Whispering Oaks

Alana listened with interest as Ren chatted away. A thought tugged at her mind, vaguely remembering something she had to do today. She paused in her walking for a moment, feeling that all important notion tugging at the back of her mind. Talking had sure passed up a lot of time and suddenly she remembered.

Stumbling off into the brush at the side Alana felt the soil underneath her feet and knew this was a good place. She hated running off like that in a conversation, especially if it was one of the few you had that didn't consist of a tree and yourself. With a small shiver she felt her feet burrowing deep into the ground, stretching out and becoming roots. Her arms shot up into the sky and elongated into branches. Her hair got longer and spread into leaves that drooped down to where her legs had once been.

Where Alana the landwalker once stood, now a graceful willow tree stretched her boughs to the sky. In her tree mind she was uncapable of spoken words, but she found it easy to send picture messagese to people near her. She sighed once more, cursing the fact that she had to go through this transformation. It was a definite conversation stopper, that was for sure.

'Hello Little Sister.' One of the neighbouring Maples greeted her.

Alana could sense, rather then see, Ren coming towards her. It was surprising, most people couldn't tell when she transformed. But she did guess that a willow looked a little out of place in between all of the birch and oak trees. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that it was a little weird.

She listened carefully to his question and moved her branches slowly in answer. Carefully she compiled some memory pictures of her transformation and sent them to him, hoping that would answer some of his questions. For as long as she could remember every fifteenth day she ran to the nearest patch of soil and became a tree. In the beginning she had been a mere sapling and it was easier to disguise herself in her backyard. Somehow she figured that her mother suspected something.

Her mind went to a memory of the first time she couldn't find soil in time. They had been visiting family in the desert and she had the urge to transform. Unable to find a suitable spot of soil she had loingered between forms and passed out. She awoke to the soil under her roots and had always wondered how she got there. After that she had been careful to keep it a secret from most people, as a lot were frightened by it.

Alana let out a sigh that rustled her leaves and thought about what to send him. She finally sent him a picture of a clock with it's hands at 2:30 and then at 3:00.

'Thirty minutes, way to long for me.' She thought to herself and the maple chuckled. Of course it was funny for him. The whole thought of a landwalker becoming a tree was funny for a lot of them. It had been so long since a nymph had visited these parts.

'Well the worst part is it's so boring.' She could feel herself pouting though her tree form showed nothing. She hadn't even come close to mastering what the nymphs of old could do. They were sometimes able to project their faces into the gnarled wood of their trunks. Eventually they learned to speak as they did in human form.

But no, she was stuck to the fate of sitting silently and scaring off any dog who came to near. 'It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it!' Apache always told her. Yeah right, it was a blast...

Alana thought for a moment before shaking her branches as a 'no'. In all her years of changing she couldn't remember any time being shorter, unless you count the one where there was a forest fire. SHe had been forced to change back and run as fast as she could only to pass out somewhere else to begin changing again. That has been when she discovered her half form, and it wasn't pretty.

She sighed inwardly, judging that about twenty-nine minutes had gone by. The aftershock of transforming was that she was a little dizzy afterwards and tended to stumble around until she got the feel for her legs again. But she could live with that. Rustling her leaves did nothing to amuse her so she turned to the power that she was getting from the soil and sun.

As the last minute ticked down she could feel her limbs shortening and turning back into arms and legs. Her roots relinquished their hold on the soil and her leaves shortened back into hair. There was no more Willow tree and Alana stumbled around dizzily, resting her head on the maple that had spoken to her. The world around her spun, and it was all she could do to not fall over. She only had to wait for the dizzy spell to pass now.

"Yeah, fine. Sorry, I just get a little dizzy afterwards." She moved away from the tree lest she fell in and turned to cast a sideways look at Ren. "You're awfully gallant for someone who's sick. And towards a perfect stranger too." Giving him a small smile she stood, the dizzy spell clearing. "But really, I'm fine. It's gone now. Sorry to make you wait in the cold, but you didn't hafta wait for me to change back."