Ikimetsän Puu

Puu is really small and is normally 2.8ft tall. It was the height she was born into and though she has the ability to shrink and grow she feels most comfortable at that height.
Puu’s body looks like a shrunk, slightly flattened version of a human body. Her legs and arms are rather short and her torso is only a little shorter than them. You could call her sturdy but for a gnome Puu is quite slender.
Puu does have breasts but they are not that discernible, making her look androgynous. Puu’s hands and feet are big compared to her size. Her feet are made for making the way through forest floor and her hands are made for being able to grab things with ease.
Puu has a thin neck and attached to it is a little big, round head. Puu’s skin is a little tanned and has a greenish sheen and she has freckles under her eyes and on her forehead. Puu’s nose is flat and pointy and her eyes are big and almond shaped. The area that is normally white is dark green in Puu’s eyes and two lime green dots are her pupils. The eyebrows over them are long, pretty thick and arched.
Puu’s cheeks are round and look soft and her chin is pointy. Her mouth is small and has plump, darker lips.
Puu’s hair is naturally dark brown and she keeps it a long, flowy mane. It has green moss and some small bush branches growing on it’s surface and they give Puu the energy she partly needs to stay alive. Puu uses a small birds nest as a hair decoration, the blue eggs in the nest not being real. The nest, however, is real and used to house a bird when Puu still lived in the forest.
As clothes Puu uses thick, often handmade leather jackets, under them white cotton tank tops and brown trousers made from natural materials. Puu has a sensitive skin and can’t use clothes with artificial fibres.
Puu always carries a back bag with her containing some snacks(for her and animals), water(for her and plants), first aid kit, change of clothes and some other small equipment she might need.

If Puu is in the same room you probably won’t notice her until she’s right next to you. She is silent in company, since she has lived most of her life by herself and social interaction is new to her. But Puu is sweet, gentle and kind and when she opens her mouth her voice is warm and words often soothing. Puu takes close care not to insult anyone and she is quick to apologize, even for nothing.
Puu only speaks the truth, mostly because she never learned how to lie. She knows that others lie sometimes but she never saw any point in it. Puu simply either speaks what she thinks is true or stays quiet. So you can trust Puu’s words and if you tell her a secret she’s like an impenetrable vault. She will never budge.
But Puu is rather bad at distinguishing a lie from a fact and if she doesn’t know about something it’s pretty easy to deceive her. Or make her really embarrassed in which case she will blush aggressively.
Puu is quite timid and gets scared easily and if she gets scared she runs or hides first and foremost. But Puu tries to be braver and this usually leads her being unreasonably, even stupidly bold. But she often fails at being intimidating due to her stuttering.
Puu has no experience in social interaction and that’s why she gets hurt easily by words and is fast to become sad. She doesn’t know how to stand up for herself either so she just takes it if someone insults her and maybe cries a little bit by herself later.
Puu doesn’t do well in large groups because of her silent nature and she often gets ignored and merges into the background. Her small size doesn’t help with that. But in smaller groups she’s more comfortable and comes out of her shell. If you’re lucky you’ll even see her smile or even, heaven forbid, laugh. Making Puu laugh is like a challenge since she herself has no idea what makes her laugh.
Puu doesn’t have any friends and not even that many acquaintances. She’s a little shy and has lived all her life in solitude with only animals and plants. The only human she ever knew was an old lady so Puu is not used to being with people of her age and never knows quite what to say.
Puu is not good at expressing her feelings verbally or on her face and she stutters a lot. That’s why she sometimes relies on her ability to transfer emotions if she truly wants to get a point through. Puu does this quite rarely because while doing it she has to look at the person in the eye for several seconds and that’s nearly unbearable for her.

Puu is a forest gnome, a rare breed of gnomes that live deep in ancient forests and avoid contact with outside world. Forest gnomes can’t live without contact to nature and Puu would die without the energy trees and plants give her. Puu’s body is flesh and bone but she has to let plants grow in her hair and clothes because they give her energy that partly keeps her alive. Puu also has to eat food normally to survive. In return Puu takes care of the plants growing on her and never cleans herself so she doesn’t take them off. Puu does not smell of anything except forest because her body is incapable of sweating. Puu does, however, take close care that she has no bugs, extra dirt or such on her.

-Longevity: Forest gnomes can live up to 1000 years.
-Heightened Senses: Puu has excellent hearing, sense of smell and eyesight.
-Strength: Puu is very strong and can lift a little over 1000kg(2200 pounds). She can control her strength input and usually uses around 10% or 20% of her power.
-Height Control: Puu can control her height. At her smallest she is about 20cm(8 inches) and at her tallest 120cm(3.9ft). She usually keeps her height around 85cm(2.8ft). Puu can shrink and grow her clothes, accessories and possible bag as well but she has to shrink them separately from her body. If Puu carelessly just shrinks her body but forgets her clothes and other things on her she might find herself buried under them. Or out of them.
-Disguise: Puu can disguise herself as any plant whose leaf or branch she is holding at the moment in her bare hands. Puu has to know the true name of that plant which she can learn with her ability to understand plants. The plant she disguises herself as has to be taller and wider than her. The disguise is broken if someone does anything more than brushes against her, like grabs her or bumps into her.
-Animal understanding: Puu can understand what animals say but they can’t understand her.
-Plant understanding: Puu senses plants on a deeper level and she knows exactly what they need to grow well and healthy. When she touches a plant she can tell whether it needs more or less sun, water or if it’s not growing in appropriate soil.
-Emotion Transfer: By touching a person or an animal and looking them straight into their eyes Puu can make them feel what she is feeling at that moment. She has to know the person’s original whole name or animal species’ name in order to do it, and she can do it at will. If the emotion Puu feels is too powerful and intense, like fear, anger or love, it can transfer to the people around her even without contact in small amounts.

Puu has a power amulet she carved from the oaks his parents turned into. It has the shape of a bear. It wards against bad luck and can repel negative energy.

Puu was born somewhere in Finland in the middle of a forest. Her parents, who were both ancient forest gnomes, grew her inside an old oak tree and gave the last of their life energy to raise Puu. They passed some of their knowledge and feelings to Puu through their energy, and her name. And when Puu finally emerged from the oak her parents had turned into two oaks beside Puu’s birth oak.
When Puu emerged she was already past the infant and toddler state and well into early childhood. She knew how to walk, talk and care for herself. Her parents had taken care that Puu knew how to forage food, treat injuries, look out for predators and humans, build shelter and other useful information. And she knew her parents had loved her, and cared for her. That should’ve been enough. But still Puu felt lonely when she sat alone at night under a tree fire illuminating the empty space around her. How much more cosy would that fire have been if there were more people with her.
Even though Puu knew how to do many things she still had to do them all by herself. And there were also things her parents hadn’t told her, like her powers. Every forest gnome’s powers are unique depending on their personality and Puu had to discover and learn to use her powers on her own. Her strength, senses, height manipulation, understanding animals and plants and disguising herself came naturally but it took her a long time to realize she could transfer her emotions to others.
Puu lived her first years in the wilderness, completely unaware of what were the ‘humans’ her parents had warned her about. But when 6 years had passed since her birth Puu’s whole world was turned upside down. Literally.
One day Puu woke up to the earth rumbling like it was the end of times. She climbed out of the hole in her birth oak and saw giant, yellow beasts destroying her home forest and chasing the animals out of their homes. Puu was horrified and grabbed all her things and ran for his life. For years to come she’d be ashamed of herself running like that, like a coward.
The whole area was full of the beasts but Puu was able to get away safe and unseen. She climbed up and up all the way on top of a rock that overlooked her home forest. And saw the saddest sight she had ever seen.
Puu’s forest was overrun by the beasts and somehow she knew instinctively what they were. These were humans. The destroyers. The thieves. The bringers of all evil. Puu, who was a gentle creature, felt great rage and hate for the first time in her life. And it scared her.
Puu, as well as many of her animal friends, had to leave that part of the forest. They all scattered, the animals knew where they could live safely. But Puu was lost and sad and angry. Would she ever see her parents again? Probably not. And it was all because of humans.
Puu travelled for days and for the first time in her life as well met other supernatural creatures. She met some dryads, brownies and one werebear. It was strange for her and she talked more than she had talked in months. But Puu decided she liked talking, and company, if it wasn’t too overwhelming.
Puu couldn’t stay with the other creatures, she somehow knew it. But she didn’t find her own kind, there were so few of them. But one day however Puu happened upon what seemed to be an isolated, abandoned structure of some kind. It was a square made of tree trunks put on top of each other and had a triangle on the top. How strange. But it seemed habitable and Puu moved in under it. It was narrow and cosy and just right.
Little did Puu know that the structure wasn’t abandoned. Couple of months after Puu moved in an old human woman came to the structure. Immediately Puu felt disgust and decided she wouldn’t be driven out this time. So she gathered all her little courage and confronted the woman. In her own way. She went to the ceiling of the roof and whispered from a crack. Puu told the woman to leave or she would do terrible things to her. It was a bluff, of course. Puu could never do anything terrible.
But the woman wasn’t terrified. In fact, she seemed delighted. She called Puu a guardian of the house. Was this structure a house? That was how Puu realized she and the humans talked the same language. She wasn’t sure what to think about that. The woman’s reaction was so unexpected to Puu that she left her alone. But the woman kept talking to her about all kinds of things. And since it was a small house Puu ended up hearing everything. At first she tried to ignore her. But as months passed Puu started listening and eventually talking back. She asked questions, made comments and sometimes even smiled or laughed. Laughing was a new experience for her. She liked it.
Puu ended up telling the woman about her experiences, and the woman taught Puu that there were all kinds of humans, good and evil and everything between and she would have to judge them herself. Puu didn’t start liking humans, she just stopped hating them. But she liked the woman and believed her. Still her distrust towards humans in general didn’t go away.
Puu learned many other things from the woman and she learned about society, money, electricity and even cell phones. Puu didn’t understand most of them but she remembered them.
One day the woman collapsed. When Puu found her she again somehow knew that the woman was going to pass on. Neither of them had any family left and on the woman’s final moments Puu looked her in the eye and transferred her sorrow to her. She simply said.
“I will miss you too, my dear friend.”
And then she passed on. Puu cried for the first time in her life and she felt like she shed her whole life’s worth of tears. She was 9 years old at the time.
Puu buried the woman in the forest by a small growing pine. Her body could help the tree grow and bring forth new life. After that Puu kept living in the house. She kept it clean and in shape for many years. But then one day a group of younger humans came to the house. Puu hid, remembered the woman’s words and observed them. They smelled funny and weren’t steady on their feet. And then they invaded the house and started littering and destroying it. This Puu couldn’t forgive, judged them to be bad and decided to drive them out. Her anger and will to respect the woman’s memory gave her strength and she appeared to the humans in her tallest height. They were terrified when Puu simply grabbed them and threw them out of the house. They escaped as fast as they could and never came back. But what did come was a scout from the academy.
Puu had just cleaned the house up and returned to her normal pace when they came. They were a supernatural creature like Puu and that made it easier for her to trust them when they offered to take Puu to the academy. At first Puu refused, and it took the scout a long time to make Puu change her mind. But she did change her mind. Because even if Puu was afraid of the new she also wanted to see the world, wanted to see what was beyond this forest, this way of life. So after a year Puu finally agreed to come to the academy. She was 15 years old when she arrived to the academy and now she has been there for about a year. Every year on the woman’s death anniversary Puu returns to the house, cleans it up and leaves flowers to her grave. The pine she buried her next to has grown to be quite big already.

-Puu is a vegetarian
-Puu lives in the forest instead of the dorms