Chapter Text
Notch cut. Relief cut. Cut along the slant of the branch collar. Hunter hefted the freshly pruned-off palistrom limb over his shoulders. Once the limb was cut down into more manageable pieces, he'd be able to use it for carving.
The palistrom grove had been doing quite well under the gentle care and occasional pruning of Dell Clawthorne and the Bat Queen, as well as Hunter himself. Although palistrom trees were still rare on the Boiling Isles, their recovery didn't seem so far away anymore. The popularity of Hunter's intricately carved palismen certainly didn't hurt the public support for palistrom conservation efforts.
Hunter tied the branch to a few other felled limbs before setting them off to float down the irrigation stream that ran through the middle of the grove, which would take the timber down to his workshop. Hunter leaned down and cupped his hands in the stream to scoop up a drink of water before standing up and stretching. It had been a very productive day, and he was ready to head back home for the evening.
"Waffle!" Hunter called. "Time to go!"
Hunter heard the telltale scream of a blue jay and turned to see Waffle standing at attention on one of the lower branches of a palistrom tree.
"Come on, let's get going," Hunter said, but Waffle stayed right where she was, staring off into the grove.
"Waffle! ...Waffle?" Waffle turned to look at Hunter and let out another jeer call before looking back into the grove, almost pointing him towards something. Hunter knew better than to ignore when a palisman was trying to tell him something, and moved quickly to go see what Waffle was alerting him about. As soon as he was within arm's reach, Waffle flew off, and Hunter had to run to follow her.
Waffle led Hunter to the edge of the palistrom grove before she finally stopped and landed in front of one of the trees, although she seemed to make a point of not landing on the tree. Hunter paused to catch his breath before coming forward to get a closer look at the tree.
The tree looked... off, to say the least. Its bark was cracked in multiple places and it was leaning heavily to one side, not at all like the strong, straight trees throughout the rest of the grove. The leaves on one side were dead, hanging off the branches like a bunch of red flags. It was clearly very sick, and Hunter was surprised that nobody had noticed this earlier. He looked around, but the rest of the trees seemed perfectly fine.
Hunter gently scooped up Waffle and placed her on his shoulder. He hoped that this was just a one-off problem with an already damaged tree, but it needed to be checked out. Even one dead tree would be a loss for the palistrom species.