The Young Tree Observes (3)
"I'll plant it."
Dressed for winter, Thermia dug into the earth with a reverent air.
With a mana shovel she cleared away the soil and carefully set the fruit seed in place, patting the ground down gently as the earth closed over it.
Then she stepped back and, together with the spirits and the villagers, watched over the seed.
Buried in the winter ground, the seed lay quiet.
I guess being in a Holy Land doesn't make it grow any faster.
"It doesn't, does it."
Well then, let's ask nature for a little permission.
The Pebble Girl, who had been waiting for just this moment, stretched out her hand.
The law of nature swept across the soil, and the principle of plant life touched the seed. The ground heaved, and up popped a sprout.
Wow.
But beyond that, nothing more seemed to happen.
The Pebble Girl frowned slightly, concentrated hard, then glanced back toward my forest. Her eyes clearly said: I can't do this alone — help.
The sprout wasn't some exotic species that a spirit would struggle with. It wasn't a purely wild variety, but a fruit tree commonly grown throughout the kingdom.
Was it different somehow because this was a Holy Land?
When Pebble sought nature's permission, what she was really doing was compressing time. She could nudge outcomes to suit people's tastes, but fundamentally she was simply pulling natural change forward.
This sprout had been born in a Holy Land infused with my Divinity. The life it would live would be quite unlike ordinary natural change.
To compress that life, perhaps she needed to make it experience my mysteries as well, not just the workings of nature.
All right, got it.
I poured my will into the sprout. The moment my wish for it to grow healthy and strong flowed in, light burst forth.
The sprout quivered.
Grow, grow tall and strong.
And yet, for all its quivering, it didn't grow.
Why not?
The Pebble Girl thought for a moment, then looked over at the Water Drop Girl. A pleading glance went her way.
The Water Drop Girl — who had been making water spirits one by one and perching them on the villagers' heads as if it were none of her business — panicked, pointed at herself in silent confirmation, and then came over.
Maybe the earth alone isn't enough.
A plant's life isn't sustained by earth spirits alone. For it to truly grow healthy and strong, perhaps the water needed to help too.
In truth, the most important thing in any natural ecosystem is water.
Because it's always been there, so obviously and conveniently, it's easy to forget the role it plays — but remove water from nature's cycle and everything falls apart. People simply never appreciate what they have.
The moment the Water Drop Girl joined in, the sprout finally began to grow.
The sprout stretched upward and sent out a stem, becoming a sapling in a rush of rustling sound. Branches spread, leaves unfurled, the tree matured — and bore fruit.
A sweet fragrance rode the wind.
Countless fruits filled the branches. Glistening fruit, beaded with drops of water.
Wow.
The fruit, basking so contentedly in the winter sun, suddenly came raining down in a flurry.
Some of them cracked open on impact, spilling juice. Most rolled across the ground, bruised but intact.
Wow?
New fruit formed on the branches.
And then, without a moment's delay, it dropped too. Fruit struck fruit, and the ground began to turn into an absolute disaster zone. The air grew thick with the scent of juice — in the worst possible way.
"······Huh?"
Hold on. Just a moment here.
Pebble, there's no need to keep the fruit growing.
The Pebble Girl waved her hands as if to say that wasn't me, climbed onto her wooden bed, and simply went back to sleep.
The Water Drop Girl stared in alarm at the falling fruit, took one to the head, dissolved into a splash, and reformed.
W-wow.
Wasn't that Pebble's doing? Is it just supposed to do that?
A deluge of fruit poured down.
The fruit smashed against one another and slowly became fertilizer.
What on earth is going on here?
"Huh? Huh?!"
Thermia, who had been watching in a daze, snapped awake.
"Catch them! Before they all crack!"
The villagers rushed over and began snatching the falling fruit out of the air — getting bonked on the heads and yelping in pain, slipping on the fruit that had already landed. It was total chaos.
W-wow.
It took a while for the fruit tree, which had been emptying itself with abandon, to calm down enough that people could actually catch what fell.
Only once things settled to the point where one person could catch each fruit as it dropped and place it in a basket did everyone finally get to breathe.
Um, guys? I don't think this is the moment to relax — shouldn't we be figuring out how to manage an orchard tree that drops fruit all day long? Aren't we in serious trouble here?
"I'm going to try it."
Thermia swallowed hard.
Her mouth opened wide, and she bit into the fruit.
She chewed a few times — and then went completely blank.
Even after waiting a while, there was no reaction.
Thermia?
The Water Drop Girl leaned in close and waved a hand in front of her face. No response. Her mind had left her body entirely.
Thermia?
I gave her forehead a gentle poke with my gaseous mana.
"Hwah?!"
The girl jolted upright, wiping the drool that had escaped her with her sleeve. Her eyes were shining.
"This is incredible! It tastes like heaven! Just eating this would make life feel like pure happiness, huh? Wait—"
Mid-sentence, Thermia realized something.
Rolling her eyes, she rubbed her belly, then hastily finished off the entire fruit in silence, as though to confirm it. Then she gasped in shock.
"One of these fills me up completely?!"
Since it was such a common fruit tree, had the mysteries focused on nutrition and satiety?
I'd made the Four Seasons Orchard hoping everyone could get through winter in abundance, so this seemed like a very good thing.
"This is—!"
Teacher, who had been keeping respectfully quiet in this sacred setting, came rushing over in alarm.
"I must try one myself."
Eat as much as you like.
Teacher took a fruit from the basket and bit in. He was so startled by the taste that he coughed, but he recovered, hurriedly finished it, and checked his own stomach.
The moment he confirmed the fullness, his eyes went wide.
"It's true······? Village Chief! You must try one at once!"
The village chief Eldrin ate one, and his expression turned grave. His gaze drifted toward the forest, in the direction of my branches.
"Are the dried fruits the same way?"
I wouldn't know. Sun-drying isn't exactly a violent upheaval of nature, so I'd assume there's no difference? The taste might come out like ordinary dried fruit, though.
The chief fell silent.
"Delicious, aren't they?"
Giggling, Thermia picked up another fruit.
Then, full or not, she started happily eating more.
"Remember what I said before? That we elves can live on fruit alone? This really might work!"
Thermia turned to face the assembled village elders, keeping her distance.
"So, how about we start living on nothing but fruit? We've confirmed that farming doesn't violate doctrine, but the Young Tree isn't fond of fields — surely it would be blasphemous to ignore His wishes."
The girl crossed her arms and launched into a bit of a sermon.
"Everyone, lately I've been questioning whether it's truly in keeping with our teachings to hunt beasts on such a large, reckless scale. The autumn hunt is over and hard to verify, so as a proactive measure — and to improve everyone's eating habits — why don't we correct the village's diet toward fruit?"
Um, excuse me? Aren't you being a little terrifying right now?
The elders, who hadn't yet tasted the fruit, silently broke into a cold sweat.
When the head of a religion — an official institution now — springs something like that on you, with the Sacred Young Tree Himself watching, there weren't many elders in any position to argue.
Teacher would shut it down anyway, of course.
Except that Teacher himself began pondering the idea with complete seriousness.
"Not bad. If we consolidate the food supply entirely around fruit, we could have a phenomenal city — self-sufficient in food while devoting almost no labor to farming, freeing everyone to focus on other fields."
It was a proposal that would benefit the village enormously but was far too coercive to push through politically. And yet now it could be routed around doctrine instead — his voice was absolutely dripping with satisfaction.
Um, hello? Why is our last bastion of common sense leaning into this so hard?
The chief, who had been quietly eyeing the fruit, went one step further.
"This can be sold to the military."
At those words, Teacher gasped.
"Of course! You said the dried fruits are similar, so military provisioning is viable. If we supply exclusively to the knight orders and position it as a premium good, we can earn serious, stable money with minimal labor."
It was the dead of winter, and yet the village suddenly began buzzing with activity.
I just did one small thing. How did it spiral into all this? I really can't say I understand. I only wanted a nice sunbathe.
Dahlia was a priestess of the Theocracy.
Though the Holy Kingdom had long since decayed, its leadership devoured by corruption and greed, there were still priests who had not lost the light — who devoted their lives in quiet, unwavering faith.
Dahlia was one of them.
Turning her back on the kingdom's center, where wealth and power awaited, she wandered the neglected frontier territories, caring for the forgotten.
Her destination this time was a fief thrown into turmoil, for the man who had once been the King's second son had marched away with his army. The second son had ultimately become the King, but the people left behind in this territory had been all but abandoned — and soothing their hearts was, Dahlia believed, a clergyman's sacred duty.
The moment she arrived, she received a formal invitation from the Steward, the lord's acting representative. For those who cast aside wealth and power to devote themselves to the faith, the Sun God was wont to at least grant honor and renown.
"You speak of a miracle?"
What she actually found herself hearing, seated across from the Steward, was an utterly preposterous rumor.
Across the vast expanse of the western territory, a miracle was unfolding. A miracle of never growing weary without sleep, of never tiring no matter how far one ran.
If one or two villages had claimed it, or a single city, it could have been dismissed as idle gossip — but the lord's castle had already sent people to verify it, several times over.
The Steward, who had never been a believer in the Sun God, seemed torn between doubt and genuine fear over whether this might be the divine miracle of legend.
She'd heard he was among those who looked unfavorably upon slavery — which the corrupt mainstream of the Theocracy blessed as the order decreed by the Sun God Himself — so it was little wonder his heart pounded.
He'd been so frightened that when it came to the plan to send an auditor to the city that ran the slave market, he actually asked her whether he truly ought to go through with it.
Dahlia, drifting a little from the official church line, spoke to him about the essence of humanity and of love, and set his mind at ease. She had him send an even more thorough audit to the city, then left the lord's castle and headed west.
Toward the ominous portent that had begun in the west, where the sun goes down.
She hadn't even entered the miraculous domain yet, but the closer she drew to the west, the more testimonies poured in from the territory's people.
"Oh, absolutely! I heard they were selling farming tools made by the elves over there, cheap and good, so I went and got one — and my shoulder, frozen up for over ten years, has loosened right up! The tools alone were worth it, but this is what really gets me!"
"My husband's been so much calmer since he came back with one, I tell you. Used to snap at every meal, saying his food wouldn't digest now that he was getting old."
"From what I hear, it's not just us, either. Everyone who's been says their endless little ailments have cleared up like night and day."
"It's like being young again, back when your body felt bulletproof! My shoulder's starting to seize up again, so once the weather warms I'm thinking of going back — would you care to join me, Priestess?"
What in the world was going on?
Were they saying that the kind of events recorded only in scripture were happening now, across the entire western territory?
That was impossible.
Even if an unprecedented miracle had occurred, it must not have first appeared in the west — the direction of the setting sun. It had to begin in the east, where the sun rises.
Besides, the east — the far edge of the rising sun — was the domain of the Demon Realm, and so the Church had always taught that miracles could hardly occur there.
Faith, after all, was only truly precious when it believed without seeing. Faith that clung to witnessed miracles was no faith at all.
But the moment Dahlia reached the west, she experienced the miracle.
Her weary feet eased, and her steps grew light.
Her mind, sleepless from worry over the Theocracy's future, was as clean and clear as if she'd slept beneath the sunlight itself.
In the winter sun, Dahlia could savor the infinite love that radiated there with a clarity of mind and body she had never known before.
It was as if she had returned to that day when, fresh from the temple and dreaming great dreams, she had set out on her very first journey.
Those who witnessed the miracle followed the rumor on foot.
Westward, ever westward.
Toward the forest at the western edge.
Toward the place where the sun was never meant to rise.