Society is a massive tree. If those roots run deep, are healthy and diverse, the tree can stand for a millennia. But even for that society to grow, it needs a healthy, well-grown, seed. When the seed begins to rot, a tree will never flourish. -- Anon Guest
Elves began as arboreal creatures in the Plane of Magic, better known as Nanogh. When a population or two found their way to the Mortal Plane, they thought it pristine and unpopulated. They really should have checked. Especially when they hollowed out the corpses of sessilated Trolls to make their new homes[1].
Nothing starts a war quicker than discovering some pompous assholes have set up their homes inside your grandfather.
The only thing that stopped the war was the magical manipulation of a functional alternative. The Yggdrassi trees can hold an entire city's worth of Elves if they're old enough, but everything has to start somewhere.
After the last round of the Xenophobia Wars[2], the Yggdrassi were few and far between. Bai'Thaharran Mellyndarrow had been tending a seed in good soil since he was old enough to understand how important it was. His family was a collection of Aunts and Elders, and a few, scattered cousins.
He was two hundred when the sapling was too heavy to lift, and had to be planted. They found a defensible spot, in mountainous high ground that overlooked a bay. Good forests, sweet water, and an abundance of useful plants.
Elves live for millennia, so it was little trouble to tend a plant that could not be a house for five hundred more years. The temporary homes surrounding it would become storehouses as the family's magic made it strong.
The more family, the better.
Bai'Thaharran taught his children, and his children's children, the importance of community. Just as every part of the tree had its uses, every person in a community had a role. Even the smallest child could pour a cup of water onto the roots of something that grew.
He held his last grandson on his knee, and showed him the Heartwood. Most trees are dead in the middle. A skeleton to hold up the living flesh of the plant. That is not true for Yggdrassi. They have a solid core of magic they draw from the world around them. As the community flourishes, so does the tree that shelters it.
"You feel it best here, little one," Bai'Thaharran spread the infant's hand over the glowing wood. "As you grow, and grow strong, you will feel it whenever you lay your hands on the tree itself. It doesn't speak, not in words, but you will feel how well your community fares."
Ages passed, as ages were wont to do. A revered elder's body is curled in a sleeping position and gently nestled between the roots of the tree he had once nursed as a sapling. An empire rose and rotted. Humans came, and Humans stayed. They bought with them other things.
Reminders of past sins, like the Hellkin.
Bai the younger kept his distance. Tried to protect his family... but his family ebbed away from tradition. Drawn into the wider world of danger by the lure of adventure.
He, too, tried it once. Just once. Just long enough to find himself indebted to a line of Human Lords with a curse attached to their bloodline. When he went home, back to his tree, with its stories and housing for so many... it was all but empty.
The Heartwood was turning sour. The tree was lonely.
Bai took up too many vows in his youth. He vowed a life's debt to Whitekeep without thinking forward to the hundreds of years that Humans could abuse such a favour. He vowed to take in, protect, and educate any child that came to his door.
He became a Master Martiallist, and used those skills and his ability to teach to help those children stay protected once they grew to their majority. The Way of Shadows could defend, it could protect, and most importantly, it could aid in escape.
Whitekeep abused Bai's vows. Of course it would. The opportunity to be rid of embarrassing second sons and regrettable by-blows was too tempting for Humans. They never understood the truth about family. And Bai would never understand why Whitekeep tolerated its curse - the occasional Hellkin turning up in the noble bloodline.
A flood of blue, be-horned devils turned up with pensions in their pockets and arrogance leaking from every pore. Bai kept his vows, but not his patience with them. Encouraging the beasts to move on to wider pastures as soon as possible.
It had to be their presence that turned the Heartwood bitter.
Double-cursed devilborn.
The last one was, as his nurse put it, "a handful". Almost literally. This was the smallest of the Whitekeep blood he had seen in his life[3]. There were some household cats larger than this devilborn.
And he was so annoying. Naturally quiet, instinctively covert, painfully observant, and injuriously honest. He put his whole self into every effort, and frequently excelled.
Were it not for the mischance of his birth, Bai would have named him a prodigy and taken him up for personal lessons.
There was one thing he could not ever teach the next Demon Lord of Whitekeep, try though he did.
He could never teach him humility.
He must have injected the Heartwood with its bitter bite, somehow. In the twenty-five years he stayed in its branches, he had to have imbued it with some of his attitude.
Until a distant cousin visited, and found the avoided truth.
"It's not the tree that's bitter," said Cousin Faevyre. "It's you."
He would have to assess, and make amends, to sweeten his tree. Very possibly with the Hellkin he had last despised.
[1] Trolls, it must be explained, are cogniscent plants that keep growing at a constant rate for their entire lives. Once they reach a certain age, moving is no longer an option. They're not exactly dead, but they're no longer functioning on a social level.
[2] Elves had a knack of irritating their neighbours.
[3] Seven hundred and fifty-six years, at this point.
[Image by Tatiana Nifatova on Unsplash]
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