//------------------------------//
// New Growth 
// Story: Dripfeed 
// by RangerOfRhudaur 
//------------------------------//

Her eyes fluttered open as she woke up. Or was it as she fell asleep? Since Gaea had given her her favour, she'd spent more time dreaming than awake, though exact numbers were hard to come by; it had been a long time since she'd last seen the Sun, and her internal clock hadn't ticked since she'd gone underground. Forced to guess, she estimated she spent about twelve or fifteen hours a day dreaming, maybe more; she seldom moved from the woven grass pallet Stumper had made her after her first day of training, her time awake spent either being examined by Stumper, drinking the strange sap-like soup the Green-Warden gave her, or staring into the darkness. Her time awake had become so limited, and her time dreaming so bountiful, that she began to wonder if she'd gotten them reversed, if the time she thought she was awake she was actually dreaming, having a horrible nightmare. Maybe she'd really lived her whole life in the cave, stuck in a coma that they'd only recently been able to bring her out of.

She shook her head; Stumper had warned her, when she'd started teaching her how to use her new abilities. "The problem with dreaming," she'd said. "is wanting to wake up again. Legends say that dreamers or seers, like you, seldom die; instead, they fall asleep, go off dreaming or seeing, and never come back. The visions you'll see, either in the eyes of your dreams or the eyes of the world, will be marvelous, but the visions your own eyes show you in the real world are important. Don't forget yourself, doe, no matter how dull you think you are." She was boring here, so she knew this was the real world; no nightmare could come close to the dullness of reality.

She bit her lip guiltily. She'd been trying to escape that dullness, even when Stumper had told her to take breaks. Once she'd learned how to cast her sight (and control where she cast it), she'd done so at almost every opportunity; she'd taken to falling asleep on her stomach so that Stumper hopefully wouldn't see the glow her eyes gave off as she went on her unauthorized wanderings.

It was just too incredible for her to resist; she'd always loved tending to plants, being able to interact with them like this was a dream come true. She'd spoken with the trees, the ferns, everything that grew in Everfree: one rest would be spent catching up with the water-lilies, the next listening to the news the creepers carried, the one after that spent hearing the tales of the trees. She had more than a million friends now, ones she made against Stumper's warnings.

She tensed; that reminded her of what the Green-Warden had shown her, and the doubts that revelation had awakened. Just what had Gaea done to Stumper? Was she planning to do the same to her? Was there any of Stumper even left, hidden behind that knotted skin? What else was Gaea not telling her about? She needed answers, and she needed to figure out who she could actually go to to get them; she couldn't trust Stumper about this, or Gaea. But who did that leave her?

Creaking steps began approaching, the creaking steps of the thing she'd thought of as her friend. Stumper walked over to her, carrying another bowl of the strange soup that had been Wallflower's breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past... days? Weeks? Months? Years? How long had she been down here? How much time had she spent outside of time?

Stumper grunted as she sat down on the edge of Wallflower's pallet, handing her the bowl. Wallflower took it and began drinking: she'd thought of the possibility of Stumper trying to poison her, but that fear had proven easily dismissible; if the Green-Warden had wanted to do anything to her, she'd have done so already.

Stumper stayed seated as the sap trickled down her throat, tasting faintly of honey and sunshine. After a few moments, she cleared her throat and said, "My hair didn't change much when Gaea gave me her gift, you know."

Wallflower stopped drinking, looking at her in confusion.

"I was blonde before I entered her service," Stumper explained. "Yellow as a daffodil, silky as a spiderweb, long," she pointed at Wallflower. "as your's. All the other does were jealous of it," she chuckled. "and all the stags begged me for locks of it. They treated it like it was amber, or gold."

Wallflower nodded, then began drinking again.

And Stumper began talking again, saying, "I like your hair. Green as grass, not too long, not too short. I bet all the stags begged you for locks, too."

Wincing, Wallflower shook her head.

Stumper frowned. "Why not? You're pretty, tall, healthy, good hips-" Wallflower almost choked at that. "-skilled at gardening, at least one stag should have asked for a hair by now."

Wallflower shook her head and drank deeply, trying to cool the blush across her face.

"Hoom," Stumper snorted. "Stags. No, not even stags, bucks, too young to realize what they're missing. They like the, what was her name, Rarity's of the world. Pretty as a flower, maybe, but flowers wilt. A strong sapling like you, though, is a flower in its own way, and it'll grow with them. But bucks don't care about growing or wilting, they only care about the moment, about what is right now. Well, their loss; they thought you beneath their notice," she nodded at Wallflower. "and now you've soared above it."

Wallflower shrugged, her face mercifully cooled down somewhat, and continued drinking.

"If they could see you now," Stumper chuckled. "Even that Rarity doe would have to say you're the fairest."

Wallflower hesitated, then put down the half-empty bowl. Using the language of gestures they'd worked out, she asked Stumper if she knew how her friends outside of Everfree were doing.

Stumper sighed and shook her head. "I only know most of them because of their presence during Gloriosa's madness, though Sunset Shimmer has featured in several of Gaea's more recent orders. Greatness lies within that girl, though whether it's great good or great evil remains to be seen. I have no recent news of them, no, though I could see about asking Timber."

Wallflower nodded, accepting that that was the best she would get, then began drinking again.

And Stumper began speaking again, saying, "That Fluttershy doe was quite nice; almost as fair as that Rarity one, and almost as kind to the green things as you. She preferred the blooded living things, though. Shame. We could've used her help. But you'll do fine," she reassured her. "One redwood isn't a forest, but it's still impressive." She sighed happily. "I remember the redwoods of Borea Horseht, the Frostwoods of the west. I had relatives out there, and every twelve moons my family and I would go visit them. Few trees could compare to the ones I saw, few even in Everfree: they were too large for me to wrap my arms around and too tall for me to see the top of, their needles were longer than my finger and hung on branches thicker than my arm. They were... they were beyond my poor attempts to describe them, grand and great and-and marvelous, a wonder of the world." Then, to Wallflower's surprise, she began to sing:

Oh, Viovelchoriz, Yorelt, oh Obborarlim!
Oh redwoods tall, I saw you all upon midwinter's day!
Oh Star-Chaser, I saw you sure and strong upon the bay!
Oh Bloodycoat, my eyes you smote with your red beauty rare!
Oh Roundedroot, your gnarled shoots turned green the frosted air!
Your trunks so strong, your limbs so long, they filled the winter world,
While thoughtless time touched not your lives though all its might there hurled!

But then sadness crept into her voice:

Oh redwoods gone, my walking's done, I'll see you now no more;
My fate is sealed, my life I yield to striving in the war.
Oh, Viovelchoriz, Yorelt, oh Obborarlim!

Green tears dripped from her eyes, tears which she quickly wiped away with a cough. "Pardon me," she cleared her throat. "I must miss there more than I knew. It has been... a long time since I last saw them."

Wallflower raised a brow in curiosity; how long was a long time?

Stumper sighed. "Thirty-four I am, yes, but not in years; thirty-four hundreds of seasons have I seen since Gaea gave me her gift. When last I walked in the Frostwoods, I saw Vanhoover as a village, a small fishing town along the cold sea. The shining knights of the great Empire of the North protected it, and riders from the western mountains came to trade. But now Willow tells me that the Empire has faded away, Vanhoover has become a city, and there are no more shining knights. Only the mountains and the Frostwood have survived, and for all I know the forest may have fallen."

Wallflower's eyes, which had bulged at the news of Stumper's true age, softened as she continued. Stumper wasn't a mythical figure come to life, or something like Gaea; she was a long-lived woman, wondering whether the old trees she'd loved still stood. She'd loved and hated, laughed and cried, lived her life just as Wallflower had before the wolf found her.

That thought made her frown, though, reminding her of her doubts about Stumper. Though she didn't think that she was just a puppet of Gaea's anymore (Wallflower sincerely doubted that song was an act), that still left the option of Gaea casting her sight into her wood-skinned servant, something Wallflower wasn't sure that she couldn't do, even though it was beyond her own skill at the moment. She trusted that Stumper was Stumper now, but that sadly didn't mean she could trust Stumper as her source. She felt that she could trust her as her friend, though, and tried to prove herself Stumper's friend by patting her on the shoulder in consolation.

Stumper flashed her a look of gratitude, then gently brushed her hand off. "Hoom, but I didn't come here to burden you with an old doe's frets," she chuckled. "I guess they're a larger part of me than I thought. That's what I came here for, you know," she softly smiled, barely visible in the shadows of her helm. "I know I scared you in training today, Wallflower, made you wonder if I was really the Green-Warden you thought you knew. I hoped that talking might show you that I was, but I didn't mean to-"

She was stopped by Wallflower putting down her empty bowl, pointing at her, then spelling something with her hands, something that caused the Green-Warden's jaw to drop;

'S-T-U-M-P-E-R.'

After running through the spelling a few times, making sure she got the message across, Wallflower pointed at Stumper again and used her hands to remind her of something she'd said to her early on;

'You can call me Stumper like my friend does.'

Green tears appeared under the wooden helm again, but this time they were blessed. "Thank you, doe," she choked. "This-you don't know how much this means to me."

Wallflower smiled back at her, then stretched out her arms, a gesture Stumper had but recently learned. And mastered, she thought as the Green-Warden embraced her; for someone with so hard a hide, Stumper gave surprisingly good hugs.