I shivered. The creaking of my limbs echoed through the temple corridor, disturbing eons of dust. However, it was a different sort of Dust that I sought. Currency to some, sorcery to others, but vital to Father and I. We were an unusual pair. After mapping the surface of an unexplored moon we rooted into its soil to rest, unknowingly over a Dust deposit. When an earthquake shattered the thin crust, we were engulfed. And when we awoke, we were changed. We should have perished. Instead, our conscious thought became shared; as if our roots were always entwined.
Linked to my mind, I heard him, “Daughter, you are trembling. Danger? Need I come?”
“No Father. Safe, just cold,” I replied. He was always intensely protective. “Besides, this passageway, you wouldn’t fit.” But he would try, if desperate enough. Tear the thrusters from his body, weapons and shielding too, though it would likely kill him. When I was a younger sapling, he reshaped himself, as some of our kind do. The calamity that destroyed our grove-family, it left him broken and splintered. Only we survived. And so with the help of artificers, he repurposed his body as a ship. A painful and irreversible metamorphosis. Those memories returned to me as I held the pouch of charred lifeless seeds hanging around my neck, the last remains of our family. Their familiar presence rekindled my warmth.
Continuing, I strode into a cavernous chamber. Before me a tiny object hovered above the floor. “What is it?” asked Father, sharing vision through my Dust-flecked eyes.
"A seed?" But when I touched it the room flashed. Then before me appeared a planet, projected by some hidden device. As it rotated, into view materialized a tree on it’s surface, but massive! Its roots stretched between continents, its canopy reached many times beyond the atmosphere, and its leaves glimmered gold with hints Dust.
“Gaia…” Father whispered in awe.
As I watched, the tree began to shrink, growing in reverse. Leaves turned to buds, branches withdrew into the trunk, until the final sprout retracted into the seed. “Explain?” I reflected back to Father. But before he could reply, the floor quaked.
“Run daughter!” I thrust the seed into my pouch and fled. The cracking floor provided easy purchase for my roots, propelling me to the entrance just as the ceiling buckled. I climbed up Father’s trunk and into his armored frame. As we ascended, the temple collapsed below us.
I emptied the pouch onto my lap. The remains of our family lay scattered about the seed. Father explained, the Gaia tree—a mythically eternal source of nourishment and Dust—perhaps grew from this seed. But much remained unknown: How must it be planted? Or cultivated? And could it be kept safe? Surely there are many who desire such an Endless relic. It requires the sort of protection only an empire could provide.
“Father,” I said, staring at the Gaia Seed surrounded by the ruins of our past, “let's go home”.
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I should probably avoid checking the score until the vote is over haha
