“I think this is Izzik.” Elach said hesitantly. The Issi in his hand somehow sighed in relief. “He or they are the Issi, and they’re controlling the body that we thought was Izzik like a massive puppet. Maybe it was an empty shell, and Izzik poured themselves in and took it over?”

Izzik buzzed in his hand, a slightly painful gesture that left his fingers tingling. He assumed that meant he wasn’t right, and his face must have shown as much from Shar’s next comment.

“We can ask Izzik when they gather enough of their strength to stand.” Shar suggested. “Now, though, we should be following Izzik’s directions. Whether they’re to safety, or to where we can find those fireflies, we can’t stay here with the other insects following us.”

The antennae led Elach on what felt like a wild goose chase until it didn’t. Shar helped him haul Izzik’s carapace through grove after grove of fruit trees of varying sizes, colours, and scents. Eternals, the scents. Elach couldn’t tell if the smell like licorice mixed with burnt embers was from an hour ago or if the trees he was currently maneuvering through smelled the same as them. Or if the peppery, milky sweetness that stuck in the back of his throat had been there for thirty minutes or if he was simply imagining the ethereal taste and smell.

Shar, however, had been having a field day. After Elach called Flow out from his headspace she began dumping Izzik carrying duty on them, running off to gather seeds, roots, and whatever else she thought she could use to grow something. The number of filled tins quickly eclipsed the number of unfilled tins, and soon after Shar was scratching multiple plant names on each receptacle.

“Okay, how about this one? Ashfruit?” Shar suggested, waving a piece of ‘fruit’ under Elach’s nose that looked closer to a burnt out fireplace log.

He sighed and breathed deep of the fruit, expecting a burnt and acrid smell, but getting a fresh, gritty noseful of mint instead. He coughed as the scent ravaged his sinuses, then almost wept in relief as the miasma of smells was washed away.

“Scourmint.” He said confidently.

Shar nodded and scratched Elach’s suggestion onto the tin, which now had partitions dividing the contents into four sections. They looked as if they’d been there all along, and not added once Shar had run out of room.

“You’ve got a bizarre way of naming things.” She commented, placing the last of the tins into her pack. A full twenty-four, with four sections of seeds in each. “It’s sort of charming. Like what you’d expect to find in a fairy tale or a fable.”

Elach snorted in amusement. “That’s what happens when your teachers describe an Issi wolf as ‘wolf with tar Issi’. Even something like Tarwolf sounds cooler than that, and it took absolutely no creative talent or scientific knowledge to come up with that.”

“Sometimes simple, yet descriptive is the best way to go. Such as the aptly named sickfruit. A fruit that smells and tastes like it would get you sick.” Shar jingled one of the tins for emphasis. “Or, I suppose, tastes and smells as if you’d just been sick.”

The puddle of antennae in Elach’s hand buzzed in irritation, urging him to keep moving. He raised an eyebrow in surprise at how much emotion the puddle managed to get through, but accepted that his guide knew best. He said as much to Shar, getting an understanding nod in return and a gesture for him to lead the way. He expected that she’d had enough, and that she’d take over for Flow, who was obviously annoyed at their position.

When they arrived at the hollow tree, Elach’s link was a constant stream of obscenities directed at one single person. He might have added one or two in there for good measure, and that might have made Flow feel empowered in their tirade, but Shar really wasn’t helping. She didn’t take a single shift carrying the increasingly awkward Izzik, and the journey had taken far longer than Elach had expected. The sun was just beginning to fall from its apex, casting long shadows wherever there was enough room for them to foster.

The tree itself was a thick thing, bulging from the bottom to the middle like a fat merchant with a shadowed entrance torn through thick bark. Elach felt a powerful barrier covering the entrance, deep black and writhing as if it were made up of countless maggots. Or antennae.

Dying wood oozed bright yellow sap, a mostly crystallized liquid that Shar scooped up in a small vial before Elach noticed she’d left his side. She shook it in the corner of his vision, equal parts crystal and thick liquid sloshing and clinking about through the clear glass.

“This tree is completely different from all the others.” She mused, entranced by the sap crystals that had now spun the liquid around themselves like protective cocoons. “Unless the fruit died out long ago, which I admit could be a possibility, this does not fit with the rest of the floor.”

Elach raised an eyebrow. “If there’s a possibility this is just a dead tree, then how is it completely different?”

Shar raised the vial to eye level, letting the sun shine through the glass. The light danced through the yellow crystals, creating a rainbow of yellow shades on the forest floor. “Because not a single one of the fruit trees had sap.”

“Huh.” Elach grunted, thinking back to all the trees he’d helped Shar rip apart. He remembered a whole lot of juice, but none of it was within the bulging wood. “I guess you’re right.”

Izzik’s Issi had gone into overdrive when the tree came into view, and as Elach brought the bug man’s body closer to the black curtain he felt a sort of resonance between the Issi in his hand, Izzik’s immobile form, and whatever was inside that tree. The antennae insisted he press them to the wall of writhing darkness, his palm squishing wetly against the squirming curtain, Issi passing between the tree and his body as he felt something looking him over.

It wasn’t an intense search, more akin to someone he hadn’t met ensuring that they were indeed talking to the right person. The tree groaned and shook in relief as its Issi left Elach with an empty palm, the curtain of darkness shooting over his shoulders to grab Izzik by the arms.

Shar’s Issi flared in response, but Elach waved her down. “It’s just taking Izzik.” He explained, the black maggots squirming over his skin as they lifted and turned Izzik onto his back. “I think this is his home.”

A sensation like agreement came from the black Issi, now sprouting small yellow growths on one end of each maggot that split until they looked like thin, fragile antlers. It pulled Izzik through the curtain and into the unknown void, then split right down the middle to let Elach enter.

“Is this its way of welcoming us?” Shar asked, eyeing the tree with uncertainty. “It feels strangely powerful for a dying tree, and I am not losing you to a piece of lumber.”

Izzik’s tree creaked as if feigning being insulted. Shar flinched back at the massive gesture and the cacophony that accompanied it, looking to Elach for guidance. It felt strange knowing someone far more powerful than him was relying on his call, but it was also empowering. He unconsciously stood straighter and shot Shar a reassuring smile, striding through the open curtains as Flow latched themselves onto the back of his shirt.

Melodic uncertainty whispered into his ear, and he reached up to give Flow’s head a reassuring pat. “Don’t worry buddy, this tree won’t hurt us. It just wants to help Izzik.”

Shivers against the corners of his mind almost brought Elach to shake in sympathy, a sort of morbid relief emanating out from the tree as the maggots swarmed over Izzik’s body. It felt as if the tree was between ecstasy at Izzik’s return and terror at whatever had broght him to his current state, the yellow draining off the maggots little by little while they writhed. Elach yelped in surprise as a root tapped the back of his knees, making him fall back into a chair made of soft root and luminous cream-coloured moss.

“Uh, thanks for the seat?” He said aloud, getting a chuckling creak in return from the tree.

Darkness melted away to show a small yet comfortable looking home carved into the tree. In one corner sat a bed with blankets knit from grass, moss, and roots. The mass of maggots swarmed towards it with alarming speed, discharging the last of their yellow glow before spreading off into the corners of the tree and leaving a slowly breathing Izzik under the earthen covers.

“Thank you, tree.” Shar said awkwardly as a chair of roots appeared under her. “How long will it take until he’s healthy enough to show us where the fireflies gather?”

The tree’s shifting painted a picture of the sun hanging lower in the sky, low enough that the shadows had overtaken light in their majority.

“Two hours or so, if I’m not misrepresenting what the tree’s saying.” Elach relayed. He shrugged his pack off his back and onto the root-thatched floor, digging through it until he found what he was looking for. As he bit into the bar of dried fruit and nuts, he shrugged. “A little rest won’t hurt.”