thehometree | Glimmer, glitter, shine...

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Glimmer, glitter, shine...

One by one, new adventurers now arrive in the Tree. As one gain wings and rises to the second floor, another light brings in the next person. Soon, a steady stream of people from all kinds of worlds, times and realities come to join the others. Whether confused, angry, excited or scared, your arrival is welcomed with nothing but joy as the fireflies and glow worms descend to greet their new friends.

The Tree offers no explanation and no reason, but the truth is undeniable.

As you will soon realize, it isn't easy to be tiny.

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Nai shakes his head. "No, but Gareki likes it, and Karoku's nice so he'll say it's okay!" There is more to it, naturally, but sweet trusting Nai isn't privy to such things.

"But when I find Karoku, he can become friends with everyone. Kaoru can be his friend too!" he says with a cheerful smile.

Nai, you sweet summer child... Kaoru couldn't fathom why a bunch of dudes would be so interested in some bracelet, but eh. None of his business.

"That would be nice. I don't know if it'll happen, though. I have a difficult personality." Was Kaoru joking. Was he serious. The world would never know.

"Did you already get something to eat? You should do that before everyone else gets hungry."

While unsure of what he means by 'difficult personality,' Nai shakes his head and smiles again.

"It's okay because Kaoru's nice!" And that's that, it seems, since he goes right into answering the question posed to him. "I didn't eat. I was looking for my friends first. Ah, maybe they're hungry too!"

Kaoru seemed a little taken aback by the statement, like what the hell Nai. Don't call him nice!! So he was going to respond in the maturest way possible: by quickly changing the subject and pretending it never happened.

"...Then let's hurry and grab something. There's a lot of different kinds of food there, so you can choose the ones you like best."

Unperturbed and even excited about the change in topic, Nai goes right along with it. He's more happy about the fact that he's made a new friend already in this strange place. Once they're done eating, he's definitely going to help Kaoru find his own friends. They've got to be around here somewhere.

"Okay! Everything here is really big, bigger than the food at home. Gareki's says that when I eat, I have to finish everything." This is going to be difficult, and even if Gareki isn't here to yell about getting enough food into his skinny body, Nai will certainly try.

"...Don't make yourself sick." Nai seemed like he might be in danger of doing just that -- trying to please others and ending up ill in the process.

"You can always save some for later. Come on." Actually, that was probably a good idea, hmm... in any case, he started off for the banquet (was it a banquet? in their honor?) table.

"I've never seen a tree this size... not even in the Eastern Woods."

Nai shakes his head and says quite confidently, "I won't!" before trotting closely behind Kaoru. Still amazed at how big everything is, Nai's eyes sparkle at the sight of the beautiful array of food laid out of them on the table before glancing up at Kaoru.

"I didn't know you could be inside a tree. The trees in Niji Forest aren't big like this one."

"There were trees on Earth that were 11 meters in diameter," said Kaoru, picking up an oversized berry and considering it before putting it aside. He picked through a few more before handing an adequately ripe one to Nai. "Or trees that you could drive a vehicle through. Here, this one is better."

Of course, that was a long time ago, before Earth had become uninhabitable. "What were they like? Your trees."

He takes the incredibly large berry, even bigger in his little hands, with his eyes still wide with curiosity. At the question, he livens up and smiles.

"They're big and fluffy and warm." Naturally. "Sometimes when it's really hot, me and Karoku sit under them because they cover us. We can still see the rainbows too, but only a little bit. I thought they were all broken because the trees are taller than them, but Karoku said it was still pretty, so I like them now." It's all right if Kaoru can't make sense of any of that because Nai tilts his head with a question of his own now.

"What's diameter? Kaoru's trees are small?"

"No..." Wow, how to explain diameter, hmm... "They were about as wide as from here to... here." He walked across the room, estimating the relative distance from his starting point to ending point.

"They were big, but small compared to this." What kind of trees were fluffy, though? Maybe Nai was talking about the leaves?

"Do Karoku ever tell you what kind of trees they were?"

"Oooh!" is his reply when they finish walking. That was quite a distance for a tree and Nai seems impressed. "Kaoru's trees are bigger."

Now there's a shake of his head. "What kind?" There are different kinds of trees?

"Some trees have long, thin leaves that look like needles. Some trees have... flat, fat leaves. There are different kinds."

Man, this was rough, trying to think of a good way to explain deciduous vs. coniferous. Kaoru picked up a large nut, broke off a piece, and popped it in his mouth. Huh. Not bad.

His head tilts to the side as he recalls memories of Niji's forests trees. From the choices Kaoru offers, he decides the trees have the 'flat, fat' type of leaves.

"They're not like needles. Needles are only in a hospital, right?"

Hmm. "...Right. When I see a tree with needles, I'll show it to you. They're not like the needles in a hospital."

He'd sort of figured that Nai's forest was deciduous just from the description. "Did the leaves in the forest ever change colors?"

"Ah, okay...!" He's not sure he'd like to see a tree like that, but if Kaoru said they're different from hospital needles, then he'll try not to worry.

"Sometimes. They became all kinds of colors like orange and yellow and red, like the flowers in the field. How did you know that?"

"That's what they're supposed to do in the fall. They change colors and fall off before the weather gets cold." He paused and took another bite.

"My friends and I went through a winter once. It was... difficult. Before that, I never realized how harsh the weather could be."

"Ooh..." He seems genuinely fascinated by this bit of information, but then again it isn't difficult to impress him. Now a slightly worried frown crosses his face. The fact that Kaoru is standing before him should be answer enough, but he feels the need to ask.

"You and your friends got hurt?"

"Not then. But we could have. I went out in the open when snow started to come down hard. I was chasing an animal, and fell through a fissure. There was a small ledge. If it hadn't been there, I would have fallen..."

Of course, that didn't quite describe the sudden, stomach-dropping moment of panic when he'd falling through the snow and found himself staring down into darkness that seemed to have no end.

Nai's eyes widen and this time not in wonder and curiosity like so many times today. He doesn't know what a fissure is, but he can see in the way Kaoru frowns that falling through it is not a good thing.

"But you're okay now! And snow is soft and fluffy, so it doesn't hurt even if you fall in it."

"Yes... I was lucky. One of my friends came looking for me. She had a rope so I could pull myself up."

Of course, they'd then had other problems. But maybe he shouldn't burden Nai with that for now. "Did you ever get into trouble in your forest?"

That's good to hear, so Nai relaxes a bit. At the question, he has to think back on it and eventually shakes his head.

"No. I was always with Karoku." A simple phrase that doesn't quite answer why Nai wouldn't have run into trouble, but to Nai, it's because Karoku took care of him and kept him safe. And the second Karoku was gone, he did get into trouble, although out of the forest.

Kaoru looked a little surprised to hear this. "He must have been good at staying out of trouble."

After all, there were all sorts of animals out there, not to mention quicksand, carnivorous plants, escaped criminals... for this Karoku fellow to have kept Nai out of danger must have been a full time job.

He was truly Nai's parent in that he raised and protected him, but that's all sadly in the past now. Nai is doing his best everyday to find Karoku again, and thought his concern for the friends he left behind overshadows everything else, a part of him believes that maybe he was sent to this strange place because Karoku may be here. He won't know until he's explored more, and now he has a new friend to spend time with.

"Karoku is really smart and strong." Nai believes as much, anyway. "He went away somewhere, but I'm going to find him."

Nai, that was really sad...

"Yeah. I hope you do." Without more information, it would be irresponsible to outright tell Nai that he was going to find his friend, but obviously Karoku was very important to him.

"What does he look like?"

Nai smiles and nods confidently. There have been a fair share of setbacks at home but he wholeheartedly believes he and Karoku will be reunited. Now, he happily describes Karoku to the best of his ability.

"Um...he's bigger than me—" He stretches his arm up into the air as far as they can go to demonstrate. "—and his hair and his eyes are blue. Like the sky!"

Edited 2015-03-23 12:18 (UTC)

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