// sorry, I’m so sorry // said the creature. It spoke as the forest spoke: a voice in English, ringing in the space between my ears. I wasn’t sure I could call it telepathy, exactly, but I could hear the creature, and I could understand what it was saying, and under the circumstances, that might be enough. // I didn’t mean to startle you. I should have thought. I’m so sorry. //

“I don’t know how to talk like that,” I said. “In your head. Can you … can you understand me?”

The creature’s tentacles waved in a pattern I interpreted as amusement. // you talk through the air, as we all do. the pollen brings me your words. I understand you, little sister. oh, it is such a joy to meet you. //

I frowned slowly. “You mean when I talk, you hear it in your head?”

The creature twisted its torso slightly to the side in agreement. // yes. yes yes yes. you speak, and the pollen translates it into image for me. the world where I was sprouted was not a sound-world, but a sight-world. the Great Root will never let the children of the good harvest become separate from each other. //

Sorting through that would have taken too long. I looked around me, noting the ongoing absence of anything else I could interpret as a person—it was only trees, and the occasional rustling of something squirrel-sized or smaller. I returned my attention to the creature. “I’m Stasia. What’s your name?”

// for you, for now, it is Second // said the creature—said Second. The name wasn’t a surprise. // I am here because you are my sister. it is good for those of the same seeding to help each other, when the gathering-in begins. //

“How … how are you my sister?”

It was impossible not to interpret the twisting of Second’s tentacles as a silent smile. One of those tentacles dipped into a gap between the scales, pulling out a seedpod the size of a small avocado. It offered the seed to me. I took it automatically, unsure how to politely refuse.

The seed weighed more than should have been possible, as if it had been sculpted from a piece of solid lead. The surface was ridged, like a walnut shell, or a mammalian brain. It sparkled in the light, filled with a captive brightness that reminded me of the glow from the barrel of the dragonfly flowers. As I tightened my fingers around it, it thrummed softly, warming up to match my body temperature.

// seeds // said Second. // we are all seeds, in the beginning, and we are all the same. we scatter them across the sky, and where they root, we grow. you and I are sisters, for we sprout from seeds harvested from the same source. //

“You’re female?”