Kaeli

Z-12-tetradecen-1-ol acetate

perceived the first rays of dawn against its uppermost leaves and awoke from semi dormancy. Everything was set to go. The change over from breathing oxygen to carbon dioxide. The internal gas exchange that would allow new sugar to make its slow way down the vine, filtering through its cells and transforming into everything needed for the day. It felt quiet contentment in those early moments. Anticipation. Pride.

Sun filtered lower and each leaf almost independent of the whole, began it’s mad rush to photosynthesize. The first bird landed on its cup, and drank. What was simply water when it landed was filled in an instant with a cocktail of chemicals. The bird received a small amount pleasant feelings to bring it back the next morning, then a heavier dose of what would turn into raw pleasure when combined with the drink the next Lil Dequoi gave it. Each morning the bird would fly a predictable path from vine to vine, dipping its beak from cup to cup, and unknown to it carry messages between them.

This morning there was little to report. The message was the equivalent of a good morning, with a few mild comments on the weather. Lastly it tagged the message with Z-12-tetradecen-1-ol acetate, a chemical no other Lil Dequoi would use unless it was trying to be confusing. Its name.

The sun rose and more birds, each in their predictable patterns came for their morning dose of pleasure. Some carried messages already.

Estra-2,4,8(10),12-tetraen-2-ol

nattered on about its garden.

TBSCI, Et3N,CH2CL2+

Gave terse reports about the war as it wound down. The most recent skirmish had lost most of its wolves, but it considered the sacrifice worth it for the number of human dead.

Acetic acid cis-tetradec-9-enyl

ester’s death by fire was still fresh on everyone’s mind.

The sun had risen to where photosynthesis was at full - when predictable as the sun, a bear ambled up, dropping it’s offering of a half eaten salmon. This was perhaps the vine’s greatest achievement just yet - and it had begun almost by accident. Like so many animals in this forest the bear knew that drinking from a cup would be pleasant, and so as it ambled by it took a sip, dropping its fish. It had come back day after day wanting the hit that first drink had gotten, fishless every time.

It had taken three months till it brought it’s second fish, then hibernation hit and they had to start over. These days, years later, the bear got anti aging medicine along with it’s pleasure. It would be a sad day when the bear died, and the fish fertilizer really did help.

Off went the bear, in came the badger with it’s litter of young. Out went the badger and in came a squirrel. The vine did not think of them as slaves so much as pets. It tended them, and in return they were available should it need to train one for a task. The badger was learning how to root out the Vetch that was beginning to take over everything. The squirrel was in training as a planter - although it was going to be such a bother taking out all those oak trees it was planting in the process.

Sight for the Lil Dequoi was an amorphous thing, light would reflect onto its leaves and it could get odd images from time to time when it wasn’t blinded by the sun. Smell/taste, it’s version of chemical reception was it’s best sense, any sense of sound was almost nonexistent.

This time though it saw before it recognized the smell. Light brown fading into shadows, moving like an animal, but on two legs instead of four. It had heard the descriptions, though it had never smelled one before. Human.

There were two scents. Both female. One full of animal grief and maternal protection. One full of young need. There was no smoke, but stories said humans could spit fire like a dragon. The Lil Dequoi began readying poisons that would be ineffectual unless the human drank - began sending out scents to attract predators knowing none were close enough.

The woman stood there for a while, grief coating her scent, perhaps her mouth moved, the vine couldn’t tell. Then she laid the baby at the base of a tree and left the way she had come.

It took very little thought to decide that this was an incredible resource. A human trained from infancy? The badger eventually came, sleepy but bristling from the danger scent still in the air, and was hit by maternal need. It half herded, half carried the little red human back into its den

Z-12-tetradecen-1-ol acetate

was ready when dawn hit its upper leaves the next morning, a very carefully worded message was forming, and as the first bird dipped to drink, it signed it and sent it off.

I have a baby human, currently under control and being cared for by a badger. This message needs to get to Lil Aoobi as soon as possible. I await orders.

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In the forest there was a scent every animal knew. It was a signal, an assignment. Its scent meant you travelled towards the center of the forest, through the concentric rings and moats to ward against fire. Through the masses of vines that made up the oldest and most powerful of the Lil Dequoi. To the tree that served as their god.

That scent once taken in was matched in the air that surrounded Lil Aoobi. Where the vines rewarded with pleasure, their god rewarded with lucidity. It would wear off after a while and the animal would wander off with only memories of its profound knowledge of the working of the world, but it would be wiser for it too.

Young animals would, on their parent’s teaching, go to a vine and entreat for that scent. If a vine thought it worthy - it would make the journey alone. The big cats of this forest all knew the way, as did the wolves and apes, and eagles.

When the badger smelled the scent, it knew the way. It took up its cubs, the strange pink one in it’s mouth, and began it’s journey. It travelled at night, careful of predators, eyes open for prey, but it travelled with single minded focus - never pausing for longer than it must.

When it crossed the great stone bridge it stopped being wary. By unspoken consent no animal killed another here. The wolves hunted beyond on their stay, the badgers kept themselves to worms and grubs. Even mice might have been sent. The badger made its way through the massive gardens, ignoring the cups of the vines that spiraled around every tree.

When it came to Lil Aoobi it knelt, and breathed in deep, the cubs followed their mother, the babe mimicked the cubs. As one they shook their heads as if clearing away a spider web, and looked around them with new eyes.

The oldest tree sat patiently and waited.

The badger understood why she had come now. She looked in surprise wondering how she could ever have thought the baby was a badger. Saddened that her role here was so small she guided her cubs to begin showing them the great gardens before everything faded and they had to cross the bridge again.

The baby gazed up at the tree, baby brain suddenly given the ability to comprehend at a depth it had never done before. A thousand neurons turned into being, and clicked into thought.

The oldest tree sat and watched.

The baby tilted up her nose, every sense suddenly heightened. In it her baby brain that had been trying so hard to learn badger, confusingly since it had been trying to figure out the pattern of human tongues before that, set about attempting to discern tree. She wriggled her way over to the trunk curled up there, and fell asleep.

The wind was full of questions and speculations. Every vine with a different theory on what the ancient tree thought or wanted. On the ground the lucid animals watched too, tasting the air, and only gathering a little of what passed between the giants above them. Those who had never seen a human before were growled some small explanation of the war.

The oldest tree cradled the baby at its base and in its old tree way, it smiled.

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Kaelii sat with her back to Aoobi and meditated. The seven year old wasn’t having a lot of luck at that just now. Everyone was talking so loud. The vines weren’t even bothering to use birds as they might if they were being respectfully quiet. The apes were having some dispute over in the nearest garden - and wanted to bring it to the tree of all things. The flowers were shouting their stupid litanies over and over, and the grass was just filling the air with one potent word. Kaelii sneezed.

The only one who was being quiet was Aoobi - and she preferred when the tree talked. It was seldom she could get anything out of the ancient thing, but everything she did was life altering. In seven years she had heard the tree say twenty nine things. In seven years she had changed her view of the universe twenty nine times.

She shook her head trying to clear it. Aoobi had been giving her less lucidity lately - the vines told her it was to wean her off - and that worried her. she saw how the animals acted when lucidity was gone. Her head felt dull, and she worried that she would go and stumble off to the other side of that bridge and begin rooting around in the mud for worms like her mother had.

Her adopted mother. She knew she was actually a hu-man, although the way everybody talked about them quietly when she was around she imagined they weren’t very nice. Maghat was trying to teach her their language and it was painfully difficult. Here everyone spoke their own language and everyone else learned how to listen to the meaning behind words. With this language she was supposed to learn how to pronounce every sound - only Maghat was an Orangutan and couldn’t pronounce any of the words, so she had to guess until he told her it was right.

She had learned the hand signs ages ago - why any species whose hand language was so simple and straightforward could rely on weird sounds that even an Orangutan couldn’t pronounce - was beyond her.

She swallowed a breath of frustration. Normally she could tune it all out. Let go of her thoughts. Let go of the distracting scents and sounds. Meditation was the closest an animal could come to being intelligent, the vines had told her - like a plant. She balked at that a little. Aoobi said all beings are right exactly as they are - or that’s the way she had interpreted it - and it was so unfair that just because she couldn’t control the cells in her skin, she wasn’t considered self conscious.

That said there were obvious unavoidable hierarchies that hardly bothered her at all anymore. Plants could eat sunlight, animals were parasites, unable to directly access the source, but stealing nutrients from plants instead. She felt a little proud for being able to eat meat - after all being a parasite to parasites just didn’t seem as bad.

But animals are necessary, the vines would always tell her. Without animals we would have nothing with which to build but our own bodies. Animals are valuable as long as they are the extension of some plant’s will.

Ugh - her head was cloudy. For the last half a year her mind had been nothing but cloudy. Apparently it was possible to be lucid without Aoobi’s help - the vines did it - and hu-mans were capable of it. Maybe she was less than even the hu-mans. Little seven year old Kaelii began to cry.

Everything that she had been holding since she began losing intelligence tumbled over her. The overt racism of the vines. The animals and their kindly offers that if she sank all the way to instinct she could run with the wolves, or hunt with the baboons. Lil Aoobi’s patient perfect silence.

It was then that she got up and began to run. In a moment she made the decision - if she was stupid than she would do what the stupid things did. No one noticed when coated in mud to hide her scent, she slipped across the bridge.

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Mind dull, weeks later, she had stayed downwind of every vine, and avoided the wolves, apes and eagles that had been sent after her. Mind dull she reached the edge of the forest and looked out across utterly foreign land, striped in rows of green.

She wandered in them, listening to their quiet contented murmurs. They were cared for and pampered they told her. She was almost thinking her kind were alright after all when she saw a terrified little weed, that spoke of genocide. The last of its kind.

Mind dull she ran again. Through field after field after field, into forests and meadows and mountains. Through valleys and villages. She hid and watched. Learned the pronunciations of words she had only guessed at. Stole bread and milk left out for the wee folk, and then felt bad and put half of it back.

Her first encounter with a human was surprisingly easy. A woman, surprised to see a girl in her backyard, asked her where her mother was. She mimicked accent and address, listened to the meaning behind words she didn’t know, and lied. The woman believed her and took her in for the night.

Mind dull she slipped away the next day. In that house she had talked to children. She was heartened by their slowness, but adults didn’t strike her as so much more. The adults had been kind where the children had been cruel. She had so much still to learn.

She could live off the land easily, even taking only leaves and berries as not to harm the plants she envied. She could learn what the humans had to teach and find some halfway point between her species and her roots.

It was with these thoughts that she curled up to sleep by the riverbank, and awoke surrounded by pirates.