The changes went on, and on, and on. For what seemed like a very long time, it was hard to think. It is always hard to form cogent thoughts when in severe pain, but that small voice that seems to keep babbling in the mind when the larger, controllable voice falls silent, even that one was absent. Thoughts happened in bits and made no sense even when put together, like scattered pieces of a book’s torn pages.
My awareness was being fused with the tree’s life. Leaves turning toward the sun. Roots taking up water. Leaf buds slowly unfurling. Very gradually, I began to be aware of this new body’s senses and needs. It had a different sort of awareness of the world. Light and temperature and moisture were suddenly far more significant to me. For a fixed creature, these things matter so much more than to something that is mobile and can seek out what it needs. I became aware that to live I had to harvest all resources within my reach. With the nutrients from my old body, I could grow taller, produce more leaves. I could capture more of the sunlight streaming down from above, and I could shade the ground beneath me to make it harder for competitors to sprout. I wanted next to nothing growing beneath my reaching branches. The leaves I dropped there were my nutrients, to rot and nourish my own roots. I wished to benefit from all the moisture that fell within the range of my reaching roots, not share it with competitive life. It was only when I found myself thinking that in many ways a tree was not so different from a man that I realized I was using my mind again.
“Nevare? Are you there now?”
Her voice reached me in a new way. It came from the wind rustling her leaves, and more intimately, from the fallen trunk that we shared. I reached for her and found her. It was like clasping hands, and then it was far more than that.
“You’re finally here. All of you. All the way here.”
“Yes. I am.” It was so easy to be completely aware of her. I had not known, before, that we had been shouting to one another across such a distance. Now when she spoke, her thoughts blossomed effortlessly in my mind. She had been the one reaching out to me, manifesting in a human shape that I could recognize in order to reach me. I had seen and comprehended only the tiniest fraction of what she truly was. Now I saw all of her. Lisana as tree was as lovely and seductive as Lisana as woman, and she was both. She was such a being, such a glorious life. I had never seen a person in such full spectrum. It was the difference between seeing a garden by torchlight and then beholding it in all its color and detail on a sunny day.
“Look at yourself,” she commanded me, pleased with the unspoken flow of compliments I had directed at her. “Just look at what you are becoming.”