Dendro Blurb (Patreon)

Some stuff hinting at the deeper lore of Trea but mostly focused on Dendro. One day maybe we'll do more stuff based on Lena/Serenth/Karas and that whole gang but for now they just background characters lmfao. 

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The sun rose and the sun set in Trea just like it did on Earth, the only difference between the two was the visible rings that wrapped around the planet of a bright green and blue. Though they were more clear at night among the stars unburdened by pollution. 

Dendro loved looking at them. Sometimes at night that was all that she got to do. Day and night, day and night. She’d sit by the great white tree with the whole garden of other Dendrobium like her and just wait. 

Sometimes a creature would be bold enough to try - usually something small and harmless. Other times something big would try to barrel its way through - a massive shadowy beast with rows of teeth and leave their garden looking like a massacre… But they would win. They always won. That was their jobs to guard this tree and so they would… And the ones that were damaged would grow back slowly. Sometimes it would take them years depending on the damage. Luckily for her the worst that ever happened was being cut off at the waist and she had to use her vines to pull herself together and let herself mend together that way. Saved a lot of time certainly. 

But she also didn’t know…. Why. 

What were they even really protecting? Had the tree put them here to guard itself? Had they been planted? The attacks were so few and far between and there was nothing to do outside of that. She could talk to the other Dendrobium but what would they have to say? The same things as her, probably except even more annoying. 

“You’re young.” Some elder flowers that were close by would say, “in a couple hundred years this won’t seem like any time at all. What are doing is a great service to Trea.” 

That didn’t make her feel any better. 

But one day, after a particularly vicious attack by a giant centipede like beast they got some welcome visitors. The king- everyone whispered - the king was here with the queen! 

The crow witch? No no - the new queen, the better queen. The Lady Lily! 

More excited whispers, and Dendro felt quite foolish. She didn’t know anything about any of the names. She hadn’t even been told that there was a king! Everyone apparently knew all of this stuff about their world and just decided not to tell her!? She supposed in the end it didn’t matter. They would still be in just this one spot. 

But the King and Queen - their guard - all of them, oh they were beautiful… And Queen Lena was very sweet, she went around to all of them to check on them and help them heal their wounds even faster while the King and a blond elf with sharp golden eyes inspected what was left of the body of the centipede. “Is it one of his?” She heard the king ask. 

“No, I don’t think so.” The blond elf responded, “Thankfully it just appears to be an unaffiliated centipede - as hard as that is to believe.” Dendro watched him curiously, but when he became aware of being watched he turned his head just slightly and she tensed. Ah- she had fought many beasts but she had never felt fear. His eyes… They made her feel unsettled. 

“Forgive him.” A closer voice said and she jumped as she looked down. Oh it was the Queen! “Karas is a good man, but war has made him… intense.” Lena explained as Dendro smiled a little bit and held up her hands. 

“Oh it’s fine! I guess I’m just wondering what all the fuss is about… I don’t even really know why it would want to get into the tree.” She admitted as Lena raised her eyebrows in surprise. 

“What?” She sputtered, “You don’t know what you’re guarding… how has no one told you?” she wondered as Dendro shrugged slowly in a way that she didn’t understand but also wasn’t sure why she should care. “This tree connects to a rift, different holes inside the tree lead out to different rifts on Earth. Ideally if that thing HAD managed to get past you, it would have gone through some sort of rift that would have changed its form into a harmless centipede but we don’t really want to take that risk.” 

“Earth?” Dendro blinked as Lena raised her eyebrows again. 

“It’s… another planet like our own, in a way, it’s very different too. They don’t have magic the same way that Trea does. I should know.” She snorted. 

“Why would you know…?” 

“I come from earth originally.” Lena explained, “As did the queen before me. Though she sort of… broke her way through whereas I just… happened to stumble upon a different rift.” She admitted with a faint laugh. 

“So earth is a place with no magic, full of nice pretty people like you?” Dendro asked as Lena laughed again, her hand going up briefly to cover her mouth. 

“Not everyone is nice.” She admitted, “But that doesn’t mean that they have to deal with the complexities of their lives as well as fantastical beasts from another world. Hm? They have their stories - a lot of things slipped through along the years. There are a  lot of other places to access it that aren’t as heavily guarded, too.” She explained, “In truth you have all done an incredible job here but…” She worried at her lip a little bit. “It seems… unfortunate to me that you would be forced to remain here and do nothing else… Can you not leave?” she asked as Dendro shook her head, motioning down to her body. 

“I’m rooted...” Dendro explained and for the first time she felt a dull ache in her heart. She’d never wanted legs necessarily she just wanted more to do- and she was realizing how much more there was to see and to do if she were not in one fixed point. 

“Serenth-” Lena started to say as she turned her head and the king made a dubious noise, already knowing where her mind was going with this. 

“The Dendrobium have been guarding this place since my father was king before me. You can’t just start uprooting them because you feel bad.” He told her as she clicked her tongue at him which made him shrug his shoulders up and slip away back to where Karas was looking because he felt bad having to tell his wife ‘no’. 

“I suppose that is that… But… you really aren’t that far away from the castle-” Lena admitted. 

“There’s a castle?” Dendro murmured to herself as Lena continued. 

“So perhaps even though I can not take you from this place I can help you in some other way.” She decided warmly and Dendro smiled back at her even though she didn’t really know what that meant. 

But she would find out in the weeks and months to come. The queen made a point to visit then - she would bring her books to read and then taught her how to read when she realized that Dendro didn’t know how. When she was gone Dendro would read through the books and protect them inside of her roots whenever anything showed up to cause a fuss - and when she was around she would listen to stories that Lena had about her family and the kingdom and also learning various things about her time on earth. When Dendro asked her why she was doing this - Lena felt that it was important to pay attention to the Dendrobium when they’d clearly been neglected all this time if they were protecting out of instinct and habit and not actually because they understood what they were doing… But she also admitted that part of it was boredom on her own part, things were peaceful in the kingdom so there wasn’t always that much to do. She was glad that there was peace of course - it was far better than life had been with the previous queen. 

When she asked her about the Crow Witch, though, Lena would become uncomfortable and change the subject so she never got to hear more about that. 

Dendro loved it - she loved learning, she loved reading, she loved hearing stories. Lena brought her daughter to speak with her a few times too and that was fun. She also got to speak with some of the guards that would come with her. She felt so much happier having something to look forward to…. 

And also… more sad. Before everything had been empty and simple… but now when they left and she ran out of books to read before they returned she felt lonely… She got more sad when they left…

She began to understand why some creatures wanted to go through the tree. Maybe they WANTED to be transformed- maybe they were lonely and just wanted a new life… if she went through would she have legs? She wished that there was something that she could do in order to just… see more… 

Oh she wished more than anything that she could be free. She wished and she prayed on all of the gods that she’d read about in those books. She’d even pray to the god trapped in the center of the earth that Karas had been so worried about. She’d pray to the four faced god that the four faced god believed in pieces of. She’d pray to the sun - to Canis - the way Lena’s daughter did. 

Anyone - anyone - was anyone listening? Why was she here, was her purpose to be no greater than this? Why was she given the ability to think and to feel if she wasn’t supposed to wish for more? How was it that no one around her seemed to care. Or maybe they did - some of the flowers on the other side of the tree, maybe they cared! But she wouldn’t know! Because she couldn’t talk to them about it because she couldn’t move! 

She’d give anything to be somewhere else, to be someone else… Would anyone listen?