A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 35: Domestic

All the furniture was made from braided living wood that came directly from the ground or the walls. There were many blankets and pillows to make the place look warm and comfortable. By far the most normal-looking and inviting room was the nursery. Hours must have been spent there embroidering the blankets and rugs. There was no dust in sight there, unlike in the tainted rooms.

It was a very nice home, he had to admit. Once Caleldir had even dreamed about settling down in such a place, taking his lovely wife to his side, and raising a large family of daughters, and if he was very fortunate, a son as well. He would work on his books and research, and eat his wife's cooking... His eyes glazed over thinking about that long ago, pleasant dream. It was just a dream, of course. A futile dream. No, his path led elsewhere.

Although the complexities of interpersonal relationships generally escaped him, Caleldir was quite good at deciphering arcane problems. He walked into the tainted space, which caused the tree to groan out a warning. But it didn't stop him, only shuddered as if it had a thousand spiders skittering across its skin. So, he soon began to, at least vaguely, understand what the tree wanted: for him to investigate the tainted portions of it, lower down, nearer to the roots. Just that told him a little about the nature of the corruption: that it was in the ground, and spread upwards.

Everything on that side of the tree was very, very dusty. Clearly no one had stepped into the tainted side of the tree for decades if not centuries. Growths of purple caplike fungus speckled the interwoven branches that made up every solid surface. It also sort of... squished as he walked. It inflated back to its original shape after his weight left it. The only footprints he left permanently were those in the dust. The ground still seemed stable enough that it would hold most medium creatures without any threat of giving in. No easy escape that way.

He knelt on the tainted floor of the living room, feeling the ground. "I am about to use some magic." He explained to the tree. "Just some divination and healing spells, to diagnose the disease and try to work on a cure. Will you let me?"

As it had before, the tree went several long moments before it seemed to respond. Perhaps it needed time to understand his words and intentions. Or maybe it just needed some time to think. When it finally made noise this time, it was a sort of sighing creak – a higher-pitched sound that its normal 'vocalizations' with lots of rustling of leaves. The noise was eager, or possibly pleading. Or it had just been the wind. There was always that possibility. Whatever it was, no branches came up to prevent Caleldir as he knelt. It was still even after the moment he took to gather his power and began channeling a few minor magics.

Caleldir was able to pick up several things. One was that the fungus that grew on the tainted side of the tree held a sort of malevolence of its own. The space around each cluster was particularly sickly and cracked. Each growth gave the tree a moderate amount of discomfort. The worst discomfort by far was the rot in its roots. It wasn't easily seen, but higher parts of the tree were completely dead because of this. It had a sort of combination of root and heart rot: a death sentence in and of itself to any non-magical oak without arcane intervention. This particular infection was both magical and aggressive which was what gave everything affected its purple hue and made the fungal growths persistent. They would normally be shades of brown and white and drop off after a few weeks. The ground wasn't covered with the dried material, so all the visible clusters must have grown there before abruptly halting their natural progression.

It was a wonder the tree still lived at all. Then again, Naliira and her tree had been extremely old and powerful before the curse took place. But now... if it were just a little more sickly, or perhaps given enough time, it would be downright structurally unsound. Not a place to raise children despite the dryad's desperation for them.

Caleldir clicked his tongue. After an exhausting series of every divination spell that he knew, and he knew a rather large number of them, given that his career was best described as 'magical librarian', he had learned quite a lot about the infection. Most of it was rather obvious, to be fair, but to have his suspicions confirmed and then expounded upon was still quite useful. Also, the tree seemed to understand him, which was helpful as well. After kneeling for quite awhile, he stood up and returned to the dining room to sit down and think, which he did for nearly an hour.

"My sincere sympathies." He said to the tree, breaking his silence at last. "Your rot is deep, and beyond my ability to cure. I may, however, be able to cauterize it somewhat. If you have any writing materials and copper, I can sketch forth a complicated series of sigils that will create a green life-fire that will burn away only the disease and heal the wood around it. That should reverse a few centuries of decay, restore the use of most above ground locations, and return a little bit of your dryad's sanity. But I will need a lot of copper dust, and about a week to work to really get the cure. Starting tomorrow, as I am now absolutely exhausted. Where should I sleep?"

The tree listened in silence – aside from the actual wind that rustled its leaves like inhaled and exhaled breath. It took even longer than before to make its version of a response. It was similar to an extremely long yet gentle gust of wind, a sigh. Then it was unresponsive for quite a bit longer. It either had no response or did not know how to articulate and answer for Caleldir's request for writing materials and copper, neither did it have an answer for where he should sleep. The latter, at least, seemed obvious. The tree had so far acted just as eager as its dryad for Caleldir to act as husband towards her whether or not he was husband in truth.

After waiting for the tree's reply, Caleldir's shoulders sank. Of course. It was a tree. Where was a tree going to get copper dust and paper? Perhaps he could talk Naliira into getting him that sort of thing later. For now though, he was genuinely exhausted. "A pity. Well, I can try to find something else to at least slightly relieve the symptoms..." he muttered to himself.

Naliira whined and shifted in her sleep. Darkness fell over the modest rooms of the treehouse, though it was not yet time for the sun to set. The dryad's dreams must have caused a shadow as dark as her mind over to fall over her living space. There was pain on her face, and inaudible mumbling at her lips. Her hair even began to go corrupt as if the pain itself bled into her and stained her beautiful features. She curled and shivered, but still seemed fast asleep.

The tree groaned at its dryad's distress. It was worried enough to physically act in the world instead of just vocalize as it had been doing to communicate. A branch snaked from the ground to push Caleldir towards the resting Naliira with gentle yet persistent force. Soon he found himself - not entirely unwillingly - on the bed next to Naliira. Oh well. He had already had sex with her twice. No sense getting squeamish about sleeping in the same bed. So, he shrugged and lay down, closing his eyes.

The dryad's troubled dreams seemed to fade when Caleldir joined her on the bed. She made a small, happy noise and curled up with him as tightly as she could. It was the desperate, possessive grasp of one who had been forced to sleep alone for far too long. Still asleep, she pressed soft lips against his shoulder before she settled down into deeper slumber. The tree around them shifted and sighed in satisfaction. To tree and dryad, all was becoming right with the world again. But it was a long time before Caleldir could drift off to sleep. Really, if he was not already bound to another, he would be willing to stay here, work to sure her madness, and start a family. Besides the life-threatening rot and cursed corruption, it really was a great place to settle down, and her mixture of vulnerability and power was quite alluring. But he was loyal to another, and he could not stay here. He would have to abandon the poor madwoman. That would be a very hard thing to do, but it had to be done.

It was a good three or four hours before Naliira's eyes fluttered open to the naturally darkening world. The sun shone low in the sky and was just beginning to light the treehouse in fiery reds and oranges. A contented smile crossed her face upon seeing her sleeping companion bathed in the light that danced and shifted with every movement of the white curtains hung on the outer walls of her bedroom.

Seeing that his eyes had opened as well, she lifted herself enough to kiss the underside of Caleldir's chin before she nuzzled her nose into the crook of his neck. A delicate hand came up to caress the other side of his face. "Care to watch the sunset with me, my love? Wouldn't it be wonderful to make love in its light?" She asked with a tone both warm and affectionate. Her words were punctuated by a sigh as she had another wonderful thought; "And then underneath the stars we can grow our family."

Making love under sunset, then making children under the starlight? The dryad seemed to nearly have Althaia levels of libido, which was not surprising, given that dryads were a type of nymph. "I would like to watch the sunset." He said slowly. If they went outside, perhaps he would be able to escape. He could not cure her here. She would forgive him once he healed her curse, he was sure. "After that, we shall see what the night may hold."

She sat up with a smile like a sunrise of joy at his seeming acceptance of her plans for the night. Her eyes sparkled with the pleasure of it. Naliira's level of happiness had the unfortunate hint of the manic due to her slightly-too-widened eyes and smile that quickly grew toothy. Her expression could be likened to Ashyr's face whenever she knew that death was in the cards – like the time they'd fought the kilted men and giant woman who had tried to rob them. The dryad got off of the bed entirely and grabbed Caleldir by the hand in her strong and gentle grip. She pulled him over to where one of the curtains flapped in the evening breeze. Beyond was a small balcony loosely surrounded with branches to keep someone from falling (or jumping.) But when she approached, the branches shifted and moved out of the way to reveal the sights of the land uninhibited. It must have been a glorious view of the treetops before everything went wrong. Now it was merely sickness. There were several other trees that were extraordinarily tall, but none were of the same height as Naliira's. All were either more decayed or just skeletons of what they once were.

Naliira skimmed over the blighted forest with a blank, unseeing expression. It was the sun and sky that she truly looked at: the only things in sight that even gods and demons could not curse. She pressed and leaned slightly over the woven branch railing of the balcony. "Isn't it beautiful, the sun? I don't know why, but I feel so... fulfilled when I feel it on my face." She turned a soft smile towards Caleldir.

The view was about what he expected. Yep. This was old Stone-Oak herself, or she had been, before the curse. The old dryad had been ancient when civilization was young. And now she was a bare shadow of her former self. A sigh of sadness escaped from his lips. "Naliira, I am sorry." He said gently. "But you are sick, and I cannot cure you by indulging your fantasies, no matter how pleasant they are."

Her smile froze and faltered a little when Caleldir apologized to her. It was clear by her face that she didn't quite understood what he meant. She wasn't sick. Of course she wasn't sick. Unless, of course, one could call desperate loneliness a sickness. There could be only one cure for that, by the dryad's estimation, and that was the continued presence of loved ones.

"I promise that I will return when I have the means to treat you." And with that, he attempted to hurl himself from the balcony.

"No!" She shrieked in fearful startlement. Her almost unnaturally long fingers reached out to try to catch him, to save him. He had caught her so off-guard, however, that she could not catch him in time. "Husband!"

The old oak, however, had plenty of time to react. Branches whipped out from the treehouse in what must have been an increasingly familiar scene. They caught and gripped Caleldir before he could hit the ground. It was not at all a gentle rescue. Those branches gripped with bone breaking firmness that crushed wrists and ankles and caused ribs to creak from too much pressure. It was as if the tree itself was angry and was trying to bring him punishment. It had, after all, warned him on several occasions. He should have know that he wouldn't be able to escape so easily.

"I am sorry!" He gasped, pleading with the tree. "I really do want to help you, but I cannot cure your rot from the inside without proper tools! If you want the rot gone, let me go!"

His words were futile, of course; branches pulled him back up to the balcony from whence he came. They dropped him in front of Naliira, who had tearfully collapsed to her hands and knees. Then they covered every inch of the entire outside of the living space and blocked out almost all light. Caleldir would not be able to pull that stunt again. Somehow, cutting off the sunset only intensified the guilt that he felt.

He looked up at the crying Naliira. Well, he had certainly screwed that one up. He should have used fire, or a weapon, or something to try to escape from the tree, but the rapidity of its reflexes utterly surprised him. "I would have returned." He said morosely, more to himself than the dryad. "I cannot cure a mad dryad without any tools!" He shook his head sadly. He was trapped in a prison that made him feel guilty for even trying to escape. He wanted to comfort the grieving woman, but he felt helpless. How could he help her when he could not even get her to realize that she lived in a rotting tree?

"I am not mad!" The dryad protested. Tears flowed like rain from her eyes. "It is you who tries to stab himself and jumps out of trees and claims no memory of me and.. and..." Her voice trailed off in broken sobs. She hunched over herself on her knees in a sort of upright curl. The curtain of her somewhat rotted green hair fell around her face to hide the ugly grief written on her features. "And calls me a dryad when I'm so obviously not."

The tree let out its own groan of agony after she spoke. The noise was punctuated by worrisome clicking and shuddering as if the whole thing was ready to fall. It held in the end, and then went quiet.

A long sigh left Caleldir's breath. "I remember you quite well, Naliira Ynyilwen Stone-Oak. I met you once, long, long ago, back before you went mad and thought yourself an elf, back when you were queen of the dryads. I ame here with your Daughter, Fedwyn Arsellia Birchborn!" He looked at her keenly, trying to see if perhaps some glimmer of recognition appeared in her eyes. "But though we met, we were never wed! Please, believe me! Does not your head feel fuzzy? Does not your world seem to make little sense? You live in a tree that responds to your subconscious wishes! You are a dryad! An immortal, beautiful dryad of enormous power, not something so ordinary as a wood-elf!" He fell silent, shaking his head. It was useless. The poor woman was as crazy as the rest of this cursed land. Even crazier than Goelon Duvainor.

Her tear stained eyes narrowed at him when he began to explain to her who she was. She was apparently trying to wrap her head around the concept, though whether she was trying to understand his perceived madness or her own was unclear. Naliira didn't remember any of that happening. She had not had a daughter, or why would she be so alone? And how could she been queen? What would she be queen of? The lonely forest? No, it was too fantastical to believe. The end result of her thoughts was a look of pity towards him. But there were tears again, and this time they weren't for his sake. "I... I am a druid, and a wood elf. Of course the tree will sometimes do as I wish." Though that didn't explain the level of sentience the oak tree seemed to have. There were quite a few things that Naliira simply refused to see. "It is what I have always been, and always will be." A look of stubbornness crossed her features for a moment. "I should have rescued you sooner, my darling husband. They really have driven you insane with their darkness." She looked up at him with her tear-ravaged face. One of her arms rose and brushed against his arm. "But... but if it's tools that you think you so desperately need... I can find some for you. You must stay here, though. You are a danger to yourself, I fear." Apparently she'd forgotten his earlier explanation that it was difficult if not impossible to truly kill himself. That didn't fit into whatever fantasy of him she held in her mind.

A glimmer entered his eyes. "Oh yes! I needed to go get some paper, water, copper dust, and an ink-pen. If I have these supplies, then my most pressing reason for leaving will be gone. And I was not trying to kill myself: I can use the feather-fall spell."

"I will try to retrieve these things for you, though I do not know where to find copper dust." She responded, and all confusion and stubbornness abruptly drained from her face. It was replaced by the patronizing smile one might hold for a child or mentally disabled person. This was apparently the way forward, so she would entertain his need for such, silly, harmless-seeming objects. She ignored his comment about using a feather-fall spell.

"Copper? Copper is quite common around herr." Caleldir assured the dryad. "Just bring me anything made out of mostly pure copper, and I can make my own dust." She seemed to be taking pity on him, which, while annoying, was not so bad. He could use it to his advantage: getting her to bring him the items he needed to try to restore at least a little of her connection to her tree. Although, if Ashyr and Selene were finding his position through scrying, they would probably find him before he made much progress on that front. But even if he was rescued before he made a noticeable dent in her insanity, at least getting to her run around grabbing copper coins for him would keep her from trying to wring children from his loins.

"Oh. Okay. That doesn't sound too hard, then." She sniffled a little and wiped away leftover tears from her face. Naliira turned more or less back to 'normal' by the time she was done – as if she hadn't spent any time crying that day. It probably helped that her skin was not quite the flesh of elves and men. Her patronizing smile turned genuine and loving for a moment. Then she leaned forward to give Caleldir a rather chaste kiss for what he was used to. "We'll make you better, don't worry."

"Yes... make me better..." Caleldir said with irony in his tone. Fortunately, the dryad was not all that perceptive nor good at inferring things. The tree seemed far more observant than its mad mistress. "Maybe we will." He said to the departing dryad.

The dryad turned to exit the room, but paused to look back at him with a bit of the demure in her features. "Maybe, when I get back, we can keep working on that child?" She didn't wait for his answer for fear of what it might be. On light feat she danced out of the room and straight into the trunk of the old oak tree. Her form melded with the rough surface, but her dress merely hit it and crumpled to the floor. Then all evidence of her was gone aside from that puddle of white cloth.

His feelings on having sex with her were about as mixed as before. It was clearly not doing any good for him to try to resist her: her tree was far too powerful to even hope to resist. All his attempts at rebuffing her advances only ended in physical pain for him, and emotional pain for her. Perhaps it was a better idea not to resist her, but simply try to distract her. Or just give in, because he had already been inside the woman twice, and he could not take that back. "Please hurry and find me, House Duskhaven." He muttered. "Before I give a mad dryad who should not have any more children, children."