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In the past, unknowable: a powerful longing; a pollen heart calling out; a soul travelling through branches and leaves.
In the past, hidden: she spread her seed, and so she created the vines and the stone and the bugs and her loyal guardian, her Seth.
In the past, obscured: a life with others; training with a pin and a shield, a once-in-a-lifetime talent; and still—a feeling of otherness, like he came from a different land.
In the past, a moment lasting until the end of the earth: she caresses his head as he lays in her lap, voice soft, “All lost come to me, eventually—my branches and roots reach even the most distant lives… You, too, a shape of a life, now unlost with me. A protector for others, to help the world grow, to help more shapes find their place.” The exact words don't make sense, but the meaning seeps into his shell and his soul. He is to guard, to protect, to remember; forever, eternally.
In the present:
The scenery around the shrine has not changed in years, it feels like, even if Seth knows that the branches have only reached further and further throughout the long years near the lake, that the moss has been hiding the solid rock and roots have grown over bug-made structures.
But the world still feels still and silent, he himself a part of an unmoving landscape.
“So what? You are to sit here all eternity?” Lace asks, legs crossed as she sits on the path in front of him. “Does that fate not drive you mad?”
She seems genuinely confused—mildly infuriated with his contentness, even—but he has nothing to say. He will do what he must, until he can’t anymore.
In the past:
He wakes up—is born—beside a lake. Still water caresses his ankles as he rises to his feet and looks around. The gorgeous branches and vines run through the cave of his birthplace.
There are bodies here, but he doesn’t know who they belong to, and he doesn’t find himself unnerved by them. A pin lies next to him. The path ahead is dangerous, he quickly deduces from the quakes, so he takes it. It fits in his claw like it belongs there.
In the present:
Pharloom is being rebuilt. With the black threads and the quakes gone, the life returns to normal, and Seth is slowly learning what that is: waking up in the mornings, hunting and foraging, teaching little ones whatever he can however best he can, watching over the even littler ones, drinking brew with Grishkin and Varga, training with Vog. Days are filled with motion and new things and love—and it’s strange, fleas were friendly and nice but they didn’t like outsiders, even the kind ones like Hornet. What did they see in him?
Fleamaster Mooshka gifts him a cloak that resembles a flea’s wings, and then it never leaves Seth’s shoulders. The weight on his back is both a sign of belonging and a strangely familiar comfort.
When Hornet sees him with the cloak on, she calls him ‘a proper flea’. The journey to Fleatopia is a dangerous one, even now, so Seth does not hold a grudge about her visiting so rarely. When she does, it’s an event—she’s swarmed by the littles, showered with questions and praises by adults, given little trinkets and gifts. Seth does not have to give much of his own, but Hornet does not mind it, instead asking him to duel her.
It’s strange. He doesn’t like fighting, he doesn’t think, but he always obliges her, and she always bests him—until, one day, he refuses the request. To his surprise, she only tilts her head a little: “Why?”
“I would like to only raise my pin when there is a good reason to,” says Seth. The unspoken is: wielding his weapon makes him a little bit sick, the same way seeing one of the little ones hurt makes him sick. But the words won’t come out, the same way the memories of his learnings won’t come out.
Hornet doesn’t mind his refusal. It’s strange how kind she is to him.
“In this way, you’re much like a little one yourself, Seth,” Grishkin tells him once, “To find so many things strange—that’s something the older of us lose the knack for doing.”
Seth shakes his head. “The more I learn of the world and its workings, the more it surprises me: the way most of it seems improper, even to the bugs that make it so. And still the world goes on.”
“And still the world goes on indeed, har har!” Grishkin laughs, “But nothing bad about the world being strange, m-mm? Miracles are what keep us going, after all.”
Seth agrees. In the end, he does like a good miracle.