dimensions in a mathematical sense, obviously.”

Obviously. That really was the word he had just used, huh? Emika fought back the urge to strangle him. Either way, at least she had some new buzzwords to feed Barnacle later. Her meal was finished by now. They entered the living room, so she could get done with the backup of her phone — something that went surprisingly quickly. She didn’t remember other questions and was too focused on getting the backup right, anyway. Lester just watched her do it, sitting on a chair he had put as far away from her as possible.

“There we go,” she said eventually. “All done. I’m sorry it took so long. Thank you very much for your answers. And for the phone. And, you know, your company.” She eyed him as he sat there, nodding. “I suppose you want to get going? Make sure you have everything, I don’t want to open the gates unless I know who it is.”

“Yes, sure. I will be on my way. T-thank you, for,” — he made a gesture towards the phone — “… Well, for your generous keeping of your promise to return it. I don’t make that much. So…”

“Of course,” Emika said. “It was a little selfish of me to take it, although I have to say, I don’t regret it.”

She saw him smile for probably the first time, then he made off. Emika was about to try fiddling around with her new one, when the doorbell rang again seconds after he had left.

“Wow, even though I told him not to forget anything,” she mumbled to herself with a slight smile, and got up on her weary limbs.

She opened the gate after traversing the garden, ready to chastise him.

But, on the other side, it wasn’t Lester who her gaze fell onto. Immediately, a sobering wave of fear ran over her body. Her guests were two men, one of whom showed her some kind of ID. He had fuzzy hair, was probably in his forties, and carried a serious look. The other one was probably a decade older and wore all grey.

 “Good morning,” the man with the ID said. “Emika Hasegawa? My name is Inspector Beckford, and this is my external colleague, Maxime. We would like to ask you some questions.”