Chapter 5942: Attunment I
Chapter 5942: Attunment I
Noah sat down on the black-gold soil of his farm with the hoe across his knees, and he let himself ignore everything that was not the field in front of him. Far off across the snowing sky, the Immense Ones he had dismissed were still sitting on their illusory mountain with their eyes closed, healing, and at the edges of the farm, the weak Nightmares from the broken door had crept away to hide in the soft grey gaps where the Fallow was still slowly spreading.
None of that mattered right now, because in front of him were fifteen green shoots in a straight row, and he wanted to see what they would become.
They did not make him wait long. In a matter of minutes, while he watched, the shoots thickened and lengthened and branched, pushing up out of the soil until each one was a small tree about half his height, with dark bark and pale leaves that shook in the falling snow. Twelve of them were plain and green, but three of them, the ones growing over Corvin and Orren and Saelith, came up in colors he had never seen on a tree before, red and gold and deep blue and silver all running through their bark and leaves at once, shining softly against the snow.
Then, a few moments later, all fifteen trees withered. Their leaves dried and fell, their bark cracked and greyed, and their branches drooped until each tree was only a thin dry stalk, but at the very end of each stalk, one fruit had grown, round and heavy and glowing faintly, and every one of them was different from the others.
|Your farm has produced its first harvest.|
|Common Narrative Fruit obtained: 12.|
|Uncommon Narrative Fruit obtained: 3.|
...!
Noah leaned closer to look at them. The twelve common fruits were each a different color and shape, one pale and round, one long and dark, one ridged and gold, and on the skin of every one of them, a single hazy symbol of infinity swirled slowly in obsidian and gold.
The three uncommon fruits were larger and brighter than the others, and on each of them three of those same hazy infinity symbols turned around each other in a slow, endless loop.
They came loose from their withered stalks on their own and floated up into the air, drifting slowly toward him until all fifteen of them hung in a ring around his head. They smelled wonderfull, sweet and sharp and rich all at once, a smell that went straigt past his nose and into the very center of his existence, and he felt his whole self lean toward them with a pull he did not even try to resist.
He reached up, took the nearest fruit out of the air, and bit into it.
The juice ran down his chin and over his fingers, cold and sweet and full of a whole Narrative told all at once, and he closed his eyes and chewed slowly and let out a long, contented breath. He took another, and then another, eating faster now, the juice dripping onto his work shirt and into the black-gold soil, and each fruit tasted completely different from the last, one bright and sharp and one deep and dark and one that seemed to taste of a home he had never been to!
This was his dream, exactly this, farming and harvesting and sitting in his own field eating what he had grown, and who could have guessed that fruit grown from the buried bodies of Immense Ones would taste so good?
He did not even notice when he reached the last one. He only realized it when his hand reached up for another and closed on empty air, and he opened his eyes to find all fifteen gone, his fingers sticky and his chin wet, and he laughed out loud at himself. He could not remember the last time he had enjoyed eating anything this much, and it was a small and very human thing he had forgotten he was allowed to have.
...!
His existence began to buzz. It started somewhere deep inside him and spread outward, a warm and steady hum that filled every part of him, and he felt more alive than he had in a long time, every piece of him waking up at once. Beside him, the small blue-gold sapling pulsed with light, and then it grew, not by much, only a little taller and a little wider, its glass bark brightening and its trunk thickening as he watched.
Its four Branches grew with it, each one stretching longer and fuller, and then, at the tip of each Branch, a bud formed and opened into a flower.
The flower on the Branch of Dreams bloomed blue and gold, its petals filled with small soft scenes from his own memories, and the flower on the Branch of Nightmares opened dark, obsidian and gold, with closed eyes painted along its petals that opened and closed slowly. The flower on the Branch of Shinjitsu was clear glass shot through with thin lines of gold and black, perfectly still, and the flower on the Branch of THE Unstriving Current turned slowly on its stem in time with the pulse, and on every one of the four flowers, faint and hazy, the shape of infinity swirled through the petals.
HUUUUM!
|The fruits of your labor have been consumed.|
|THE Dreaming Human Origin Tree has grown.|
|Branch of Dreams: Level 1 to Level 2.|
|Branch of Nightmares: Level 1 to Level 2.|
|Branch of Shinjitsu: Level 1 to Level 2.|
|Branch of THE Unstriving Current: Level 1 to Level 2.|
|All four Branches have reached Level 2. Your Tree has flowered.|
|Shinjitsu Assimilation Rate: 8% to 9%.|
...!
|A flower is what labor becomes when it is given time.|
|Each flower holds what you have dreamed, what you have answered, what you have held true, and how you have moved with existence.|
|Each flower carries traces of infinity, of your Dreams, and of your Nightmares.|
|The more flowers bloom on your Tree, the greater the power of its Branches becomes.|
|Flowers: 4.|
...!