Nalai’Dormata had presented the judges with a tier 45 kiwi tree. It was a favourite fruit of the Cloven, but while a tier 45 tree was good for a test like this, it was not enough to ensure a win. They had expected more. So Nalai presented them with twenty more. All grown within the past five weeks and of unblemished quality.

This was not the kind of plant you just mass-produced, this presentation begged questions. Nalai had gloated, seeing the looks that her display produced. She had explained carefully, deliberately, how her results could get them every prize of true importance at the Interstates.

They had all nodded along with every word, right up until she mentioned her methods. It made it obvious where she had been learning, and it was just not done, the results were suddenly beside it, no matter how they exceeded every expectation of Human craft thanks to Nalai’s addition to the process.

The issue was that the Cloven believed in the spirits of plants, and that no short-term gain was worth compromising their long-term ideals for how plants must be developed. Yes, Human methods sometimes produced improved, replicable results.

But at what cost? At the cost of the very soul of the plant, of that one individual who would have met unique circumstances, mutated and potentially given rise to a whole new branch of hortology. Nalai was conservative in her methodology and still preserved the Cloven core, she just put enough effort in to mold the result, using the kind of measured analysis and planning that Humans were so fond of. It had taken years, but by this point she could replicate her results in any normal Cloven garden. It was not enough. It was not art.

Competing with this method among Cloven was a fool’s errand, it would gain them nothing but ridicule unless they hid the methods, something that would assuredly be discovered before the next competition and lead to even greater ridicule then instead. Even while their competition gladly, unashamedly enjoyed the effortlessly abundant kiwi that such methods would have produced.

Nalai was not chosen. In the coming years she would lose any remaining patience and come to loudly argue about how if the spirits of plants were so sacrosanct, how if the plant that prevailed in the wild was so clearly superior, why then did Cloven insist on driving predators from their lands. Why was providing artificial advantage in that form permitted? Her questioning did not go unnoticed, but neither did it make waves. She was just a [Druid]. And within years she was relegated to acting as a glorified [Gardener], wielding little to no influence and keeping company with nary a soul outside her own kind.

It was enough to make a Cloven go mad and habitually volunteer for clearing out predators in Doc Forrest.

Of course, while there she also ensured the Humans were still taking good care of the ancestral lands her family had once gifted them. It would sadden her when they did not, the day when someone in her family came there and they had truly forgotten. Even now they had to search records to validify her claims. It was a frustrating thing, how hard could it be to remember the Dormata family?

They had named their capital in our honour for bark's sake.

When Nalai’Dormata returned to Cloven lands, to the southern capital of Wapiti, after having cleared out the last of the starving and rabid mosswolves she could find, she reported straight to the headquarters.

The building was no building at all but a huge tree that had been petrified on its demise and turned into a massive fortress to prepare for the day.

A proud bull was manning the reception, one Nalai recognised unfortunately. “Returned just in time I see, how convenient,” Nalai walked right past him, refusing to rise to the bait. “Last strike and now she suddenly knows how to show up on time,”

She was almost down the horticured corridor.

“Guess you really were taking some extra time for mommy when you needed an extra week every other time, or did you finally learn to let a pack go,”

Those words went deeper than anybody but the two of them could know. They had her marching right back before any conscious decision was made. “I am actually back because for once I got lucky, you’re right. Rather than walk into a clearing of mosswolves and barghatz, finishing up swallowing the small ones after catching a train of Human families,” She slammed her hand on his desk. “For once the wolves rather ran into trouble instead, leaving everyone in a young party injured but alive by the skin of their teeth. Saved by a strange girl, that you especially would find interesting, and that I might have even told you about, since you will hear it eventually. If you were not you.”

With that she turned her hooves right around and marched to the office of their mutual boss. [Archdruid] Gello’Naceii. Nalai was about to tell her everything she had learned.

[Druids] were simply no longer in a position in Cloven society to afford to keep secrets from one another unless stringently necessary, it was too important that they act in tandem.

And this was big. Potentially.

First we just need to learn some things for certain.