“Yes, and no. I can only ask them to do things that are physically possible. Like, I can’t ask them to fly. But I can ask them to do a lot more things now, even the quite unlikely stuffs. I’ve been with Oldbark for a hundred years. I’ve learnt a lot.”
“Why do you use the word ‘ask’? It’s your magic that makes it happen, isn’t it?”
“Well, they actually have a choice. They can refuse to do the things I ask. It rarely happens, almost not at all. But they can. They have a choice. And, dead plants don’t respond to me. And the plants in Greymoor, they absolutely refused. They’d turned grey and black, a ghost of a plant, and they don’t putrefy. I couldn’t talk to them at all.”
“Let’s not talk about dark and ghostly matters, shall we. It’s already dark in here.”
“So, you’re afraid of the dark,” teased Elena. “You didn’t seemed so last night.”
“Well, I was … concentrating,” he said.
“Oh, really.” She held up her hand and the palm began to glow. A few golden dusts floated upwards and bombarded the ceiling. A few small leaves began to incandesce. The dim interior lighted up warmly.
“Making leaves shine. How romantic!” With the light, Darius could see her face again. She was so pretty, especially now. Slowly looking down, he saw that defenceless pink nipples, though small but it stood up proudly. Darius gently squeezed her breast and she adjusted herself, laying herself on the soft comfortable moss, a gesture of invitation and Darius adjusted himself accordingly, getting on top. There, they began again the continuation of the unfinished story, part three.
Darius woke up around noon but Elena was already up. She was standing by the wall looking out. He got up and went over to her, hugging her from behind, kissing her neck and grabbing her breasts. He wanted to proceed to her mouth but she deflected away.
“You definitely need to wash up. I’ve some water for you,” she said giggling.
“Oh, do I stink.”
“Yes, you do.”
“But, why don’t you stink?”
“Cause I don’t perspire like you.”
“Huh.” Darius turned and saw the bunches of fruits growing out of the whole wall. They were more bountiful than yesterday. And this time, there were a few large pitcher plants hanging among them. Darius was curious and went over. He saw that they were filled fresh water all the way up to the rim. “Now, this is innovative.” Each one of them contained about several jugs of water.
“They are just … hanging there. So, you can pour the water out or you can poke some holes at the base and it’ll spray out. You know, like a watering can.”
“Huh. Is this standard magic or you can just invent them as you go?”
“Not really an invention. I just grew the plant and asked the tree to fill it with water.”
“Alright. That’s really neat.” Although she had said that she could only grow things, but up till now, the possibility of her magic was limitless.
He started to bath by poking the holes and he found out that the tree replenished the water quite quickly. The pitcher was never empty.
“I see that you did some renovation.”
“Yeah, I did.” She had been doing some modification to their nest since she woke up. She had opened up the top so that the sun and the wind could now come in. More importantly, they could stand up and stretched and look around the forest. Darius noticed that they were further high up than the last time he looked out to the forest.
“I raised it higher so you can look further.”
“I really like that. Can you raise it further, like above the canopy? Then, we can see how vast the forest is.”
“I can, but let's not do that.”