Lupine Tree

by wille179


Shaman and Woodsman

"I am Lumber Jack. Jack for short. I am a timberwolf tree. I am Lumber Jack, the magnificent, elegant, extraordinary tree. Why yes, my name is Lumber Jack; how did you know? I told you? Of course I did."

I'd been prattling on like that for quite some time now, never growing tired of the sound of my voice. It was a rough, grating sound, and yet I enjoyed it simply because it was my sound. And slowly but surely, it was morphing into a semblance of real language instead of mere growls.

"This?" Lycan held up the nearly complete cloak and shirt. Currently, I was decorating the leather and fur with berry juices for color and bones for decoration. "This is just something I've been working on. It's nothing special. You like it?"

The wolves gathered in my clearing all nodded and voiced their agreement. "Of course you do," my Lycan said. "You're me!"

It blinked. My cheerful mood had vanished quite suddenly. "You're me," I repeated, sans the self-important tone.

I looked around; there wasn't an animal in sight, and no plants near me had any real measure of intelligence. I was utterly alone, and had no one to talk to.

Talking to myself suddenly seemed quite pointless and not at all fun, so I stopped. My branches drooped, and the magic that coursed through my trunk and limbs stilled.

These emotions were strange. The Other was a mammal, meaning that their emotions and my own feel completely different, and yet there were some similarities. My magic felt like their lungs and stomach, my flowers were like their face, my leaves and branches were like their shoulders, and my roots were like their feet. It’s not a perfect analogy and it means that I have a hard time interpreting my own body’s reaction as an emotion.

But this, I know this one: shame and loneliness. I feel pathetic. I feel like asking the wind to come and blow me over. Who am I kidding? I’m just a beast playing at being a person.

No, I am a person.

My leaves perk back up and my flowers open wider.

“I AM A PERSON!” Lycan roars, the faintest hints of a smile forming on his face. So what if I was having trouble with all these emotions that I had been too stupid to understand before? I could understand them now; I could master them. I could do it!


I so couldn’t do it.

The flowers clutched in Lycan’s hand, despite having been cut from my body, still reacted to my magic. The smell they produced was nauseatingly powerful, and between that and my tense roots and branches, I knew the equivalent action from the Other: blushing.

I hadn’t been able to get the Zebra out of my head since I had spied her that first time, and my... infatuation — yes, that’s the word — had only grown when I heard that she spoke the same language as me. I still hadn’t talked with her yet, but I really wanted to.

And yet, at the same time, I really didn’t want to talk to her. What if she hated me? What if she rejected me for my beastly nature? I didn’t know if I could deal with rejection from the first sapient being I had encountered since my burning.

Worse, what if I made an idiot of myself and she laughed at me? Even if she didn’t reject me, she’d always know that I was a fool! What do I do?

No. Calm down, Jack. You can do this.

But what if I couldn’t?

YOU CAN DO THIS!

Lycan and the wolves accompanying him all gritted their teeth simultaneously. Lycan straightened up, adjusted its clothes, and tightened its grip on the flowers in its hand. Then, bracing itself, my puppet raised its other hand and knocked on the door.

The moment the door opened, Lycan thrust the sweet smelling blossoms into her face.

The zebra jumped back in surprise.

Perhaps that wasn't the best idea...

The zebra took a moment to compose herself after evaluating if I was a threat. Apparently judging me as a possible but not immediate danger, she stepped back and spoke, "Creature of the timberwolf tree, why do you offer your flowers to me?"

I highly doubt that she was expecting me to reply, seeing as she jumped when I answered, "I wanted to speak with you."

There was a calculating glint in her eye, though it seemed completely devoid of malice. "If conversation is what you desire, the do come in. Let's sit by the fire."

I flinched. There was no disguising it; it was a full-body flinch that each and every one of my puppets mimicked. "Fire?"

The zebra observed me with a calm demeanor. "If you are worried of fire burning your hide, then do not enter. We'll remain outside. Now, to what name should I call you? You are clearly intelligent and my respect you are due. Timberwolf, my name is Zecora."

"Lumber Jack," I replied. Still holding the flowers, I stretched Lycan's hand out a bit further towards her. "Umm... Do you want these?"

"Lumber Jack, did you grow these flora?" She asked, completing the rhyme her previous phrases had led me to expect was coming. I had very quickly picked up on the fact that Zecora was rhyming in couplets and found it quite fascinating. To rhyme in real time conversation — what a skill!

"I did. They were plucked fresh from my branches this morning. I've seen you gathering flowers and herbs in my territory and thought that you might like some. Other animals always want my flowers and my fruit, so I thought..."

"Thank you, Lumber Jack; this means a lot. Long have I wanted to brew with these in my pot," Zecora replied as she took them from Lycan's paw. She put them up to her nose and inhaled deeply. "These are of a quality rarely found; tell me, how did you ensure growth so sound?"

I quickly and happily explained how my blood drinking made me stronger, and that it let me expand my range until it included her house. That naturally turned the conversation to my control of my twelve puppets, and then to my pack. Of course, that led to the question I could tell that she was eager to know the answer to: my intelligence.

"No, I don't know how I became this way. It was near the time of fifth bloom when I suddenly felt like I was burning. Then the pain vanished and I was smarter, though I didn't realize immediately."

"And when exactly is 'fifth bloom'? I do not want to assume," Zecora asked.

"Fifth bloom is when my fifth set of flowers grow, during the part of the year with the longest days."

"Hmmm... Then the Tree of Harmony could be the cause of your transformation. Your intelligence might be its accidental creation." She went on to explain that four months ago — had it really been that long? — the Tree of Harmony had released a surge of magic to purge the forest of a parasitic vine. She didn't know how it would have created my mind, but it was the only significant event at the time and may have been a catalyst to whatever did.

With nothing else to go on, I accepted that at face value. I would definitely have to find this tree if I wanted to get more information.

Shortly after that, Zecora did manage to tempt me into her home with a promise that she would douse her fire and that she would tell me a little about herself. Inside, I was greeted to the same smell that always clung to her, only a thousand times stronger. It was almost overwhelming.

Zecora took the flowers to her counter and began to mash them together in a mortar and pestle. As she worked, she said, “You must have questions to ask me. I sense that you are an inquisitive tree. Feel free to ask while I work on this task.”

I opened Lycan’s mouth to ask, and then paused. What did I want to ask her? There were so many things I wanted to know about the zebra that lived in my territory, I hardly knew what to ask first. Eventually, I decided. “Why?”

“Hmm?”

“Why were you willing to talk to me?” I clarified. “I... I think I may have hunted some of your kind back then. I was expecting that you’d be scared of me...”

The motion of the zebra’s hooves stopped, bringing a soft silence to the room. “I am scared, that is true. I have every right to fear you. However, your words and action have given me clarity. A rational member of your kind is a rarity. If your actions are genuine, then in the end, I will be fine. Should you attack me as prey, then there’ll be hell to pay. Myself I can defend, and bring a fight to a swift end.”

“Oh, is that a challenge that I hear?” I inquired playfully. “Even manticores have easily fallen by my claws.” To emphasize my point, I turned slightly so that she could see the stinger and the wings of the manticore hanging from the back of my cape, as well as the bones that I had attached to it. I may be smart now, but I have my pride as a hunter.

“Dear Lumber Jack, you misheard; I did not speak a fighting word.” Chuckling, Zecora resumed her grinding of the flowers. More than a quarter of them had been reduced to a fine paste by this point. “But you have further proven your point. Between your cloak and your gifts, you do not disappoint. My perception of you as just an animal has been stomped, as you did this all without prompt.”

“Oh. I knew making clothes was the right thing to do. I saw you wearing your own cloak and and decided that I wanted one as well,” I replied, delighted with myself.

“If clothing and adornment is indeed your passion, then might I suggest consulting a purveyor of fashion? There is a seamstress by the name of Rarity. With her, I have great familiarity. If you would be willing to trade more of your flowers for me to use, then I will bring you a selection of clothes to choose.”

My puppet’s eyes widened. Trading flowers for clothes? I had lots of flowers. Did that mean I could get lots of clothes? I asked her, but was disappointed when she told me that she didn’t have a use for that many flowers just yet. Then I asked her if there were other things I could do to get more clothes — anything to avoid tanning fires, really — and I offered my fruit or the carcases of my hunts.

She said she would think about it, and that was better than a flat no.

“Hey, what are you using my flowers for anyway?”

Until that moment, I didn’t know that it was possible to see a blush through fur. Furthermore, it seemed that when Zecora became embarrassed, she focused too much on rhyming and too little on the actual meaning behind her words. In short, what I heard was a little hard to decipher. But, to translate into simple terms: apparently some ponies and zebras needed reproductive assistance and my flowers made them both more eager and able to reproduce.

Well that sounds nice. It doesn't explain all the blushing, but it does explain why I keep finding pairs of rabbits climbing on each other near my mound. Me personally, I like it when bees come to my flowers; they tickle.

I wonder if it tickles for ponies and zebras when they reproduce. I bet it-

Oh.

Ohhhh....

Nevermind. I just remembered how the Other did it.

That seems so much more involved. And messy. Very messy.

And Zecora wants my flowers to help with that? Suddenly, I feel that I’m going to need far more clothes than I originally thought.

Ewww....