Moss and Lo

Lo Kaleid hadn’t noticed it, not at first. Not how the ground seemed to react with an awareness of who it was that was stepping on it and through it. He had come to the farmland that Candlerest had set aside for the refugees from Tolhaven, mostly just to clear his head in this quieter area of the town and its surroundings.

But the more time he spent here, the more he talked with the Tolhaven farmers, the more he breathed the clean air of these southern lands, the more he found himself at ease. Without noticing, his breathing starts to sync with the birdsong, he starts to move with the curve of the land, light brown hair hanging over his eyes as he scans the treeline at the top of this ridge he was climbing.

It was as he crested the ridge, and came to the tree stump he’d spent the last three mornings sitting on, that he noticed a circle of mushrooms that weren’t there yesterday had begun to sprout. He raised an eyebrow, as if the mushrooms would talk back. They won’t. “Not to me at least,” He murmurs more to himself than to the mushroom, “But that’s ok, I’ll just ask Nell to translate later.”

He waits, as he’s done for the last three days, for Solem, and smiles as the old monk comes hobbling down the path towards him. The elder of Tolhaven pretends not to see the smile until he’s past Lo, then says, “C’mon. There’s enough work to be done here that even the land sees it. And sitting isn’t training. So let’s find you something to do.”

These mornings progress in much this way. Solem finds things for Lo to do, Lo follows Solem like he is still an initiate, and not formerly a Master of the Order of the Jubilant Sigil. Solem has Lo fix a fence that wasn’t broken. Has Lo “test the soil” by getting him to grasp handfuls of it, rich with life. Has Lo move between saplings planted on the slopes, not to test his agility but his awareness. The saplings don’t grow uniformly. Their asymmetry is part of their strength, and why they’ll grow up and out and become much more than the thin, reedy things they are now.

After a few more days, Lo starts to notice it. Solem has stood in a field, bare-chested and sandalless. His palms open, “welcoming the air” Solem says. Lo steps, not to any count or rhythm. It’s not hard nor wide - but following the land. The way the earth bends. The way the grass breathes. A songbird flutters nearby, Lo’s hand lifts, but not to strike, to instead acknowledge. The songbird flies off, its song changing its note. Lo wonders if it’s because of him.

A breathe. He exhales. A full turn, balanced on one foot. Lo holds the motion in the moment, kept in the space between what might happen and what wants to. And Lo Kaleid smiles, because that is enough.

It is a week later, and Solem no longer walks with Lo each day. He leaves Lo to it, because now the land walks with Lo - or perhaps Lo walks with the land. His strikes, once spiralling outwards, now begin to spiral inward, drawn from the rhythm of root and bend. And the land is aware. It breathes through his soles. When Lo falls he does not land, he arrives, and is welcomed by it. Sarain, one of the Drow twins Lo travels with, once told him things like fighting styles couldn’t stay the stay, or they’d wilt and rot. She taught him how to welcome shadow, strike from it, move in it, and evolve from it. Lo is applying those lessons here, and the land is responding.

Three Weeks Later

The Tolhaven farmers note it before Lo does. In patterns of moss on trees and walls built long before they came to Candlerest. In how the birds avoid certain areas of farmland they flew through before. Solem asks Lo to come investigate.

So he does, and that’s when he feels it. The land, flinching beneath his footsteps rather than accepting his weight. A bird overhead shifts course - it’s not fleeing, but it is avoiding. Even the roots feel tangled here. Not sick. Just… confused. As if still weighing things.

Lo feels the noise more than hears it. A silence so heavy and still that it clearly doesn’t belong. It is a watching. Lo kneels, he touches the soil, and is answered with silence. He straightens. Something is out there.

And it’s not here to learn.

The Tolhaven farmers tell Lo that the watching thing is back again. They all feel it now. It’s not… hostile… but watchful. Guarded. And that unnerves them. So they call for Lo Kaleid, the monk whose order used to be jubilation, but more recently has been grounded. In tune with the earth.

He steps off the known path, into the fringe, where the soil is too still and the plants too symmetrical. The trees here aren’t bending, they’re posed. Lo stops at the edge of what was once a pond, now run dry. There are no tracks here, no scent on the wind. But it’s like the air itself is bruised.

Lo kneels to the earth, muttering, “What are you?,” but feels nothing when he places a hand on the cracked earth.

No, there is something here - too much here even. A pressure grips his chest. It’s not pain or fear, it’s familiarity. Not exactly the same, but an echo of something, something that lingered too long.

He whispers, “You shouldn't be here,” to the air. Lo steps up, and back, into the center of this clearing. There’s nothing there, nothing… visible at least. But just as the tension he feels begins to recede, some new feeling interjects, not part of this, but almost like someone reading over Lo’s shoulder, having already skipped ahead.

“Narrative smugness isn’t called for, Feycreature.” Lo walks away, pretending he doesn’t hear the soft laughter that responds.

Back in Candlerest

Two gnomes walk along the path just outside the gardens that adopted them as much as they grew. Pip, dressed in bright mismatched colours, walks along the wall, counting ducks that aren’t there.

“Duck one’s polite, duck two’s a liar,
Duck three juggled bread rolls over the fire,”

Nell, mood lightened as it often is around Pip, doesn’t join in, but taps her foot along to his ditty as she checks on a new moss patch that appeared the previous day. Moss weaving was important for Candlerest, so any time new moss patches developed, they required careful tending to.

“Duck four says he’s royalty, don’t check the crown,
Duck five just insulted me in Gnomish and left town.”

Nell stops though, because the moss recoils. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

Pip looks up, “Maybe it’s just shy.”

Nell ignores him and activates Halo of Spores, “Who’s here?”

“Easy, easy,” A figure emerges from the underbrush, hand crossbows at his side, hat at just the right angle to straddle the line between rogue and outlaw and a glint in his eye, Nell and Pip both recognise the man - not through experience, but through reputation. This is Tyren Vo.

“Krete warned us about you.” Nell says guardedly.

Tyren tilts his head, “She’s very dramatic,” which draws a laugh from Pip. No one would normally call Candlerest’s half-orc protector dramatic.

“What are you do-,” Nell begins to ask, before Tyren holds up a finger.

“Just wait,” he says, before pointing behind her. The two gnomes turn, and standing before them is a familiar figure. Tessilar stands before them, once human, now not so much Fey-touched as Fey-assimiliated, currently wearing the guise of an Eladrin of all the seasons.

Pip cheers at seeing their old friend, whilst Nell merely cocks an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be here with good news.”

“Don’t let Tyren’s coat fool you, we’re here to help.”

“Nell’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

Tessilar smiles, too calm. “Because Lo is walking into a place that doesn’t know it’s dead.”

Nell doesn’t move, but Pip does, he jumps down from the wall. “Explain.”

Tessilar continues, almost gently. “There’s a child buried there. Not a person - a memory. It wants to be known. It wants to be alive. But it was made by grief - and it has teeth.”

Nell shakes her head, spreads out her spores as far she can, trying to take in the situation. When she can’t sense Lo, Tyren moves. Not towards her, but he takes a step away, taking out a small stick from his coat pocket. Pip can see he has a great many more inside it, but says nothing. Tyren snaps the stick in half, and it disappears.

Nell sees none of this, but what she does see is Lo Kaleid and beyond him, watching, something hulking heads his way.

“That’s… a moss ogre?”

Tessilar shrugs. “Sometimes a moss ogre. Sometimes something else. These aren’t living creatures. They’re doorways. And Lo Kaleid is about to step inside without any idea of how much danger he’s in.”

Nell sets her feet. “Then he won’t be going alone.”