[Hmm? Why are you so surprised? Didn’t you put that there yourself?]
What? Why would a bunch of humans possibly be flocking around a bush that a scary monster pnted in the middle of nowhere???
[It’s not in the middle of nowhere; Just a bit into the distance is the town of the boy that you saved. Do you really not remember that bush?]
Boy that I saved…?
Ohhh, do you mean Fen’s vilge? Wow, that really brings me back… I wonder how they’re all doing? Ah but wait a minute! I may be a bit directionally challenged at times, but that vilge should be wayyy more south than this! Did I… Did I mess up somehow? How come you didn’t tell me?!
[Calm down, child. That’s not the boy that I meant. Do you truly not remember growing that camellia bush for the boy all that time ago?]
Hrmmm… A boy, a boy…
[...Goodness. Really, Mellily. Will you remember if I told you it was the first time you consumed humans?]
OH! Oh my gosh, you’re totally right!!!
[Of course I’m right. So I take it you remember now?]
Yeah of course I do! How could I forget that amazing taste? It was practically melt in your mouth nutritious! Man, it's like recalling a delicious dish that you haven't had in a long time~!
[...Child…]
I’m kidding, I’m kidding! …Sort of, anyway. Yeah no, I totally remember the kid you’re talking about now. That bush was the very first thing I ever grew, wasn’t it? But that still doesn’t answer my question about why anyone’s worshiping that bush in the first pce, you know!
[Would you like me to tell you?]
Huh? Yeah, of course I want you to-
…Hmm…
No, you know what? I don’t want you to tell me! But instead you could tell me something else~!
[What might that be, child?]
How about you stop jerking me around already and tell me where I can find the nearest ke, please?
~~~
Yeah okay, so I don’t know what all the fuss was about, because changing my body wasn’t really all that difficult! Sure, it took a lot of concentration on what I wanted to look like, and sure, maybe it chugged a bunch of my resources out of me… but from what the Spirit told me, doing it inside of the water made it a lot easier to control. It has something to do with the natural energies surrounding me and helping somehow…? Idunno, I was kind of impatient, so I don’t think I listened to it all very well; Honestly, maybe that’s why it took me a bit longer to do than it did when mom did it.
But still, I pulled it off!
I’m now a beautiful replica of mom!!!
Okay well, I say it looks like mom, but there are a few minor differences. What was once my long, silvery fronds mimicking human hair now looks like actual flowing silver hair, which comes down to my waist instead of mom’s shoulder-length bob. The green eye color I couldn’t do anything about for some reason, maybe as a rule, since all things governed by the Forest Spirit has to have at least something green about them. But it’s perfectly fine with me; I actually really liked the minty green and silver combo anyway!
Really, there were only two major things that separated this new look of mine from what mom had made before. First of all, I felt bad that I was losing all of my pretty flowers, so I made this body come equipped with a cute little flower crown on top of my head, that’s decorated with a bunch them! It looks absolutely adorable! And if I weren’t so naked right now, it would look completely normal, and not at all give away how it's fused right onto my freaking head like it is!
Oh, and speaking of being naked, here’s major difference number two: I don’t have any weird zigzags on my body like the other humans (apparently) have!
I really didn’t think about it or notice it at all, until I got back to the town and stealthily went looking for some clothes to steal and caught sight of a few of the humans. See, these pretty green eyes of mine aren’t just for show; I can actually see with these! It’s shocking, I know, but I was actually able to grow myself fully functioning eyes, one that can actually perceive things like the humans can! It was a lot of work, believe you me, and uh… Well, maybe the Spirit had to step in and help me with it a little when it saw me struggling on them. But what could I do? I wanted them! Mom didn’t bother making functioning eyes when she made herself look human, so I was working with absolutely nothing to go off of here! It’s not like humans just naturally know how to make their own body parts, so having a past memory of being a human, whether it was from my previous life or having seen mom’s, did absolutely nothing to help me!
If I’m gonna go infiltrate the humans, then I gotta see like one if I’m gonna fit in!
Or well… No, that’s a total lie. But I wanna see what they see! You can’t bme me for that at all!!!
Anyways yeah, after an hour long walk from the ke to the small town where the humans lived, I finally realized that I wasn’t quite painted like one. Woopsies! But hey, it’s not the worst thing, you know? Now that I can finally see the stripey-stripes that these humans have with my own eyes, I can also see that not everyone has the exact same ones! It’s completely possible that if I just cover myself up enough then no one would even think that I don’t have them! Although that does really limit my clothing choices…
Hmm, and you know, what? Now that I’m looking, maybe I might have made myself a little bit too tall by accident. I didn’t follow mom’s tempte to the letter and mostly just focused on the looks and sight, so I might have neglected making her the right height. Yeah, I seem to be about a whole head taller than the tallest woman I can see. That’s definitely gonna limit my clothing choices even more…
Welp, cloaks exist for a reason!
Buuut maybe I should put on a dress underneath, just to make sure I don’t fsh anyone.
Let’s see if I can find one that’ll fit!
~~~
Okay, so as good as the whole ‘hide under a cloak’ idea was, I completely forgot that it was going to crush my flowers when I put on the hood. And since the flowers are actually part of my body, and I can actually feel through them, uh… Yeah, it’s like a delicate part of me is constantly getting pressed and smushed down. Reeeally uncomfortable. I’m definitely gonna have to figure out a better solution than this one, for sure. I hate to say it, but maybe this warrants another trip to the ke for a quick fix. It’s all fine and dandy to make myself shorter to better match how tall mom used to be… But I don’t like the idea of having to give up on these oh-so-pretty flowers that I had to work so hard to grow.
Oh yeah, speaking of being uncomfortable-!
I had kind of hoped that me being the one in charge of the whole ‘change how I look’ process would somehow alleviate the vast discomfort I felt st time when mom did this. And hey, honestly, it’s not quite as bad as it was back then! Buuuut it’s true that it still totally is uncomfortable, no matter what I did to try and fix it. It’s just gonna be like that when you compress a big catastrophically dangerous pnt-monster into a teeny tiny package! There’s just no other way around it!
At least I have a little bit of experience dealing with it from st time, so I should be fine.
…Still doesn’t mean that I wanna stay looking like this forever though, so I better hurry up and figure out what’s going on around here.
So for the record, I’d mostly been sticking to the outskirts of this town so far, trying not to fsh anyone while I went around looking for suitable clothes. And you know, because I have these really real functioning eyes on me right now, it’s actually pretty hard for me to pay attention to my secondary magical sight. Well, maybe it’s partly the fault of my eyes dominating my senses, but I’m also sure that the fact that my roots are currently mashed into a facade of ‘real looking human legs’ might also be hindering them. Either way, I didn’t realize something veeeery important about this town until I walked a little bit further inside of it.
There’s camellia flowers and bushes all over this freaking pce!
The windowsills? Camellias! The hedges? Camellias! Even the trees and the edges of some of the roofs were decorated with these pretty garnds of camellia flowers! And almost every single person in the town was walking around with a camellia flower artfully pced somewhere in their hair or on their clothes. It almost made me consider pulling down my hood and freeing my flower crown, since I’m sure I wouldn’t stand out too much with all of these flower-wearing people around!
I didn’t, though.
I’m gonna try my best to not show my face, just in case something goes wrong here.
Besides, I’m already freakishly tall!
We don’t need mom’s beauty making me stand out as well~!
Well, now that I’m here, I suppose my best bet to figure out why all this is happening is to maybe… Idunno, ask someone about it? Wouldn’t that be the easiest way, instead of trying to creep around like a spy and looking suspicious? Ugh, it’s been so long since I had to try and act normal… I’m honestly not sure if what I’m pnning to say even makes sense!
...It’s a lot easier to talk to people when you’re a giant monster; At least nobody’s gonna look at you funny because you messed up a conversation!
_____
AN: Sorry for the dey, I got sick! And I'm still sick, so I'm thinking I'm gonna finish up posting the next chapter of my stories and then go on a lil break until January 20th. Sorry for the wait, and see you then!
