so i listen to the    wind for an answer

The tree talks. It talks! She’s giddier than she can explain. This isn’t the first weird thing she’s run into in Helovia, but it is definitely her favorite. First there was the rat man with the two eggs (one of which was real) and the shadows that showed her Corbin, that made her relive moments of her past with her brother. Out of those shadow’s she’d been given a gift, one that memory and patience and time earned. A piece of Helovia that also felt very much like a piece of herself. In a way, it was something that made her feel like she belonged here. Like she wasn’t just an outsider trying to fit in. And now, the trees (her trees) were talking. Well, one of them was.

She knows by now what’s in the egg, and she’d be lying if she said it wasn’t a motivating factor. Yes, she is curious to know what it’s like to have a bond with a companion, and in truth, she would simply like to always have a friend at her side. Yes, she had made friends here. But still. She had no family here, no horse she saw on any regular basis. Her closest friend was Alysanne, who was rather busy being Queen now and all. She admits that the companionship would be nice.

But at the same, how could she ever deny the trees a request for help. To hear that the blue spruce is troubled leaves her own heart troubled as well. This place – particularly this Forest – meant so much to her. If it needed help enough to actually bring a tree to life in order to ask for it, she would help regardless of the reward at the end. These trees were her friends before anyone else was, the critters her only real form of conversation for longer than she might want to admit. It was the least she could do. “Of course,” she says, her voice kind and gentle as it always is.

Some of the others have already set off, and some have returned though others have not yet. She takes a moment to think of where she can go, of something good and perhaps slightly special she can bring the tree and the critters of the thicket. After a moment, an idea comes to her, and she slips through the trees till she can find a place to take to the sky again. It doesn’t take her long to find what she’s looking for from the air. There’s a large patch of sunflowers in the Thistle Meadow, some of which were spared from the fires of Tallsun. At this point, the sunflowers were dying, their yellow petals turning brown and falling to earth.

But that was exactly what she needed. The seeds – all those seeds – were just waiting to be harvested. But she doesn’t try to get the seeds now. No, instead she lands, using her teeth and a rock to slowly cut her way through the thick stems of the sunflowers. It’s no easy job, but thankfully her wings help to hold the sunflowers in place as she cuts. Finally, after what feels like forever (but really, was perhaps half an hour), she’s cut down a handful of sunflower heads. She gathers the stems in her mouth and lifts, surprised as just how heavy these things were.

Given the weight, she tucks a few of the sunflower heads behind each wing, pinning them to her side. Looks like she’d be walking back. She tries to go quickly, not wanting to make the tree wait too long. Thankfully, she didn’t travel terribly far to find the sunflowers, and so her trek back takes a reasonable amount of time. She finds the thicket again quickly, placing the sunflower heads on the ground and stripping them of their extra petals and leaves, eventually placing just the heads, full of seeds, on one of the stumps. “Should I get more?” she asks the tree, uncertain how much it needs or how long the tree wants her to be gone. So she waits, ready to collect whatever else the tree might need.

lyanna