where drifting trees take root

Driftwood washed ashore the coast of Manta Carlos, carried along by the waves. Where normally they were chunks of ship and planks, one of them was vaguely human. Bits of grass grew on her form, and there were small cracks on her skin.

Ran found herself on the coast two days later, and the driftwood around her had dried. Her feet - how alien it felt to have feet! - attempted to push her a little farther up the beach. Her weak and unused arms found themselves fairly strong - enough to crawl her even further up, away from that choking brine.

Superfluous lungs coughed up saltwater, and small droplets of sap. It took the dryad the better part of half an hour to simply crawl her way three feet more across the coast.

She washed ashore at sunrise, and the sun was high by the time she clawed herself completely away from all the water to begin the proper process of drying in the daylight.

Past noon, her lungs were dry enough for her to voice out a few hoarse words, in complete gibberish.

Another hour passed. The waves lapped the shore, and Ran found herself finally coherent and dry enough to consider where she was. "ídel..." she said to no one, attempting to recall what the appropriate words to express herself would be in this time. She had encountered fragments of modern-day language before the breath of the earth exiled her from her old lands. It slowly came to her, and she simply moaned out a single word: "Empty..."

More time passed. It was afternoon, and she found herself content by the clear sunlight. Trying to remember what else she was capable of before wandering off to discover her place, Ran brought to mind an ancient melody. With her arms around her knees on the coastline, she closed her eyes and began to sing.

A slow dirge, almost as if she were at a funeral, escaped her lips and rang throughout the coastline. Ran recalled its powers as she sang its unintelligible words, and thought nothing of it. The place was empty as far as her eyes and ears could see and hear.

Ran was alone, in a foreign world that she knew nothing of.

But, for the first time, she was truly alive.

@Kaya

A voice had joined the tree's. The voice cut through the seamless melody, suddenly stopping it short. Currently too weak to resist any violence, Ran attempted to parse the words. There were some familiar thoughts in those words, but to her they might as well be half-gibberish. Her sensibilities had not yet adjusted to modern language properly.

However, certain bits of thought could be very easily understood, regardless of linguistic mastery.

"Not... hurt. Not... fight."

She raised her arms slowly, cautiously. Ran's voice was low and slow, attempting to ensure that what few words she currently recalled could be comprehensible.

With her arms raised in a gesture of peace, she uttered to whatever animals would hear her voice. "సహాయం - అర్ధంకాలేదు - సురక్షితం?"

Ran hoped that some creature would hear her query and respond fittingly, but the only ones that did - a seagull in passing - only responded with the avian equivalent of a shrug, unaware if this person in front of her was harmless or not.

A small amount of panic began to form in Ran's yet unsettled mind. Considering her options suggested too many unknowns for a retreat or a preventive attack. With the options she had decreasing and decreasing in amount, Ran settled into the sand with her arms still raised, hoping to stall out until she could determine her safety or the aura of lethargy around her provided her respite.

A new melody. One more peaceful than the dirges and litanies Ran's past provide for her, one seemingly untainted, gentle. She let the song play for a few seconds before her hands went down, the expression on her face subtly twisting into intrigue and curiosity.

Jaw agape, Ran tilted her head to the right and squinted, a dog having heard a cat's meow for the first time. She leaned in closer, pulled back, tilted in the other direction, and began trying to look at Vanessa from all angles she could reach. "Song... new song? Not know..."

It struck her that she had never heard any other sing aside from herself, as the song shifted tune to something more morose. Ran did not know what decided the content of songs outside of her own small bubble, nor did she know the concepts of empathy and sympathy. The gesture of concern did not affect her, as she only half-understood it. A finger on her earthen skin gave her some comfort, as it was not an outright gesture of hostility.

Not knowing how to respond, she copied Vanessa, placing her own finger on the same spot on one of Vanessa's arms, and sang her own version of that morose melody a single beat behind, as if she were the echo to Vanessa's song.