Strangers in a Tree
Seraph has never seen so many trees in all her life. Following the meandering path of Midas and Ira, forever traveling the world in pursuit of new resources, and necessitated by the threat of those who might harm them, Seraph has followed them on their many journeys to continue her own treatment. This one took them to an enormous forest, and from her vantage at the top of an especially tall oak perched on the crest of a ridge, she witnesses a rolling ocean of brown and yellow, the autumnal canopy of mid fall. Many trees have already shed their leaves, while the proud evergreens sport their dark green needles in contrast to their tired neighbors. In the distance, they climb the foothills of graceful old mountains, already white capped by early snows.
While the vista is indeed beautiful, and the thick woods ideal for concealing Midas’ wagon and medical tent set up, they leave her with poor choices for shelter. Unlike the so-called doctor, Seraph travels on foot or by wing, and has no wagon to crawl inside to shield her from the cold and damp weather of the season. She has made due with various discomforts in the past, but always prefers it when she can find abandoned structures or even dry caves in which to set up a temporary living space.
Sitting back against the trunk of the great tree, Seraph puffs out her cheeks, thinking hard on what to do next. Sure, the tree itself is large enough to support her sleeping body, but should it rain or, worse still, snow, her misery might know no end. There is a world where she begs Midas and Ira to let her stay in or even under their wagon, but that day is the one she sheds all pride; Seraph would rather Midas stop treating her altogether than see such a pitiful display of desperation.
Just as her hopes begin to sink away, hazy movement catches her attention, and she spreads her wings, focusing all her eyes on the direction she first noticed it. After a few seconds, she spots it again, a faint trace of smoke, barely visible against the grey sky. Her gaze tracks downward to its source, and after a while of carefully scanning the treetops, she identifies the source.
Where smoke rises, one finds surprises… Seraph takes wing, already imagining hot spruce tea and maybe even smoked venison. The prospect pushes her on, more eagerly than before, and she continues to daydream of warm hearths and cozy blankets even as she draws close enough to land and continue on foot.
She sees now the smoke’s curious source: something not quite a tower, not quite a tree, almost both and neither. Smoke trails from a petite chimney jutting out from the trunk near the top, cleverly disguised as another branch, but revealed by the soot staining the outlet. Other bits of architecture set it apart from the rest of the trees; small windows with their curtains drawn, a balcony wrapping around part of the trunk, set above the ground on uneven wooden supports.
“How charming!” Seraph declares to herself, enamored by its quaint and rustic appearance. “No cold wet forest floor for me tonight.” Giddy with relief, she skips quickly to the base of the tree, circling it for a few steps before finding a door at ground level. A brisk wind plucks at her dress, sending leaves scampering across the forest floor in a hissing rush of sound that almost drowns out her fist knocking against the wood. The wind dies again, but just as Seraph raises her hand to knock a second time, the door opens.
The daiten on the other side looks surprised to see her, but he recovers with a warm smile. “Oh! Aha, this is unusual - we don’t see a lot of visitors, let alone other daitens, around here.” Without even asking her name, he opens the door wide and hastens her inside. “It’s biting cold out there; please, come in.”
Seraph herself hardly believes her eyes. Somehow, Midas seems to know where to find other daitens, but she never imagined she might run into them on her own. “Thank you!” She says, grateful for the stranger’s immediate hospitality - by the sound of it, he sees other daitens infrequently; perhaps her appearance is a welcome one.
“I’m so sorry,” he frets, wringing his hands just once, “my name is Juno; maybe I should have said so sooner, but I didn’t want to make you stand out there any longer than you had to.” He smiles again, and his face alone radiates the same warmth of a fire in a hearth.
Seraph laughs, shaking her head. “Oh no, no need to be sorry! You’re so kind.” She follows Juno up a flight of stairs, where the source of the flame is revealed: a small stove in the kitchen. Trying not to get too distracted by the tempting smells, she continues. “My name is Seraph - I hope I’m not imposing too much, but you see, I’m something of a nomadic traveler, and I was hoping to find a place to stay for the time being.”
Juno gestures to a tiny setup of table and stools for Seraph to sit, and moves past into the kitchen, nodding to himself. As Seraph pulls out a stool, she notices one of the seats is a good deal larger than the rest, and remembers how Juno greeted her. “I’m sorry, but did you mention living here with someone else?” She calls after Juno, who returns a moment later with a small platter of sliced bread, and a jam jar.
“Oh, I suppose so,” he replies, setting both on the table in front of Seraph. “That’s wild raspberries,” he points to the jar, smiling, almost seeming to leave the original subject behind. “I gathered them myself from the area.”
Seraph’s stomach growls, as if it too prefers to focus on the food and not the mystery. “Oooo, how nice!” She thanks him, and eagerly takes the offered knife to spread the jam over the warm bread. After a few bites, however, she persists. “So, you have a roommate, then?”
“Aha, you could say that.” Juno laughs, taking a piece of bread for himself. “She does go on a lot of errands, though, like right now.” He finishes meticulously covering the entire face of the slice, leaving not a single bare spot behind. “Her name is Dione.”
The name rings no bells, yet Seraph pauses briefly. Did she ever know someone by the name? Perhaps not. “Dione! That’s a pretty name.” She says, leaving the momentary hesitation behind and forgotten.
Juno takes a bite, chews carefully, and swallows before saying anything else. “She is very pretty,” he sighs, before breaking into a snorting laugh. “Well most of the time, anyway. Sometimes when she gets mad, she can make some ugly faces.”
“Awww, but isn’t everyone like that?” Seraph can not help but laugh along, even without knowing the full context. Juno’s good spirits are contagious, it seems. “We all have our bad days.”
“True!” Juno agrees, and takes another bite. “She can be very temperamental, and sometimes even downright mean, but she’s actually quite nice when you get to know her.” His gaze suddenly fixes on the middle distance, and he nods once, firmly, almost as if addressing someone else, not here, who has heard the assertion already. A second later, though, his eyes are back on Seraph, glowing with calm.
After Seraph has her fill, Juno pours them both a cup of tea, and asks her to regale him with stories of her travels, and she happily obliges. As Juno is an uncorrupted daiten, she decides not to talk about Midas and Ira, leaving out the reason for her travels and focusing on the events therein. She never considered her life since becoming this almost nomadic wanderer to be exciting or interesting, but she has Juno’s entire attention the whole time, and Seraph realizes that this tree, this forest, may very well be most of his whole world. If he was manifested after the Fall of Heaven, he could be quite young even, making even her duller journeys ones worth recounting.
The sun sets early, drowning the woods outside in shadow, and in response Juno lights several lanterns, and candles held in protective glass to prevent them from accidentally setting the whole place on fire. He is just about to show her to the guest room when the balcony door opens with a click, catching Seraph off guard. Juno turns, and begins to call out a greeting, but all at once the figure in the doorway seethes and explodes forward, expanding into the space in a flurry of wings.
The angry eruption sends the table and stools flying, but Seraph refuses to retreat. Spreading her own feathered wings, she opens the eyes on their undersides wide, and meets the snarling teeth head on. A second later, she stands nose-to-nose with the hostile daiten, staring down their many gazes, cognizant of the second mouth opening below the first but resolving to remain unfazed by it.
“Dione, the table!” Juno shouts, breaking the tension with the incongruity of the dismay alone. “This is not how we treat our house guests.”
Dione’s gaze moves from Seraph, to Juno, then back to Seraph for one last pointed glare, before she turns to Juno, who has gone to pick up the table and chairs. “She is no guest of mine!” She protests, pointing a vitriolic finger at Seraph. “I want her out!”
“And I want a puppy!” Juno shoots back, his voice becoming a mocking whine. “What’s so wrong? She’s done nothing wrong! Unless, you can give me a good reason why we can't trust her?” He pauses in his work to look at Seraph, and for a heartbeat his eyes seem dark and dangerous.
To this, Dione freezes, but finally her wings fold back, and her posture subsides into something less threatening. “No,” she murmurs quietly, glancing back at Seraph with regret. The other eyes have closed again, and the second mouth is all but invisible. “There is nothing. But - she cannot stay indefinitely. How long will she be our ‘guest’?”
Juno finishes resetting the table and chairs, and sighs. “She said it could be a week or two. Is that right?” He smiles, and the darkness from his expression is gone - if it had ever been there in the first place.
“Um, that’s right.” Seraph puts a hand on her hip, and glares at Dione. “So, Juno, how long does it take to ‘get to know her’, hm?” Her wings flap in irritation, but exhaustion binds her emotions from evolving into stronger words. “I’m sorry, maybe that was rude… I guess I’m just tired.”
“Aw that’s alright, you’ve been travelling for days now; can’t blame you!” Juno looks after the sulking Dione one last time, perhaps checking on her, but once satisfied he approaches Seraph again. “Right, I was about to show you to your room. I’m sure we can all find a way to keep from stepping on any toes, okay, Dione?”
Not expecting to be called on, Dione flinches, but she pays attention anyway. “Of course,” she assures him. “Just keep her out from where she does not belong.”
“Obviously!” Juno replies, sounding almost offended at the notion that he might forget to do so. “Mm, Seraph, you can stay, but there are some places you mustn’t go,” he motions for her to follow him up a curling flight of stairs while he explains. “Your room, the kitchen and the ground floor are all open to you, within reason.” He takes a lamp from the wall, lights it, and pushes through a door into a dark room. “Leave the books in the library alone - they’re mine.”
Seraph follows him into the dim circle of light, straining to see through the shadows of the room, but doing her best to pay attention regardless. “Don’t touch things that aren’t mine; got it. Simple enough.”
“And the basement-” Juno turns suddenly to face her, his face lit from below, casting him in an oddly unsettling light. “Stay out of it.”
Before Seraph can ask why, he snaps his fingers, and a series of small, delicate lights appear over their heads. Looking back at Juno, she catches him smiling, almost pridefully, before he laughs it off.
“You have magic!” Seraph exclaims, taken by the beauty of the supernatural fairy lights. “Amazing.”
Beaming, Juno places the lantern on the bedside table, and walks back to the door. “Thank you,” he preens, evidently less than shameless about his abilities. “I hope you sleep well, and… I hope you’ll forgive Dione for earlier.”
Seraph falls back onto the bed, breathing out a long sigh. “Maybe if she apologizes,” she murmurs, too stubborn to simply forgive actions that have yet to be made right. Juno only laughs.
“I’ll make sure she does, then. Good night, Seraph - I’m glad we got to meet.” He puts a finger to his mouth, almost in a shushing motion, and blows. The lantern at Seraph’s side goes out, leaving the weaker lights above to twinkle like gentle starlight, and Juno closes the door.
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