Ryn of Avonside

Grace and I waited out the full seven days Ollinfer had originally forecast before we decided to risk going out into the mundane world. The guys had been fending for themselves for a while now, but we’d been blocked from attempting to help until Grace was safe and the storm had fucked off.

The storm did eventually fuck off towards the end of the sixth day and we jumped at the chance to go outside the tree and survey the damage. The ground was saturated, puddles of water laying deceptively beneath the grass that was now knee height. I should get the bunnies onto mowing it or something.

The largest change was the lake, the thing was full to the brim with magically charged water. In fact it was so full that the puddles we walked through were probably due to it overflowing. I needed to create some pathways for streams when I had the time.

“I found one of your shirts,” Grace commented, picking up a soaking wet white piece of cloth.

“Huh, is it intact?” I asked, walking over to her.

She untangled it and held it out in front of us. “Uh, sort of,” she laughed.

The shirt had ripped down the back, then caught at the lower hem. It was now a very risque backless shirt.

“Should I put it on?” I joked, taking it from her. “Take the Avonside fashion scene by storm.”

I tried to figure out how I’d even wear the damn thing. Putting on wet clothing was always a struggle, even when you weren’t joking around. When I looked up, Grace was staring down at the shirt, her face just a little flushed, her eyes wide.

Giving an awkward laugh, I asked, “Wait… do you want me to put it on?”

“What?” she asked, choking and then coughing as her face flushed further. “I mean, like… you’d look really hot in it, but also that’s whatever. I mean, no… I um.”

A slow smile spread across my face as I actually contemplated putting it on. But no, I didn’t have the guts to do something like that with Grace, at least… not yet.

We continued to look around my grove, and found that for the most part, everything that had been below the line of my windbreak had survived — only taking a slight beating. None of the damage was stuff my buns couldn’t fix with a bit of their magic. The windbreak would heal in time too, which meant that all in all, my plan had worked! My plants wouldn’t die to the first big storm that hit my grove!

We also found a lot of our belongings scattered around the place, although most of it was kinda munted. We collected it all up anyway, no point wasting any of it, since some was made from materials we wouldn’t have access to again for a while yet.

With the grove surveyed and found to be in reasonably good shape, I turned to Grace. “So should we try for Millowhall now? See where the guys have gotten to? If you’re feeling up to it that is.”

“Yeah, I think I’m goo—” she began, but as she was speaking the clouds parted for a moment, raining sunlight down on us. “Oh, that feels so nice,” she gasped, turning to face the sunlight.

I watched in awe as she transformed, her body turning from that of a human to that of… something else. She still had her humanoid shape, except that her skin was now rough bark — branches sprouting out every so often. Still growing, the branches rapidly produced leaves, and her hair morphed into a tangle of vines and foliage.

“Oh, wow,” I breathed, staring at her.

“What?” she asked, turning to look at me in confusion. Her face, although also covered in bark, seemed to have plates of the stuff that shifted to display expression.

“You just turned into a tree girl,” I told her, motioning vaguely up and down her body. “Not like me either, I’m all flowers and soft green stem skin, but you’re made of bark!”

Grace’s eyes turned hurriedly down to her arm as she held it out. “Holy shit. I’m like an Ent.”

“You are,” I agreed, stepping close to run my fingers over her hand. She stilled as I did so, and then on a hunch I transformed into plant mode too.

The moment I took that form, something truly strange happened between Grace and I. Strange sensations whirled up from our touch, and we looked up to stare at each other in amazement. Amazement I could feel from both myself and her. I could feel, at least on a dim level, the emotions that she was experiencing.

“Oh,” I blurted, stepping closer almost without thought. My hands went to her face and just sort of… explored, and with every brush of green growth to bark between us, I could feel the affection she felt for me. Judging by the way she was looking at me, it was a two way street as well.

“That’s new,” she breathed, her arms coming up to settle on my hips. “I… wow. You really feel that for me?”

“Yes,” I nodded, a purple blush blooming across my cheeks. “You really feel that for me?”

“Uh huh,” she said, smiling down at me. “Wanna kiss like this?”

Grace, bashful one moment and incredibly forward the next. Kinda like me actually? It was like we swapped back and forth.

“Oh yes,” I said, reaching up to place my hands on her shoulders and pull her down to my level.

The kiss was odd at first, the bark of her lips was like cork, but warm and softer. There were still a few small ridges on her bark lips that were hard, but that just gave the kiss a bit of texture.

All of the physical sensations paled in comparison to the feedback loop of emotion that swelled within us. Feeling her attraction and affection for me seemed to amplify my own, and vice versa, until my world was nothing but love for her.

When we finally parted, it was like we were sticky, the actual motion of moving away from one another difficult and unpleasant.

“Wow… Wow, wow, holy fucking, wow,” she gasped, looking almost drunk. I probably looked like that too.

“Definitely,” I sighed dreamily, still holding onto her to keep myself upright. Why were my legs made of jelly? They were meant to be made of plant.

We were both silent for many minutes as we just sorta stood there and calmed down. It had been a lot, and my mind was still in the process of rebooting after that surge of emotion.

“Should we um, go have lunch, then get ready to leave?” Grace asked after a moment, still looking a little dizzy. Her paper-thin bark eyelids were fluttering as she attempted to reassert control over herself.

“Yeah… let’s do that,” I nodded, changing slowly back into normal human mode.

She took a little longer to switch back, complaining that her skin itched as it happened.

 

Lunch consisted of more fruit and vegetables, which we were both thoroughly sick of now. I was even considering using my magic to hunt some animals to throw in the freezer at this point. I was hoping I could enlarge my grove to the point that I might be able to sustain some larger animals inside it. It would be so cool to have deer running around in the woods.

When we finished eating, we went back up to our room and got ready to leave the grove. Grace got into her armour, minus the helmet, and I got fully suited up into my coat, scarf and, and all the rest.

“We look very fantasy right now,” she said, amused as she glanced between us. “The cute mage in her dapper coat and the knight in armour.”

“You forgot to add hot to your description of the knight,” I corrected, sending a flirtatious grin her way.

Grace rolled her eyes in exasperation, although it was slightly undercut by her bashful smile. “What happened to the quiet, polite person I was friends with when all of this started?”

“I got my dream body, plus an amazing girl — the depression weights came off, now I'm all bouncy-happy like a balloon,” I replied, as though it were obvious.

Grace's expression softened, and she reached out to take my hand. “Right. The winter flower finally felt some sunlight.”

Her words were so insightfully poetic, that I had to take a moment to digest them. Damn. I liked that analogy.

“Come on, beautiful,” she said, squeezing my hand to get my attention back. “Time to hop back over.’

We could leave the grove from anywhere inside it, so I met her gaze and asked, “You ready?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, determination replacing the affection in her expression, and her gun at the ready.

We stood back to back, and after taking a few calming breaths, I transferred us over.

We did not come out in Ollinfer’s grove, just as she’d promised. Instead we found ourselves in an unfamiliar patch of forest. It was definitely forest too, not rainforest like we’d seen when we entered the mountains. Vaguely coniferous trees clung to craggy rock all about us, with hardy shrubs scrambling for what little good soil was left under the trees. Snow blanketed everything in a thin layer, and it looked fresh, as though it had only fallen last night.

“Alright, looks like Ollinfer was good on her word,” Grace remarked, looking around at the scenery.

We weren’t just in a forest though, we were halfway up the side of a mountain — perched on a large terrace-like ledge that extended out of our view in a roughly straight line, until our view of it was blocked by the trees around us. Curiously, we made our way towards the edge, and when we arrived we were assaulted with the most intense vertigo that I had ever experienced. We stumbled backwards, alarmed.

“I couldn’t see the bottom!” Grace exclaimed, her eyes wide with shock.

She was right. While some distance opposite us there was another almost vertical cliff face like the one we stood on — ledges and terraces running up the side, there was literally no bottom in sight. Our view down was blocked by yet more irregularities in the mountain, but even then we could see that it was really fucking deep. I’d only ever seen terrain like this in Minecraft or on Mars, it was insane.

“We are… wow,” I gasped. “Really fucking high up.”

“Unreal” she said, shaking her head in awe.

Taking a deep breath, I reined my thoughts in and focused on what we needed to do next. “I’m going to cast my spell and check for the guys.”

I raised my ring hand and carefully cast the spell, watching it closely this time — just in case Ollinfer decided to fuck with us again. Thankfully, it went off without a hitch and I quickly located where Adam’s ring was.

“Adam is that way,” I said, pointing down the massive canyon we were standing in. “I don’t think he’s all that far away either.”

“Really?” Grace asked, her tone disbelieving. “How close?”

“I can’t say for sure, I can only get a direction and a distance vibe, but he feels close. Maybe a few miles?” I mused, concentrating on the fading information that my spell had brought up.

“Should we start like, trying to walk along this huge cliff?” she asked tentatively, once again staring warily at the edge.

“I guess so,” I shrugged, staring around us in awe at the scenery. It was gorgeous, even if it was also slightly terrifying. We could even see the snow line a few hundred meters below us on the far side of the canyon, and maybe some wispy clouds below that. My mind was reeling at the sheer enormity of this place. Had the Umare built this place specifically like this? They must have, right? They designed the rest of this ring after all. Would we even be able to continue along this ledge all the way to our friends? How far did it stretch?