"You stink."

Solomon abruptly blinked away the tears in his eyes.

When he looked up, he was somewhere completely removed from the forest he had just torn through.

This place was... teal.

It was a simple teal canvas with no identifying landmarks of any kind.

The only thing there with him... Was some kind of woman.

Or at least, Solomon thought it was a woman.

It was like a shadow, pretending to take full human form. It wore a lacy veil over its body, and a stark white hat atop its head with a wide brim.

It had an umbrella slung over one of its shoulders, of the same color as its hat.

Two living butterflies danced clumsily around each other above the being’s head, as if they were children who had only just learned to use their legs.

"You smelled interesting when you first came to visit. But now I can hardly make anything out beyond your grief. It is most unpleasant."

Solomon abruptly stood up.

Or at least, that was his intention. It felt like his lower body was wrapped in pillowy marshmallows. Rather than not being able to move... It was as if he had no desire to.

He felt comfortable from the very bottom of his soul.

With Clarity, Solomon and his siblings were immune to mental manipulations, so he could tell that this was something completely different.

Solomon wasn’t being manipulated into letting down his guard. He was being shown that he was not in danger here. Thus, any fighting spirit he could have mustered from within his tired body was snuffed out.

"...Who are you?"

"What a rude thing to ask when you’re lying against me. I could strangle you if I felt like it... I don’t think it would kill you, but I could do it nonetheless."

Solomon blinked. His mind instantly recalled the position he was in prior to being sucked into this strange space.

"You’re... The tree?"

"How rude. I have a name."

Solomon was slapped by a tree branch. Where exactly it had come from, he couldn’t say.

"I don’t know what you are, but I do know at the very least that you are much younger than me. As your elder, I should be spoken to with the proper amount of respect."

"...You are a tree."

Solomon got slapped again. Muria was progressively hitting him harder.

"I am so much more than a simple tree, child of the cosmos. I am life everlasting. The foundation of this realm, and the eternal font from which its vitality and magic are formed. I am self-sustaining, self-perfecting, all knowing-"

"All knowing??" Solomon’s eyes lit up. "Do you speak the truth?"

Another tree branch hit Solomon, this time on the back of his head.

"I do so detest being interrupted... I had held a high opinion of you since you had helped to chase away some of the foulness that had befallen my lands. But conversing with you is making me reexamine my initial assessments."

Solomon finally got to his feet, but it wasn’t to beg.

"Please... If you are all-knowing, then you have to be able to tell me where the woman I love has gone... Her name is Yari de Isavelle Sylvarre, and-"

"I know the one whom you speak of quite well, boy. She was one of my most favored seeds to sow. Watching the harm that befell her... It truly broke my heart."

Solomon saw the shadowy figure pause to rub her chin.

"Well, I don’t actually have a heart, but I’m sure you get the meaning, right?"

"Ah... Yes."

Solomon was not convinced that this wasn’t all part of some messed-up dream.

"You need not fret." The spirit waved her hand. "Right now, there is no one in the realm who is safer than those two at the moment. So with that out of the way, let’s talk about-"

"Great Muria...Please..."

Solomon surprised the figure when he suddenly dropped to one knee and lowered his head.

"I love that woman more than you can possibly imagine. More than I can express to you in words, or deeds. She is a vital piece of me. Until I have her in my arms, alive and well... I will never be able to rest easily. I must save her."

Muria watched Solomon’s dipped head for quite some time; the expression she made was only visible to herself. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

"...A pity. And I thought I would get to have a nice chat after all of this time." She huffed. "Maybe I’ll pick one of the ones you brought with you. They smell equally as strange."

Solomon had never thought he would be using his siblings as a buffer between himself and an immortal, sentient tree, but apparently, everything was possible in the elven realm.

"Great Muria... Yari..?"

"Yes, yes..." Annoyed, Muria blew a gust of air past her lips.

She proceeded to tell Solomon exactly where to find Yari, as well as whose company she would be in.

He almost couldn’t believe everything he heard. But Muria didn’t seem to want to give him any time to think about the bomb that she had just dropped in his lap.

*Sigh* "I’ll release you now, I suppose. Take good care of it, and don’t come bothering me for a while. This one was a bit harder to make than the others."

Solomon’s brow wrinkled. "What are you talking a-"

-

"-About?"

Solomon blinked, his eyes once again filled with water, but his mood no longer quite as troubled as before.

Everything that he had just learned... It was all swimming around in his head at once. But he couldn’t sit around to rest here. Not when Yari was still out there waiting for them.

"Jiaoying, I know where Yari is; we have to-"

"B-Bear...?"

Solomon followed the gaze of his lover into her lap.

There, she held a brown seed roughly triple the size of a large coconut.

"Is this... What I think it is...?" Jiaoying swallowed.

Solomon couldn’t answer her. It was difficult to speak when his jaw hung from his face like the testicles of a ninety-year-old man.

However, everything that he was trying to say to Jiaoying beforehand finally sank into her brain. She almost immediately forgot about the large seed in her lap.

"W-Wait, did you just say you know where she is??"

Solomon’s mouth had gone completely dry. "Y-Yes, I..."

"Well, what are you waiting for!? We have to go get her, quickly!"

Solomon nodded to refocus. This wasn’t the time to become starry-eyed.

He had to get to Yari as quickly as humanly possible. Even faster than Mercy could carry him.

Solomon reached down into the depths of his body, screaming at his body to get up and move.

It wasn’t easy. After four days of exertion, he was as exhausted as Jiaoying.

But as he dug down, he found that he still had something left.

Blood ran from his ears and nostrils in twin rivers.

Jiaoying tried to stop him from pushing himself, but he couldn’t hear her.

And when he finally opened his eyes again, she was significantly smaller than he had been a couple of seconds ago.

Solomon was not yet sure what he had done, but he knew that he felt different.

When his love pointed up at him, her hand was trembling, and she looked like she was going to fall over from suffering one surprise after another.

"H-Hey... I get really tired of asking this all the time, but... How long have you been able to do that...?"