Chapter Text
A’alish stood at the edge of the gate staring into the violet magic that whirled within it. He had used the gates before, but they always came with a deep trepidation. Like jumping from a cliff into deep water merely feet away from the rocks. Sieran took his hand.
“This one only goes to Lion’s Arch. From there we can go to the Grove.”
With a nod, he stepped through it.
There was only a moment, a flash of time, between the Priory and Lion’s Arch, but in that moment he felt as though eternity passed through him. His dread, his doubts, his desire to flee all welled up inside of him, but Sieran’s grip on his hand was firm. She tugged him across the boardwalk of the port city and towards another set of violet gates.
“If you really haven’t been home in a decade, you’ll be in for a treat. Things have really exploded. It’s a city in its own right!”
Despite her enthusiasm, or perhaps because of it, he remained quiet. A city of Sylvari did not appeal to him. It sounded overwhelming. Ten years of newborns just ready to pry into his business and look at him with unfettered curiosity. He adjusted his helmet and nodded again.
He didn’t have time to feel dread when he stepped through the gate with Sieran again. The warm browns of the dock vanished into brilliant greens and blues, the sounds of ships and cargo replaced with laughter and bird song. A’alish felt like he was twisted out of shape. Like something was pulling on him and crushing him all at once-- he didn’t belong there. He didn’t belong, and he couldn’t breathe.
His world didn’t go dark so much as it... disappeared. He vaguely registered Sieran say something and grab his wrist, but something took over for him. His body moved of its own accord. When someone spoke to him, it was distant and mangled like he was deep under water and they were shouting above him. Fingers pried at his fist, and he realized Sieran was trying to get him to loosen his grip. He let her go entirely.
“How do we get to the Pale Tree?” He could hear himself perfectly fine.
“She knows we’re coming.” Sieran’s voice had somehow cut through the fog, but his mind was still checked out.
“Ok.”
She took his hand again and began to lead him through the crowd, though this time A’alish barely recognized the people around him. They were faceles to him. Actors in a painting, and he was a fly buzzing around in the skull of a person. And then, somehow, they were in the boughs of the Pale Tree high above the Grove. He didn’t question it. He felt like he was in a stupor. It was a sensation he was familiar with.
“Llewellyn!” A woman’s voice broke his stupor, and his stomach roiled with rage.
“That! Is not my name!” He bellowed, suddenly aware of his surroundings, of the avatar of the Pale Tree standing before him and Sieran beside him. The Pale Tree stopped with her hand outstretched.
“My son...” She took another step towards him, her guards ready to protect this embodiment, then she touched his helmet. And he let her. He stood there, tears rolling down his face as his mother undid the jaw strap and removed his mask. The Pale Tree blinked.
“I have found you at last...” Relief and remorse flooded her features. “Your sister came to me long ago... But I could not find you in the Dream. Are you..?” Nightmare? The question hung unfinished in the air.
“I’ve never been a part of the Dream. If I’m anything... It's by circumstance only. Not by choice.” He felt like he was crumbling. Like he was being laid bare with all of his broken pieces exposed to the wind. He didn’t Dream. His body was wrong. The Pale Tree couldn’t even reach him herself. His sister, whoever that was, had already sought help, but could he even be helped?
“My son... My dear child... Will you let me take this burden from you?” Her hands were on his face, holding him.
“How..? How could you even begin?”
“By giving you your body back. Go to my roots, my son. Deep into the water, and I will bring you into my arms, into the Dream where you have always belonged.”
A’alish looked past the branches to the world below, but he could not see the ground. He felt himself being pulled further into that mist of dissociation, and he let it happen. Those around him grew distant once more like he’d been submerged below the ocean’s surface with the sounds of the world above muffled and incomprehensible, but he must have agreed. He must have said something, as a hand took his own and led him--
To the waters below the Pale Tree. Someone undid the straps at his back and gently pulled the armor from him where he could not reach. His sabatons, his boots below, his pants, and shirt he all removed himself. When he stood naked at the edge of the water, he felt cold and alone. The Grove was filled with people, and no one seemed to pay him any mind. Either they didn’t care, or a naked sylvari taking a dip at the roots was normal-- and as if on cue, three stark naked newborns charged past him and dove into the deep, clear water.
With a shaky sigh, he looked back to see Sieran wave weakly at him.
“It’ll be OK. It’ll be more than OK. You’re coming home.” She smiled, and he steeled himself against his own reservations. Home was a choice. He felt like an invader.
The water was cool, comfortably so, against his feet and ankles. There was nothing special or magical about the water itself, but as he drew nearer the roots of the Pale Tree, he felt a call. Completely submerged, with the world around him truly muted, he curled up in her roots like a child in his mother’s arms. And then he slept. And then he Dreamed.
He was looking at the gouged out river with the fractured reflections in the barren, muddy snowscape of his previous dream. But this time there were no faces in the water. Not even his own. He turned from the water hoping that, if this was a dream, he might find the ocean of stars once again, but as he walked through the mud, he found himself becoming more lost and less lucid.
A dull ache radiated from his hips and spine through his shoulders and bones, and he thought to himself, Ah! The screwdriver! It made perfect sense. Clearly the pain was coming from... He paused and gave it thought. A screwdriver made no sense. But then he was rooted to the ground, his body abandoning its humanoid shape and stretching through the earth beneath him, cracking it and breaking it into chunks.
The ocean is below. He drove himself into the ground, digging through it and plowing through rocks. He was no longer a bipedal creature but a massive system of roots and vines strangling the world below him desperate to find that ocean--
A star adrift among countless others. Marbles hanging in the void. Lights blinking in the sky. He could not see himself, but he could feel himself reaching out, expanding, becoming more than just a lonely ship in the night. He brushed something, someone else’s wandering tendril, and felt their quiet, muted greeting. He could be alone here, if he wanted, but he didn’t have to be.
He shifted between Dreaming and dreaming, and when he felt he might never be alone again, he awoke, pulling off roots that had grown over him and freeing himself. He hadn’t wanted that intense overwhelming connection, but he could control it. Limit it. Reach out to it now. But when he thought of community... roots still clung to him, and when he tried to pull them off of his head, he was met with pain, yet he was free to leave. Nothing bound him to the Pale Tree.
A’alish climbed up the grassy bank and startled when he saw his hand. It was still grey, in parts, but new bark was growing under it, shedding the old grey oak like a lizard slowly shedding its skin. Yellow splintered through like stretch marks in flesh, and the roots that had hung from his head... They were willow branches. Delicate, flowing, beautiful. He darted back to look at his reflection, to see the strange shift from the grey woman to this bright man. It wasn’t a gradual or gentle transition-- parts of her were still all over him. Most of him was still grey barked, but his face was beginning to show through. He was beginning to show through. His eyes... were yellow. And when he stood, he felt far taller than he had any right to be.
A young sylvari hanging by the waterside was staring at him in awe. When she caught his eye, she whispered, “Did you change your mind too? My brother thinks he picked wrong, but he doesn’t know.”
“Yes.” He smiled. His voice had deepened dramatically. It resonated in his chest. “I think I did.”
His return to the Priory was without warning or fanfare. He was still visibly the grey sylvari who had come to them in the summer prior, but it was the end of the next autumn when he returned. He’d spent nearly a year in the Pale Tree’s embrace, and he finally felt as though he was becoming himself. He stopped by the blacksmith, and the charr nearly choked when she saw him. Handing her the armor in a bag, he said, “I don’t think this fits me quite right. Is there anything you could do about that?”
“I could make you new armor...” She gawked at him. “You’re... big. Too big for that to be salvageable.” She pointed at the armor then held her hands apart, one at A’alish’s current height and the other lower down towards his stomach. “What does this... why are you big?”
“I was always supposed to be big.” He grinned, teeth flashing. Tall, broad shouldered, and beautiful, he thought. The last one was still a work in progress. “Let’s start over, my name is A’alish, and I am here to inquire about employment. There was a misunderstanding the last time I was here, but I have since made the effort to clear that up.”
“You mean you being a man?” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m glad you cleared that up. You are a man, right?”
“Yes.” He narrowed his eyes.
“No no, don’t get that way with me. There’s more to it than just ‘man’ and ‘woman’. Let me measure you before you run off. If you’re going to join us properly, Gixx’s going to want to talk to you if you’re joining on, but Thurston will be ecstatic to see you. The last time he was that mopey was when his niece didn’t want to sit on his shoulders any more.”
“Niece?”
“Old guildmember’s kid. Now come here.” She wielded her measuring tape like a weapon. The last time she measured him wasn’t humiliating, but it wasn’t comfortable either. This time he felt proud, at ease, as she held the tape against his shoulders and marked the measurements down. He was building his confidence, steeling himself against what might be an emotional reunion to come. He couldn’t tell what sort of a reunion he wanted with Thurston, though he had long since decided he hoped for a calm welcome from Sieran, if that was possible. Nodding to the blacksmith and leaving his old armor behind, he turned to the Priory.
It had been his intention to knock on Thurston’s door with a confident rap, but as his knuckles collided with the wood he was struck with that same trepidation, and the sound came out as regretful. Strangled. He winced, but before he could try again he heard a warm voice call out, “Come in!”
He opened the door to Thurston sitting at the desk glaring at a stack of papers and his husband sitting on half of them. Rory, the man made of sunshine and wearing a lopsided grin, leaned over to his husband and whispered something. The Magister looked up, his glare falling from his features into something that looked more like fear or shock.
“A’alish!” He scrambled around his desk and stopped with his hands hovering just over the sylvari’s shoulders. A’alish leaned forward into Thurston’s hands briefly before pulling away again.
“Magister Rowell, I would like to inquire about a position with the Priory. It has been the source of my most rewarding work yet.”
“Of course, son. Of course. Welcome home.”
Home... Home was a choice.
“It’s good to be back.”
And he had made his.