I Woke Up as a Sapling (2)

When dawn arrived, the Water Droplet Spirit that had settled snugly onto my leaves the night before would wake up.

Stretching the way a person might, the spirit elongated its droplet body upward in one long pull to greet the morning. It hadn't originally ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had that stretching habit. It had watched me finish my Dew Face Wash and unfurl my branches wide a few times, and started copying me.

After its stretch, the spirit would take one full lap around me before settling back onto the leaves to wait for the dew. It knew how much I enjoyed washing myself in pure morning dew.

As I rolled the morning dew along and rinsed my leaves, the spirit would wait quietly like an ordinary dewdrop resting on a leaf. When its turn came, it merged with the dew and rolled across the leaves along with me.

Boing, boing.

You look like you're having so much fun. I couldn't hear a voice, but the trembling of the droplet felt like bubbly giggling. Did it feel like riding an amusement park ride?

Once every leaf was washed and the branches were clean too, dew beaded at the tips of the leaves. The spirit, still mingled in with it, dropped together with the rest and soaked into the ground.

Absorbed through my roots, it would drift through my body like ordinary mana—only to move on its own and escape. It traveled up through my trunk, beaded on my leaves, and returned to being a droplet.

Just as what I did after my Dew Face Wash changed with my mood, the spirit's post-wash routine differed every day too.

Some days it washed every blade of grass nearby one by one, giving them all their own little dew bath, then bounced around in proud satisfaction. Other days it grabbed the stem of a yellow flower, tied it into a knot with a neighboring stem, and giggled so hard the droplet shook.

But today was very different from usual.

Whoa, is that for me?

The droplet had brought back a stone from outside. It dangled from the surface of the droplet, hanging there and bobbing as it floated.

It was no ordinary stone. It was wide and flat, shaped like a plate. A rare stone like this could only be found out in the wide world beyond.

How cool. It's like an overseas souvenir.

A gift from outside. It had been going out to explore beyond my field of vision so often lately—maybe it had started thinking a lot about me, stuck in place as I was.

Yippee, I get to have a family member like this droplet. I must be the luckiest sapling in the whole world.

To express my gratitude, I focused my mind. It was still unfamiliar, but my Divinity exercised its mystery, and my will took shape as language.

"You brought me such an adorable little stone? Thank you. You did so, so well."

The surface of the droplet rippled rapidly. It burst into giggles, then flew up onto a branch and bounced up and down. The vigorous bouncing made the branch sway and the leaves flutter.

Whoa, whoa, you're so strong.

From then on, the droplet began bringing back gifts every time it went out.

A smooth, round pebble. A branch marked with the teeth-marks of a squirrel's gnawing. A bird's eggshell still dusted with down.

One day it even brought back a snail shell. When it set the shell down, the snail inside wriggled its body out, and the two of us ended up startling each other.

Whoa? So it wasn't an empty shell?

Today, too, the droplet brought something curious back.

Everything it had brought so far seemed like things that could be found in this forest. This time was a little different.

A long something made of wood dangled from the droplet's surface. As if to say look at this, it floated closer, and the wooden thing swayed.

Whoaaa?

It was, unmistakably, a wooden arrow. The arrowhead looked like a clumsy toy, as if someone had tried and failed to imitate a real one—but it was clearly an arrow made of wood.

"Where in the world did you find this?"

The top of the droplet tilted and jabbed repeatedly toward one direction. It pointed toward the deep, wooded heart of the forest.

Whoa, I see. Amazing.

So somewhere in that far side of the forest, beyond everything I knew, there were wooden arrows.

The world really is so wide and beautiful.

I want to see the far side of that forest someday.

I want to watch a wooden ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠arrow's birth and its whole life.

I had released my nutrients back into my body, but my actual growth had stalled.

It was the same principle as my roots refusing to grow any further until they broke through the barrier—my trunk and branches had also overgrown, and so they stopped growing.

And yet, even with my outward form grown to bursting, the EXP required to level up wasn't nearly satisfied, which gave me quite a lot to think about.

Did I perhaps only grow the parts that show? Now that my exterior has swelled, has the nourishment needed inside actually increased to match?

From the outside I look like a sturdy sapling, but maybe my core is still lacking.

The nutrients had in fact been spent on fine details I had never recognized before.

The bark. The xylem. The phloem. The leaf veins. The root hairs.

To bear the weight of my expanded form, the very material of my body had grown tough and durable. My growth rings thickened, and it felt as if my soul were growing alongside them, in step with time.

More than a month had passed.

The world I could see had widened.

Glance one way and the Yellow Flower Field ended, giving way to dense, encircling woodland. This was no longer the border between plain and forest. This was deep inside the forest.

Look the other way, and trees and brush stood packed tight all the way to the forest's far edge. The endless expanse of trees made me imagine just how thickly wooded that unseen distance must be.

So that's where the wooden arrow was born.

The Water Droplet Spirit flew freely between the undergrowth that blocked my sight. It settled on a leaf, then leapt off to snatch a falling green feather out of the air.

And then it began inspecting the feather thoroughly, spinning it around and around.

You're preparing a gift for me, aren't you? How thoughtful.

But after fluttering the feather and fingering each individual strand, the droplet shook itself briskly. With an air of this doesn't meet my standards, it tossed the feather aside carelessly and flew off again.

Whoa? I thought that one was pretty nice, but no?

Apparently it didn't pass the Water Droplet Spirit's discerning aesthetic eye.

Watching the droplet head beyond my field of vision, I turned my attention to my roots.

Ever since I'd decided to treat the boulder as a neighbor rather than an obstacle, my underground expansion had actually sped up. Instead of spending time smashing through and carving a straight path, I detoured around it and focused on claiming territory, so the spread itself came much faster.

So that's what "the hasty traveler takes the long road" means.

With roots that weren't straight, my nutrient pathways weren't exactly tidy—but in the leisurely life of a plant, that hardly seemed to matter.

My roots filled the earth beneath me.

Once my roots were fully developed, I turned my focus to the branches.

This time, I intended to do something different from before.

Having spent so long basking in the sunlight and swaying in the wind while carefully studying my branches and leaves, I'd been able to spot something that left something to be desired.

People who raise trees prune them. They cut away dead and withered branches to make room, and trim back branches that overlap too thickly to let the tree breathe.

More was not automatically better.

Overlapping leaves couldn't catch the sunlight, and overlapping branches couldn't ride the wind.

I could have stopped the nutrient supply and, with the Water Droplet Spirit's help, pruned the branches after the fact. But it was far better to keep them from growing tangled in the first place. It would save the nutrients needed for growth, too.

Considering how each branch would sit relative to the others, I extended them with care—adjusting the angles of the twigs, calibrating the spread of the leaves, pursuing a graceful openness where nothing crowded anything else.

My trunk grew, and my branches spread.

Higher. Higher still.

I am now a thirteen-meter sapling.

I stood roughly eye to eye with the trees around me.

Introducing myself as a tree would be entirely justified now.

Yippee.

The droplet brought back a gift.

"Whoa, thank you again. You're like my very own sunlight."

Astonishingly, it was a green feather. I distinctly remembered watching it discard a feather for failing its aesthetic standards—and this one looked very similar.

Was something different about it?

Compared to that earlier feather, this one seemed to flutter more gracefully and gleam more brightly. Perhaps its owner had been younger. The Water Droplet Spirit's aesthetic sense truly ran deep and profound.

But then, into that deep and profound aesthetic sense, a most unexpected creature was caught.

The droplet floated back into my field of vision, and once again it had brought a gift. Unlike all the previous ones, this was a small, living animal.

White, fluffy fur and ears standing straight up.

Red eyes, a plump little body, and an adorable puff of a tail.

It was a rabbit.

A familiar rabbit, one I felt I'd seen before.

The rabbit flew in, dangling limply by both ears. Perhaps it had struggled and given up—it hung there utterly deflated, its soul clearly elsewhere.

Whoaaa?

You're bringing me that? You're actually bringing me that? Isn't jumping from inanimate objects straight to a rabbit a bit too fast?

The rabbit was delivered. Whether the trauma of being carried hither by a mere droplet had shattered its body and mind, the rabbit remained soullessly slack.

The droplet bounced up and down on top of the rabbit, clearly angling for praise.

Come to think of it, the droplet's been with me since the day I became a different kind of sprout, cotyledons and all. It's a veteran of the life-or-death battle with this rabbit.

Was it out roaming, spotted the familiar rabbit, and decided to kidnap it? Is that what happened?

"W-well, wow."

I honestly have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to this.

"It's the thought that counts. Thank you."

Delighted, the droplet bounced on the rabbit for a while longer before flying off toward the leaves to play with the dew. It settled onto a leaf, went perfectly still, and mimicked a drop of dew.

Which left me alone with the rabbit.

W-well. Hello.

The rabbit came back to itself and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠groomed its ears with its forepaws. After a stretch of that, it twitched its nose, glanced up at me, then subtly looked away and went back to fixing its ears. Too awkward to leave, too awkward to do anything else.

An air of strained silence hung over us.

How should I put this. I don't think either of us expected a meeting this abrupt. I have no idea how we're supposed to resolve it. You neither, right?

The rabbit looked up. Its small stature couldn't take all of me in at once, so it rose up on its hind legs, forepaws lifted, straining to see all the way to my crown. Its red eyes wavered.

Maybe it doesn't feel like so long ago to you. It doesn't to me, either, in some ways.

But I'm no longer the sprout I was.

We've come too far to fight each other again.

What stands here now is not a sprout and a rabbit. Only a tree and a rabbit.

The wind stirred my leaves.

The rabbit lowered its forepaws.

It stayed still for a while, then fiddled with its ears—and suddenly began chewing. I thought it might be eating grass, but it wasn't. From its mouth dropped a small pellet, glittering like a blue jewel.

Whoa?

It was a jewel-like pellet, sapphire blue.

Why is a jewel pellet coming out of a rabbit's mouth?

Don't tell me you eat things like that?

Did the shock of losing to a sprout knock its soul so far out of its body that it took to chewing rocks? Knowing how clever it is, maybe it simply never realized what a devastating blow that was to rabbit honor.

The rabbit nudged the jewel pellet forward with a smooth push.

Huh? Are you giving it to me? Is this an apology?

The rabbit didn't pick it back up. It simply turned and left.

The jewel alone remained.

And there it goes.

Abrupt as it was, maybe that was a good meeting. If we hadn't met today, the rabbit would only have watched me from afar until it gave up and drifted away for good. At least this time, we parted on reconciled terms.

The jewel pellet drifted into my field of vision.

But a rabbit eating jewels—will its health be all right? For all I know, our next meeting place might be the afterlife.

Worried it might have mistaken something perfectly edible for a jewel, I examined the pellet closely.

The blue jewel looked much like any ordinary gemstone. But as I studied it in detail, something dawned on me.

Ohh, I see. So that's what this is.

The Natural Circulation Method drew on the principle that just as mana lingers in the sky, so too can mana linger in plants.

Which naturally raised a question.

Couldn't it also linger in the earth? If my understanding of nature's circulation was correct, such a thing had to exist.

I believed it would—and it truly did.

The blue jewel was a pure, concentrated lump of mana. It had the hard form of rock and gemstone, but its true substance was mana itself.

It was something that deserved to be called a Mana Stone.

What a fascinating form.

I used mana in its liquid form too, but this shape was entirely new to me.

I pondered for a moment, then gathered mana onto a leaf. A bead of mana dew shimmered and formed.

Let's think of it not as water, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but as stone.

It wasn't easy. Water was something I felt constantly, deeply, within my own body—but stone I only ever touched indirectly, through my roots. I had chosen the boulder as a neighbor, but between a neighbor and me there still lay a fundamental distance.

Yet with a finished example sitting right before my eyes, the task came easier. Armed with the belief that it was possible, I held in my mind the thought that mana was like stone—and the dew began to compress, little by little.

At last, a round, blue marble took shape.

Whoa. A mana marble.

Sunlight glinted off its smooth surface.

I compared the Mana Stone and my mana marble, turning them this way and that.

Huh? Something's different.

The Mana Stone carried the law of the earth within it. Just as immense pressure forms rock and intense heat forms gemstone, the law of the earth was pressed thick into the Mana Stone.

My mana marble, by contrast, was simply mana that had hardened. Similar, in a sense—but compared to the Mana Stone, a great deal of that law was missing from it.

I've gone and made something strange, haven't I. What did I just create?

Whoa?