For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-398-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt-cracking-up
The forest road landed straight and narrow on the forest, cutting a direct swath between the Village of Kittrosk and the City of Morraw. The road existed by grace of the forest... or it had. But over the years, humanity had reinforced their claim to travel with large flat stones and regular passage. They'd used portions of borrowed and then stolen mana to claim ownership over the road's space, as they had done with the villages established by grace of the forest.

For these reasons, and because Jani hated the ugly dirt path, our not-so-merry threesome left the road to itself. They did not go back to the village to find Swellven and Chanbun. No need to implicate those two. Let them lead their lives. Poor Coriander and Lavender felt entirely crushed by their having to leave behind the rest of their family. Parsley, who had been more adventurous than Coriander and Lavender, would not have believed her mother and sister could go out adventuring. She didn't know about her mother's wistfulness or her imagination. Parsley had been married just a few months before, and had talked about moving to Morraw to raise the child. Maybe they'd see her again someday if she did. But maybe not. There was no telling what the path held, and if Coriander and Lavender died, there would be no trees next to Dad for them. They'd have to find him through the roots that connected the whole forest.

Goodness, my thoughts are dark, thought Coriander. Or perhaps they're light. Death is where Dry is, and I miss Dry. No matter. I am with Lavender now. I am living that life of adventure. Forward. Always forward.

The forest undergrowth grabbed at each souls soles. Except Jani, because Jani the elf with the thoughts of a human from another place and her own thoughts had become accustomed enough to who she was that her delicate steps wouldn't even crunch a leaf. Jani found a berry just in front of her lips, so she captured it with her tongue and chewed, its sweet juices filling her mouth with satisfaction. For every uncrunched leaf Jani left behind, Coriander and Lavender crunched two, though. Jani hoped and assumed the forest would forgive them, but she hadn't communed or communicated with the forest recently and worried that the forest would feel as vindictive as she felt when it had come to avenging the forest by killing the man who had hurt it.

Now there were feet in front of feet, stepping for minutes, hours, until a day ended. Only when Jani stopped, though she'd been pausing for her slowpoke companions the whole while, did she realize that though berries had presented themselves to her when she'd needed even the slightest bit of sustenance, her companions had eaten nothing.

Jani dug in the soil and produced a tuber. She offered it, raw, to Coriander first, who knew well enough that practicality had occasion to beat aesthetic in this moment, and so she ate it without letting her mind plan which animal to butcher and soak it in the juices of. Lavender, who was no stranger to munching on a heretofore unconsidered food source, gladly accepted the proffered protuberance, and munched away.

Jani smiled. Jani's smile became a laugh, and then abruptly, Jan was still and quiet.

---

Janice awoke in her own bed. She'd been dreaming of Chibera again. The smell of bacon and coffee wafted across the hallway towards her. That mom had had a stroke and was in the hospital must have been a dream as well. Perhaps not only throwing a chair through a glass panel at Rice-ist was a dream, but working at a fast food chain was entirely a dream. Was that too much to wish for? What were dreams, anyways? Was the SAT a dream?

Janice wore Snoopy pajamas that did not truly fit her. "I haven't worn these since I was 15," Janice said aloud to nobody. She changed into the jeans and t-shirt she preferred if the need to work at Rice-ist hadn't hit. There was her Rice-ist polo, though, sitting on the back of a chair, so unfortunately, that was part of reality. A t-shirt? Oof. It had gotten cold, hadn't it. She threw on a sweater she didn't remember that was sitting on the back of her computer. It was big. Far too big. This was not her sweater.

She did remember the sweater.

Janice flew downstairs. There he was. He pushed bacon around a pan with a wooden spoon. The coffee in his clear mug was much closer to white than brown. His beard was larger than she'd ever seen it before and grayer. His thick glasses didn't hide the deep creases around his eyes, and they magnified the gleam in them. Janice ran to him, threw her arms around him, and then wail in pain as hot oil from the skillet flipped up from the bacon.

Janice's father held her arms under the cold water that he seemed to have instantly transported her to.

---

Jan looked at the two humans who sat in the dirt and chewed Yubba root.

"It was all real?" Though Jan could see that there were two people to talk to, she did not feel that she was addressing them. They were not of the forest. They were humans. Destroyers of the forest, and though she remembered that these two had helped and she did not consider them the direst of enemies, she still did not trust them. And though she remembered, she did not feel it as a truth that you feel deep down. She felt it as a story she had been told. As a life someone else had lived. She trusted this story as much as she could trust any, but it was not as vibrant as a memory. It was as if it had happened to someone else. That means she had to take it with a grain of salt. Who knows what untruths can come from malformed memories.

Though she did not ask them, and that was clear to her, they answered her. Or, they responded, but they did not answer.

"I can hardly believe it myself. Honestly, I assumed this was all old hat to you. Part of the job, of course. I guess we don't know each other so well. I guess I don't know myself so well, even. I'd hardly have expected to be here. Boy, we all have a tendency to ramble, don't we?" Coriander stopped herself. She looked at Jan and cocked her head. "Jani?"

Jan did not have a tendency to ramble. In fact, she was surprised she had spoken at all. She had ... oh no. She had memories, but could they be trusted? They could not. Before these memories, there had been a telepath invading her mind. There had been a woman who had been manipulating her. Who had, perhaps, finally achieved her goal and had left her, a useless pawn. Perhaps these two were in on it. Were now tasked with taking her out. She would not be taken alive. Yes, that one. That one that her memories told her she had fallen in love with was reaching toward her "Jani, you've cracked up", probably to destroy her connection to the forest. Jan, benefiting from a center of gravity that responded at will to being hoisted, sprung into the tree. She leaped from limb to bough to branch, flinging herself between trees like a wild flying squirrel.

She would not stop. Would not stop. Would not stop until she reached her destination. Had the telepath known she would lead these two here? Had she left before she got here because she was afraid of this? Or had she not known, and would have loved to find this secret? No matter, the telepath was gone now.

Photo by me. But go find my #osis story to see what it really looks like.

In the thick of the forest, Jan stepped in to a copse. And in that copse she found the tree. Its trunk covered in unwelcoming spines that glistened with the poison of the deepest mana. Around the base of the tree, corpses of unfortunate animals who had mistaken this tree for any other.

Jan spoke aloud the language of The World Tree.

"Challus darnae. Challus dramae. Challus enwironae."

Though nothing visibly changed, Jan felt the acceptance, probationary though it was, of the world tree. She threw her hand against the poisonous spines, and felt the deepest mana flow into her blood. She felt the thoughts of the forest become her.

She was one.

Chapter 12

Janice babbled delightedly with her father, trying to weave the story of Chibera into a fantasy, while eking out details as if she knew them from her father as to where and what and when and why and how with her mother.

Philip had called him, it was true, but that ... oh, what had been happening in her mind, wondered Janice. She was too delighted with her father's presence, even though she'd thought she would hate him when she saw him next, to be upset with him or to look too closely at the events that had led them to where they were now.

Her father, upon realizing that a woman he'd loved was in need and a daughter he loved more than anything (except, did he? Janice pushed the thought away), had come straight from the Pacific Northwest to home. There was nowhere he could be except here, and he wasn't going anywhere for as long as they could stand to keep him. Janice wanted to know everything about his life, but there were too many of her own thoughts pushing at her temples for her to keep him going on about himself without noticing. That was a thing that hadn't changed. Her father was still the most empathetic person she'd ever met, and so she babbled delightedly. Trying not to think about how she SHOULD be feeling sad about her mother. She told the story of Chibera as if it were a novel she were writing. But then he asked to read it, and she had to pretend that she'd become a stickler for editing. He didn't seem to really believe her. She'd never BEEN a stickler for editing.