ArchivedLogs:Greenthings Rising

Greenthings Rising
Dramatis Personae Corey, Jim, Hive, Micah	2014-04-07 Swampthing rises... a little.
Location <XS> Forest
Quiet and shady, the trees rise all around here high and thick. In stillness, woodland creatures make appearances, though sudden noises scare them back into the cover. Dappled sunlight filters down between the thick foliage, and the ground underfoot is heavily overgrown, though here and there paths have been worn, by deer or years of students wandering familiar trails. Spring is still new, here in the earthy woods. Wet smells of prominent brown and subtle green. Faint green shoots making a few brave spears up through the thick leaf litter in the warm, drizzly day, naked tree branches nevertheless now developing a faint mossy face to their northern sides. The doom-gloom Jimtree is its own eerie mix of flourishing new life set like an emerald gem in a dismal dead nest of grass that is /not/ so green. All the siphoned energy off the plants around him have, if nothing else, benefited his physical health significantly. It's overgrown with moss, sprouting strange and unlikely kudzu vines that have begun to invasively blanket the realm around him in a fairy tale net. His mismatched grafted branches have begun to leaf over far earlier than should be likely, peach, cherry, apple, all warming small pale green buds at the tips of their spindly fingers. The deep gash in his side is no longer visible beneath the foliage. It froths with flora. Making his way out to visit the recovering tree, Corey is dressed for comfort in the ever changing weather of spring with a light jacket overtop of long sleeved teeshirt and a pair of jeans. A backpack is slung over one shoulder, a thermos tucked carefully into the mesh beverage pocket on the side, while he carries a lawn chair under his other arm. Stopping by the tree, he pats it gently and offers it a smile. "Hey there patient. At least you don't complain about the slow going ey?" Chuckling, he unfolds the chair and settles in beneath the tree, pulling out a water bottle from inside of the backpack, and pouring half of it onto the tree roots before taking a sip himself. "Another day, another study session. At least the weather has been improving." Settling in with a little flip book to study from, the healing aura settles in and pervades the area, flowing deep into the ground and around to the flora and fauna. "Hrm, maybe I should take a picture of this for Mel, she probably would appreciate the fact he's getting better." It was faint, when it first started - last week, only a slight response to Corey's presence, leaves turning too slow for the human eye to note, so that hours later they seem to face him just slightly more. But that was then. The plant-thing looming up ominously over Corey is capable of something no other plants are: learning. Unnerving, how they respond to the presence now - the kudzu vines rise up like a knot of froth, twisting slowly around the base of his chair, leaves unfurling like miniature pilgrims turning up their face to a strange arriving god. Raising a brow at the kudzu shifting around his chair, Corey raises a brow. "Well, you certainly seem to be doing better at least, well if this is you at least." He seems to think a moment, then pours the rest of the water down on the roots as an offering. "I'll keep the coffee though. Pretty sure Jayna would slap me if I did something that stupid," he says with a grin as he untwists the cap of the thermos and pours himself the lids worth of the steaming beverage. "You know, Mel is getting close to having the baby. She's been overworking herself and stressing herself too much, but then that really is her in a nut shell." It's two parallel worlds, man and tree, fauna and flora. Different momentum and environmental sensitivities. There is no tempo, no respiration nor pulse in the heartless life of green things; but there's steadiness, a vital relentless expansion that grows engulfs what it cannot split apart. With the aid of Corey's presence, the weak green of fresh grass around him for once /wilts/ as directed energy is greedily consumed. There's a papery, creaky-wood rustling, above the young man's head. A strained... squeal. Of some vital last membrane breaking open - and finally green shoots begin to twist open. Or seem to. THe process is slow, so slow... Having started reading in the calm and quiet, Corey tilts his head up at the squeel. "Huh, well that's new." Twisting he points his phone at it and takes a quick picture as the shoots start to twist open. "Maybe I should ask them to bring some fertilizer by too. Maybe the liquid stuff, just because I really don't want to be sitting right next to a pile of manure. Did that when I was in my teens and tending people's lawns. Definitely not an experience worth having in a Florida summer." Sipping from his coffee, he hrms, then settles back into the chair. "I wonder if a telepath would know what you're thinking." Deep beneath the chia-pet overgrowth, the opening leaves, delicate cyclones gradually spiraling open as they rise, there is still that subtle human shape deep at the heart of the tree. At the base of the choppy branches, the center of the knuckley tentacles of vines, curled over and Vesuvian. And somewhere deep in this mess... there's another sound. A burrowing, bark-crunching. A creak of treefiber. Then silence. Another creak. Then silence. For a long moment then... steady quiet. Where the shape of a human ear has now also blossomed, small fragments of plant matter falling away to catch in the small chambers of the ears. One pinwhieeling in miniature down the canal. Ominous quiet, wind whistling through the trees. And a weak, low wheeze beneath the vines. "Ya know, if I hadn't already seen people being grown back from scratch, I'd probably be a bit more creeped out by this." Corey says with a somewhat bemused self realization. "Well, I guess now that you've got an ear, I can see about some music I guess. I've got no idea what you actually Listen to though. On one hand, if you're annoyed you'll recover faster to shut it off at least." Pushing some buttons on the phone, it starts to tinnily play the Beach Boy's Kokomo through it's crappy speakers. "It's happy at least. And I've always wanted to go. Ah well, maybe someday." The merry music echoes through the hollow places of the eerie spring forest, trickling through the branches and creeping through the secret places. It wends, winds, plays on to give that vital heart beat tempo to the living things. A squirrel makes it hopping way somewhere in the distance, vanishing behind a copse of bushes. And beneath the ominous squat Jimtree, there comes a second inhale... And a second sound. Starting in just a keen, guttural and ragged, there's a low raw /scream/, snarling out through stripped dry vocals. Hitting a stop on the music, Corey hops out of his chair and blinking at the tree. "Alright alright, I'll stop the music." Tilting his head to look more over the tree he looks a tad concerned, thinking he may need to call someone as he steps closer to the tree. "Are you in there? Do you need something? More water, a cheeseburger, cigarette?" The last two said with slightly more levity. Placing his hand against the regrown bark, he glances through the green and brush to see if there is more person there. << What. >> This is the first response, startled up to shudder out of the tree through both Jim and Corey's minds; in Jim's it feels natural, a quiet-gruff voice though in Corey's it /thuds/ sledgehammer-heavy. After this there's quiet, something stirring through a sludgey-heavy morass of exhaustion-sick-stress that finally wakes to just settle into watchfulness. << Dude, >> it says, so-very-eloquently, << you're here now. You got this. >> Wincing at the thudding in his head, Corey blinks looking at the tree << Hive?>> he thinks, then looks around the area. He is pretty sure he would have noticed the presence of another person moving about, especially one who wasn't moving around very well at the moment. <<Guess I should watch what I wish for. I was just wondering if a telepath would know what's going on.>> He does at least take a sip of coffee, hoping the caffiene will dull out the brain thump. The almost inhuman echo of a human voice scratched out and hollow from deep in the tree pitches out, wheezes. Makes a rasped second exhale that's just a dog bark of /noise/. A breath more, slower, and then the sound stops. Beneath the foliage had been some rapid rhythmic sense of inhale, exhale, inhale.... a final exhale and it stops once more. The creak of wood and a noticeable sudden /expansion/ of territory into the surrounding plant life. Tree branches sag visibly, grass wilts down, all sucked in as though on some arboreal gasp. And the silence that follows is /thick/. Deep in the pit of his mind, the slow lazy river of plant thought churns now, around a pit of white water, where a boulder now rests. A deep nugget of stubborn present-minded awareness. And in here... it's still gasping. "Eesh. Well you certainly do wake up loudly. I better contact someone. Someone to bring you pants," Corey says, hoping that they also wont need to bring an ambulance. Thumbing in a text message and firing it off to someone who is more in the know than himself he steps back to watch the tree jim process. Watching the other trees start dying out in the area, he runs a hand through his hair with a low whistle. "Guess you were hungry though." ( Corey-->Micah ): Your tree friend is waking up. I think he may need pants. Also, he's destroying the forest. ( Micah-->Corey ): Jim? Ohgosh. I'll let some folks know what's going on. Somebody at the school should be able to bring him some kind of clothes. << Yeah. Hey. Sorry. I'm only here in your head, >> Hive answers Corey, just as heavy-thudding as ever. << Jim's waking up, is what's going on. Hard to do without a body, I guess. >> Inwardly, there's a prodding mental /poke/, towards Jim, Prod. Push. Pokepokepoke. Hey. You. There. Sup. << You've done this before, >> he says, quieter, to Jim. << Lungs. Organs. You've had them. >> The vocalizations have stopped fully now. As has the sound of wheezing breath, the internal creaking of wood fiber shifting its textures, its load bearing tension. The tree is once more inanimate in a way, solid and aged, larger now, a thin canopy of mismatched leaves opened like fingers reaching up praise to the rain, the sun behind it. That hard nugget within Jim bites down like a trap, on Hive's prodding. Raw, ragged-thin, it grits. << soon. too-- >> Just that, slumping not into the depth of plant thought but a true fainting exhaustion, instead. << too - just a little…— >> He grasps, for other words. Finds instead Hive, and twists tight. Coiling up like a muscle slowly preparing itself behind a veil of slumber. << soon. >>