#rel and nisha see her as their mother and protector and that's approximately it

[kerra-and-company]

what i’m here for

The story of another Tree, deep in the Maguuma Jungle.

(I set out to write character posts for two of my sylvari OCs, and somehow I got inspired to write their Mother’s backstory in the process and thus flesh out another OC entirely, so here you go! Their character posts will arrive at some point in the near future.)

Warnings: implied/referenced suicide (at the very end of the fic)

AO3 Link

She awakens in the depths of the jungle.

She can sense life all around her, both like and unlike her, and power. So much power. The air feels heavy and suffocating, and she does her best to shut it out.

There are creatures all around her—smaller, and different, but alive. She wants for the first time. She wants to see them.

She manifests an avatar and opens her eyes to her world.

*****

The Itzel teach her language, speech, and the ways of their world.

The jungle provides, they say, and they call her the Tree.

She learns that she was found by Ranili, a mischievous child who ventured too far from their village. They planted her in a corner of the jungle far away from the beasts they call Mordrem and their master. Ranili’s children are her teachers today.

The dragon Mordremoth is her creator. Deep down inside, she knows this, an understanding as essential as the fact that she exists. Its power thrums somewhere just left of her core, telling her to give herself over to it. She tells the Itzel this, but they already knew.

“A seed found in this jungle?” laughs Zetl, the one who visits her most. “It would be much stranger if you were not of the dragon. But Ranili could tell when they found you—you are much more of Ameyalli than of the dragon. You are special, and so we help you.”

She nods, and accepts this, and learns all the Itzel are willing to teach her. She continues to shut out the dragon.

*****

She is not so certain that she is unique.

As her trunk and leaves grow, so does her mind, and she learns to reach into a strange place, full of possibilities and potential. When she tells the Itzel, they call it the Canopy.

The deeper she reaches into the Canopy, the more she feels. She thinks there are at least two others like her in the world, one younger than she and one older. She also feels—

Saplings—

Children.

Her older sister has children.

She’d considered it before, at least in the abstract. She’d met young Itzel and seen jungle stalker cubs, and she enjoys meeting and caring for young things. But this shocks her into practical consideration of the idea. She decides she likes it.

By this time, Zetl’s son Livi is her main visitor, and it is to Livi that she poses the idea.

Livi is more distrustful of her than Zetl had been, having lost friends to Mordrem, but vows to support her regardless. Livi’s only condition is that he be present for the emergence of the children, and she agrees.

*****

Creating children is more difficult than she’d anticipated, and it takes time.

She allows the Canopy to do some of the work, the magic swirling into two bodies. They will look a bit like her avatar does, but they will each be unique, with their own thoughts, their own minds, and their own personalities.

She imparts to them the knowledge of the Itzel but also grants them her own.

The jungle provides, but it also destroys. You are my two firstborn, and you inherit an unavoidable legacy.

I come from the jungle dragon, but I do not serve it. You must not, either.

It may try to turn you. It may ignore you. You may feel its presence at all times. I do not know, for I am not you. I have never been and will never be exactly like you, my children.

But I am strong, and you will be, too. You will have a future, and you will be yourselves. This I know with certainty.

I love you both so much. Never forget that.

*****

She allows her children to name themselves, still inside the Canopy.

Her first child—her son—chooses the name Relethen, the first letter a homage to his mother’s savior and the rest compiled from the names of jungle plants. He wants his name to sound unique, determined to be an individual from the start. He is curious and powerful and brave. He is so, so much smaller than she is, and she wonders if this was a mistake, to create beings this small and set them free in the world. She has to pause and remind herself that he is not much smaller than the Itzel, and that most creatures are smaller than she.

Her second child names xemself Nishannai, the sound, if not the length, vaguely reminiscent of Itzel names. Xe is strong, looking (in the Canopy) like the burning-blue flames at the center of the Itzel’s hottest fires. Xe feels everything down to xyr core, and it frightens her, a little, that her child is so vulnerable. Xe is noticeably larger than xyr brother, but still so much smaller than xyr mother that it hurts. And it is her second child that asks a question that she had somehow never remotely considered in all her years of life.

What do we call you?

She tells them both that Mother is just fine.

But don’t you have a name, Mother?

*****

She had never thought to choose one.

*****

Livi takes her children to the Itzel village, where they are taken in and welcomed by the villagers. They travel to the village on most days, but on other days, they stay with her.

Both children are determined to help their mother pick a name, and they go back and forth, bouncing ideas off each other. Some of them are Itzel names, some of them are simply words, and some of them are their own creations.

She finally picks a name—one of Nisha’s suggestions. It comes from the Itzel words for green and growing things, and it makes her happy.

*****

Some growing is harder. Rel begins to venture farther into the jungle, and Nisha stays away from her for longer and longer periods of time, learning to master swords and hammers and poison. But they both always come back.

She begins to ponder whether they would be safer outside the jungle. The trouble is that neither she nor the Itzel know exactly what lays beyond. The world might be entirely jungle, for all she knows.

But when she reaches into the Canopy, in the direction of her sisters, she can see impressions of tall cliffs covered in white and vast expanses of water that seem to stretch out forever and just-as-large expanses of pale golden dirt. None of these things are found in the jungle, the Itzel tell her.

The magic of the dragon weighs on her heart more and more each day. She cannot leave the jungle. She is rooted here. It is a part of her, and she is a part of it, as much as she also is different. But her children do not grow roots. They can walk away and be safe. Perhaps they will one day even find her siblings and their children—her younger sister has at least one child now too, she thinks.

She comes to a decision.

She calls her children to her.

*****

In her opinion, whatever is in charge of the universe, be it Mordremoth, the Itzel’s Ameyalli, or some other being, has a terrible sense of timing.

They are all arguing. Rel wishes to stay and protect her, while Livi and the other villagers support her desire for her children to leave. Nisha hangs off to the side, the tears in xyr eyes born from anger and pain and grief and resolve.

And just as she is about to intervene, to tell her son to stop being stubborn, just this once, and to leave her be, the magic presses in on her again, stronger than it ever has before. She, in her avatar, gasps with pain, and her family gathers around her.

She tells them what is happening. She knows it is the end.

Rel, her stubborn, brave, son, freezes in place, motionless. Nisha, on the other hand, is nothing but motion, pacing while asking what xe can do over and over and over again. Livi’s face twitches before solidifying into hard stone, and he motions his people back, nodding to her.

She smiles at her children and imparts one last lesson to them as she says goodbye.

*****

Her last act is one of sacrifice. She cuts herself off from the Canopy, cutting off the source of the magic corrupting her, cutting off her lifeblood. It ensures her death rather than her corruption, and it keeps her children safe just a little longer.

When she is recorded in history, years later, it is like this:

She was mother to Relethen and Nishannai, two of Tyria’s champions.

She was the Tree of the Depths, who fought an Elder Dragon as long as she could.

And her name was Viridi.