[Ronette's side]
"Anyway," grumbled a particularly bitter fern, voice raspy like dry leaves. "What should we do with this skeleton?"
"We should punish it!" cried a dandelion, bristling with righteous fury. "After all, it was once human!"
"I agree!" a squirrel piped up, gripping a tiny protest sign: 'Compost the Colonizer!'
Murmurs of approval rippled outward, blooming like algae across still water.
But not all voices joined.
"Although it was once human," the monocled beetle interjected, stroking an antenna like an ancient judge pondering a riddle, "it is now clearly a skeleton."
"OBJECTION!" bellowed a cabbage, who nobody quite remembered inviting.
Amid the swelling noise, Ronette slumped beside the gnarled root where they'd interrogated him, kneeling like a guilty toddler caught red-handed with a shattered vase.
His arms drooped. His soul withered.
'Why is no one listening to me? I'm a human.'
He clenched trembling fists, squeezed his eyes shut—and a single, pitiful whimper slipped free.
Then—
Thump.
A deep, resonant sound rolled across the clearing.
Not a shout. Not violence.
Just the steady, grounding thump of a staff meeting earth, heavy with silent authority.
Breaths caught.
Petals froze mid-rustle.
Even the air itself dared not flutter.
All eyes turned.
A figure stepped from the foliage with the slow, unbothered pace of someone who had seen centuries rise and fall—and still had time for tea.
He was tall, draped in robes the color of starlight and damp moss. His beard flowed down like a waterfall of ancient secrets.
On his brow: a crown of twigs and tiny, bioluminescent mushrooms, pulsing gently.
In his hand: a staff topped with a swirling crystal, mist curling inside like a caged storm.
The Sage of the Grove had arrived.
"Enough," he intoned, voice calm yet rumbling with power.
Even the stubborn breeze fell still.
The beetle, monocle quivering, stammered, "S-Sage Alderroot, we were just—"
"I saw," Alderroot replied, eyes—one glowing green, the other calm sky-blue—sweeping over the crowd before resting on Ronette.
"This one… is no skeleton."
Gasps scattered like startled birds.
"He breathes. He sweats. He flails rather dramatically. And most telling of all…" Alderroot's glowing eye narrowed. "He sniffles like a traumatized duckling."
Ronette blinked.
"See?" Alderroot gestured at the trembling, confused man curled on the moss. "This is no bone-walker. He's flesh—and very confused."
"But—but the elbow!" a flower blurted, leaves trembling.
"My elbow is just pointy!" Ronette yelped, practically leaping upright.
Alderroot lifted a hand. Silence returned like a well-trained hound.
"You've misjudged him," Alderroot said, gently but firm as root and stone. "If we judge every creature by the sharpness of its joints… then grasshoppers must stand trial next. And no one wants that chaos."
Petals drooped in reluctant agreement.
"Release him," Alderroot decreed. "He is under my protection."
Leaves fluttered. A few muttered apologies rustled by, and more than one passive-aggressive leaf was tossed at Ronette's feet before the garden council slowly dissolved back into foliage and silence.
Ronette shuffled closer, still blinking away disbelief.
"Th-thank you…" he breathed, voice hoarse. "I thought I was going to be turned into salad dressing."
"You still might," Alderroot said with a straight face. Then his lips twitched into a slow, knowing smile. "If I had told them you were a human. That is."
"Wait, what?" Ronette asked, head tilting like a puzzled pup.
Alderroot only turned, staff glinting faintly, and beckoned.
"Come. Let me tell you a story."
With no better options and a hundred worse ones, Ronette followed.
They stepped under an arch of flowering vines, blooms unfurling in slow greeting, petals dusted with dew and shimmering blues, violets, and ghostly silver.
The air thickened—lavender, honeysuckle, and something wilder: the scent of old secrets kept in deep roots.
The path narrowed, winding between patches of luminescent mushrooms pulsing gently with each step, like heartbeats echoing in living soil.
Overhead, branches arched close, leaves whispering to one another about two unlikely travelers below.
Tiny motes of light—neither insect nor spell Ronette could name—danced in the underbrush, some swirling curiously around Alderroot's staff as if in quiet reverence.
To Ronette, it felt less like walking and more like drifting into the footnotes of a forgotten fairytale.
Stone lanterns, runes flickering with gentle flame, appeared by the trail—half-swallowed by moss and ivy.
Birds of translucent feather watched, eyes bright with secrets they would never share.
In the distance, water trickled—soft, steady, ancient.
"I'm starting to think," Ronette muttered under breath, "this is the nicest kidnapping I've ever had."
A flower snickered behind him.
Alderroot's chuckle rumbled ahead.
"Keep walking. The real story hasn't even begun."
They reached a mossy bench, carved from a fallen trunk polished by age.
Sunlight filtered through the canopy, scattering gold and shadow in dapples across the clearing—like a spell cast halfway through.
Alderroot planted his staff with a quiet ceremony, chest rising with a breath that smelled of bark and rain.
Then, solemn as prophecy, he began:
"Long ago, in a kingdom made entirely of spoons…"
Ronette blinked. "Spoons?"
"Yes. Spoons," Alderroot confirmed, voice calm as if discussing the weather. "Buildings, bridges, roads—all silver, all polished. Quite reflective. Very difficult to sneak around."
He paused for effect.
"The citizens, of course, were forks."
Ronette's brow crumpled in bewilderment. "Forks?"
"Indeed," Alderroot nodded, wise as moss. "Irony, my lad, is civilization's cornerstone."
Ronette opened his mouth, then closed it.
Alderroot continued, eyes half-lidded like a bard weaving nonsense into legend:
"Their ruler—King Salad Tongs the Third—was noble and generous. Beloved mostly because he once arm-wrestled a raccoon for a cursed ladle… and won."
Ronette blinked slowly. His face twisted with the kind of baffled concern reserved for overhearing nonsense on a public bus. Still, he managed to murmur, "That… seems unhealthy."
"Indeed. The ladle spoke only in riddles and bird calls."
"What does this have to do with me?" Ronette asked, voice teetering on panic.
"Shush. This is the important part." Alderroot lifted a finger.
"One day, the kingdom faced doom: an army of teapots who wished to steep the entire city in lukewarm revenge."
Ronette buried his face in his hands. "Oh no."
"Oh yes," Alderroot agreed gravely. "So King Salad Tongs rallied his bravest—a melon baller, a grapefruit spoon, and Sir Butter Knife the Sharpish—and rode into battle atop a giant dinner plate."
Silence settled like mist.
"…Did they win?" Ronette finally asked.
"Of course not," Alderroot scoffed. "The teapots had chamomile. You can't fight that level of emotional manipulation."
Ronette stood, blinking in blank horror. "You led me through this magical garden… to tell a story about cutlery?"
"Naturally," Alderroot said, tone grave. "There's a moral."
"There is?!"
Alderroot leaned in, voice hushed, serious:
"Don't trust teapots. They brew trouble."
Ronette stared.
Alderroot stared back.
Silence yawned open between them, awkward and unstoppable.
Without a word, Ronette turned on his heel. "I'm going back to the angry garden council."
Behind him, Alderroot chuckled dryly, staff tapping moss.
"I was only jesting."
Ronette paused mid-step.
Alderroot cleared his throat, this time with a tone dipped in something closer to wisdom—or at least decent dramatic timing. "This time, it's serious."
Slowly, suspiciously, Ronette turned back.
Caution in his eyes. But also something like curiosity.
He walked back, sitting beside the sage, breath catching faintly.
Alderroot inhaled, wind softening around them, petals above freezing mid-sway.
He straightened his crooked back, chest rising, staff slightly off the ground for dramatic effect.
"Once, in the Land of Eternal Left Socks…"
Ronette's brow twitched. "Wait—"
"No interruptions," Alderroot chided gently. "You'll break the rhythm."
Ronette clamped his mouth shut, eyes narrowing with suspicion.
"In the Land of Eternal Left Socks," Alderroot continued, "no one had ever seen a right sock. Not once. It was considered a myth, like honest politicians or organized Tupperware drawers. Every citizen wore two left socks, sometimes on the same foot, sometimes on their heads. It was… a time of great confusion."
He paused, eyes misty. Ronette wasn't sure if it was nostalgia or pollen.
"One day, a young bard named Gherkin Picklewhistle discovered a sock so strange, so symmetrical… it could only be a right sock."
Ronette tilted his head. "Picklewhistle?"
"Hush," Alderroot said without looking at him. "This sock glowed with the power of balance. When worn, it granted the ability to find matching Tupperware lids instantly—"
"No."
"—and speak fluently to furniture."
Ronette threw his arms up. "That's not even a power!"
"Tell that to the Ottoman Rebellion of Sock Year 47."
"There was an Ottoman Rebellion?!"
Alderroot tapped his nose. "Chairs know things they never tell humans. Trust me."
There was a long, painful pause.
"Anyway," Alderroot said, waving a hand vaguely, "Gherkin was declared a heretic, the sock was buried in a drawer filled with broken pens, and the cycle continued."
Ronette's mouth hung open like a fish stranded on dry moss.
"That," Alderroot intoned, staff thudding gently, "is the truth."
"…That story helped no one."
"It helped me," Alderroot said cheerfully, a moss-dry smile in his voice. "My throat was dry. Now I feel quite refreshed."
Ronette dragged his hands down his face. "Why are you like this?"
Alderroot leaned on his staff, gaze soft, gently amused.
"Wisdom comes in many forms. Some of them… are deeply unhelpful."