Chapter Text
Shifting his weight from foot to foot, curled up inside the sprawling branches of a redwood, and silent as a mouse, Wind Archer watched. Millennial Tree cookie wasn’t doing anything interesting. Just sitting on a smooth rock and rhythmically brushing his hair over a pool of untouched, crystal clear water.
1, 2, 3, 4, Wind Archer counted. Brush. 1, 2, 3, 4, brush. 1, 2, 3, 4-
“Do you need anything, love?” Millennial Tree said, his voice as kind and steady as it always was.
Shoot.
Wind Archer soundlessly dropped from his perch. Millennial Tree shifted to face him, hair brush still in his hand. A moment passed, and when Wind Archer didn’t answer his question, he sighed and motion for him to sit next to the pool. Wind obeyed, setting his bow on the ground and stared absentmindedly into the water.
“Are you upset about our new awakenings?” Millennial asked. Wind Archer knew he was asking out of courtesy―Millennial already knew the answer.
“I understand how you must feel about Dark Enchantress,” Millennial said, setting his hand on Wind’s shoulder. Wind leaned into the touch. “But I don’t think that’s what you’re so upset about.
Wind huffed. That was a real question. Millennial Tree really didn’t know.
“Pomegranate.” Wind Archer said after a minute of silence. “Your other child.”
“ Your sister,” Millennial gently corrected. “Never forget that.”
Wind Archer unconsoiusly clenched a fist. His reflection was the picture of quiet calm, but if you looked closely, his rigid posture and downcast eyes told a different story.
Pommie- Pomegranate had seemed so content to serve Dark Enchantress. To abandon everything she and Wind Archer had learned together. To cast her father aside and begin following this new master who reeked of everything Wind Archer had fought to dispel. To not look him in the eye when he could do nothing but stare as her new master announced her return.
Dark Enchantress enraged him for reasons that he could admit to himself were superficial. Millennial Tree accepted her as his friend, and she had yet to do anything to endanger anything under his realm of protection. Pomegranate turning her back on their father’s teachings and choosing to serve a new master, leaving him to protect the forest by himself felt like a more bitter betrayal.
Ẅind Archer’s eyes flickered to the pool at his feet, and his reflection stared back at him, the picture of quiet fury. As if he was mulling over the destruction of the cookie kingdom instead of a his own irrational feelings.
“I always thought that we would…” Millennial Tree looked at him intently, and Wind Archer’s throat closed up. The wind around him grew stronger. “That we would protect the forest together. We made plans, you know, to restore the cookie kingdom to its old glory by planting enough trees.” Wind Archer huffed a laugh. “As if. The kingdom needs more than plantlife to go back to the way it once was.”
Millennial nodded, not once moving his hand from Wind Archer’s shoulder. Wind Archer lowers his head a little, keeping eye contact from his own reflection.
“Her disappearance greatly shocked us both,” Millennial Tree recalled, squeezing Wind Archer’s shoulder. “I remember that much. Everything after, I admit, is something of a blur.”
Wind Archer grimaced. The years after she left, his father’s descent into stagnation, frozen as a tree for years he didn’t bother to count, had sped up after Pomegranate left them. The pit in his heart grew in size.
“Do you feel betrayed too?” Wind Archer asked, lifting his head.
Millennial Tree, and the world, seemed to pause as he mulled the question over.
A jelly frog croaked. The forest wind grew a little bit more timid.
“Yes,” Millennial Tree said carefully, his eyes still thinking. “I do. But I must respect her choice to-”
“-turn her back on you?” Wind Archer couldn’t help but introject. Millennial Tree gave him a look, and Wind shrunk back a little.
“To follow a new master,” he continued. “She’s grown up now. I accept that I cannot control her forever. As you must accept that she will not always be at your side.”
Wind Archer couldn’t respond to that, and settled for running his fingers over the grass.
“But that does not mean, I don’t think, that you two cannot at least rekindle your companionship.” Millennial Tree said, his voice somehow growing more serious. “Sitting here and thinking about the distant past will only glorify it and sour the present. If you seek her out, I think talking to her would do you some good.” Millennial Tree removed his hand from Wind Archer’s shoulder and picked up the hairbrush. “At the very least, closure could be offered.”
At least that much he could agree with.
So.
Wind Archer was hiding in a tree again.
He took extra care to be quiet. Pommie一 Pomegranate, he reminded himself, would show up any minute now. This clearing, with sunlight filtering through the Redwoods and grass just a little greener then the forest around it, with the sound of rushing water giving a certain rhythm, had been one of Pomegranate’s favourite spots. When they were…
Wind Archer stopped his train of thought and allowed himself to furiously shake his head. It was best not to think about that type of thing.
Involuntarily, Wind Archer’s eyes drifted over to a of a particularly familiar tree. The leaves were in full, healthy shape, as they had been since his awakening, the bark glistening with a faint golden sheen. His eyes traced the bark until he reached a sloppy heart shape carved near the bottom. If Wind Archer focussed hard enough, he could see Pomegranate picking up a sharp rock and begging him to help her draw it. Time had almost completely faded it away now, the new bark filling in the gaps, but if the sunlight hit it at just the right angle, the edges were as sharp as ever.
Wind Archer tried not to look too deep into the metaphorical implications of that and went back to waiting.
His patience was rewarded when the soft crackle of leaves rubbing against leave and light footfalls on dry grass became noticeable, and Pomegranate appeared from behind and thick swath of leaves. Wind Archer was, just for a second, struck by how similar she looked to the Pomegranate immortalized in his mind. Sure, she hand an air of maturity about her, her eyes were the slightest bit more red, and her face a little more resigned, but the pomegranate jewels she insisted on wearing were still there, adorning her clothes and gleaming in the sun. Her face, only a little worn by age, still looked identical to before she left.
Her eyes darted around the clearing, her hand tightening ever so slightly on the staff before she reached the same tree that Wind Archer had been inspecting a minute before. Wind Archer’s breath hitched and leaned a little closer.
...Which resulted only in losing his balance and tumbling forwards, somehow hitting as many branches as possible on his descent to the forest floor. With one final thump , Wind Archer hit the ground.
On reflex, his hand darted over to the gem on his forehead. He released a breath when he confirmed it was unharmed. He rubbed at his arms and rolled over onto his stomach, getting on his knees and looking up.
He was greeted with and dark, outstretched hand, Pomegranates wary face behind it. Wind Archer’s stomach dropped to his feet.
“Wind Archer,” she said, her voice as soft as ever. “Are you going to get up or not?”