Beware of Kittens: Day 9.4: The Shawl of Life

Vesna’s golden eyes gleamed beneath the fabric shawl with a pleading look.

"Right. What exactly do you see there?" I asked, gesturing at the crystalline filaments spreading across the corpses.

"Lines of power converging from dead bodies into… a new, growing, blooming seed," she breathed. "A new Mother-tree in its earliest stage! A new Sirin domain!”

I frowned.

“It’s… Uncorrupted. Undriven. It holds no ancestral memories yet, no hunger, no desires." She assured me.

I looked at the emerald growths more carefully. The patterns seemed organized yet chaotic—growing with purpose but without the rigid structure I'd expect from a mature organism. It reminded me of stem cells, undifferentiated and malleable.

"If I let you keep it, what's to stop it from becoming like your old tree?" I asked. "What if it eventually starts controlling you again, turning you back into a mindless predator?"

"I think that it could be... different this time around." Vesna's talons fidgeted beneath their wrappings. "I... I could sing to it. Shape its purpose from the very beginning." Her voice grew more confident. "The Mother-tree was already many centuries old, ancient, far stronger than my music when Lisabella brought me to it—its nature was already fixed. But this one, this seedling... it's new, just born. Malleable."

"So you could program it, essentially," I mused. "Like imprinting on a newborn animal."

"I don't understand some of your words, but yes—I think that I could shape its growing soul and physical form with my song, guide its development." She took a step closer to the bodies.

I rubbed my chin, considering our options. Destroying it would be the safest course—eliminate the potential threat before it developed. But there was knowledge to be gained here, a new domain to experiment on and possibly a powerful tool if properly understood and controlled.

"What if..." I began slowly, an idea forming. "What if you modified it to be mobile, like my domain? Instead of growing into a stationary tree that traps you in one place, perhaps you could shape it into something you can carry with you."

Vesna's eyes widened. "A… portable sanctuary? Trees can be… portable? Hum, I did not think of that as an option at all."

"Yes," I nodded, thinking of the tumbleweed. "A portable tree. And what if you also shaped it to help protect you from the sun? Similar to how my domain makes me invisible to magical perception, your modified tree could shield you from daylight like an outfit. A mirror on one side, dark on the other. Something that reflects sunlight and magic and shields you… maybe even lets you sense the physical world, expands your senses. A living cloak that fills in what you’re missing as a Sirin!"

"A shawl of day and night," she whispered, eyes growing wide and talons snapping. "A living mantle to shield me from the burning sky..." Her voice filled with wonder at the possibility. “And expands my senses.”

"It could be symbiotic rather than parasitic," I continued, warming to the concept. "You feed it with your music and magic, and it protects you in return. No predation necessary. No uncontrolled expansion, no massive growth where it needs to crunch on new bodies to bloom each spring. Easy to control. Small. Mobile. Depending on you. Think you can pull that off?"

“Yes.” Vesna's feathers rustled beneath her furry coverings. "I... I believe I could shape such a thing with my music. The crystalline seed is still fluid, still forming its essential nature."

"Alright," I finally said. "You can try to reshape it. But I'm going to be ready to destroy it at the first sign of trouble."

"Thank you," she breathed, genuine gratitude in her voice. “I… I won’t fail you, won’t fail in this, I promise!!” I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or the seed that she was obsessively staring at.

I retreated to a safe position out of the shed, momentarily paralyzing Vesna as I moved past her. Then, I grabbed a Molotov cocktail from my pack and readied the box of Arcanix-made matches I found in the ruins. "Proceed," I instructed. 

Vesna nodded. 

The Sirin approached the crystalline filaments reverently, kneeling before them. Taking a deep breath and with a snap of her claws that sounded like a gunshot that made me twitch, she began to sing. Her voice was soft at first but gradually built in strength and complexity.

"Seedling born of death and night,
Crystal child of emerald light,
I sing to shape your forming soul,
To guide you toward a gentler whole."

As the first notes left her lips, the discordant emerald filaments trembled, their glow intensifying. They seemed to reach up toward her voice, stretching like plants seeking sunlight. A heart-beat like pulse and illusionary strings formed background music to Vesna’s song.

"Not for hunger, not for pain,
Not to bind or to enchain,
But to shelter, to protect,
A new purpose I direct."

The crystalline structures wiggled in rhythm with her song, the random geometric patterns of the fungi-like roots shifting and reorganizing. I watched as the filaments entwined, forming a small tree in front of her, crystalline flowers and leaves blooming like a video in fast forward.

"Memory of oak long past,
Freedom that could never last,
Lisabella's dream reborn,
Free from Blight that left it torn."

Vesna's voice cracked slightly on her lost love's name, but she continued, her harmonics growing more complex as the emerald crystals began to weave themselves into a new shape—no longer branching outward like a tree, but flowing in all directions like forming fabric, twisting and moving along her hands.

"Grow not as your mother grew,
Twisted by the Blight so true,
Be instead a shield, a home,
A sanctuary from the storm.

Take from death a newer life,
Free from hunger, free from strife,
Consume not the souls of men,
But nurture those within your ken."

With each verse, the crystal roots and branches grew more organized, forming themselves into a delicate lattice that resembled woven cloth. 

"Let me be your guiding star,
Let my will shape what you are,
No puppet's strings to bind your heart,
A true companion from the start."

The crystalline structure was now unmistakably taking the form of a shawl or mantle of leaves—a flowing, luminous garment held by her lanky fingers. Each note, each word seemed to add more detail, more complexity to its form.

"Form not roots that seek the ground,
But grow within, inward bound,
A perfect shawl of everlasting night,
That I may use as cover from the light."

As she sang, I noticed something remarkable—the corpses beneath the growing crystal shawl were rapidly decomposing, their remaining organic and crystalline matter being consumed at an accelerated rate. The crystals were absorbing their essence, using it as raw material for this new form, turning the bodies to what appeared to be white-gray sand or ashes.

"Weave your essence into threads,
A cloak of night that gently spreads,
Not rooted deep like trees of old,
But draped around me, soft yet bold."

The shawl began to expand, its edges flowing like liquid emerald, spreading wider with each verse. Where it had once been merely the size of a large handkerchief, it now grew large enough to envelop a person.

"My heart's bloom, a two-sided shawl,
From these bodies old and worn,
Shape yourself to shield my wings,
From daylight's harsh and burning stings."

Vesna stood up now, arms outstretched as the crystalline shawl continued to form itself. One side of the emerald leaves gradually became reflective, the other pure black, dark.

"Mantle dark of emerald sheen,
Protect me from the sun's keen beam,
Together bound but never chained,
A new beginning now ordained!!"

Vesna pulled off her fluffy Nordstaii coat as she sang the last verse with a confident smile.

With the final word, she grasped the crystal shawl, tearing it away from the deflated corpses. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a flash of emerald light, the crystalline fabric wrapped itself around her shoulders and wings, flowing around her entire body, roots entwining themselves around her curves. All of the leaves moved around her body akin to 

 turning to make her into a statue of emerald-tinted, mirror-like triangles. The glow intensified briefly before settling into a subtle, pulsing radiance that seemed to follow the rhythm of her breathing.

"Did it work?"

Vesna stood motionless for a moment, her eyes closed as if listening to something I couldn't hear. Then her golden eyes opened, wide with wonder.

"Yes," she breathed out. "Yes, it worked!”

She let out a happy “Eeeeeeee!”, clapped her hands and pulled the coat back on top of the respective shawl.

The leaves and branches of the new Mother tree sparkled with mirror-surface and shimmered beneath.

I stepped back as she walked into the sunlight and spun about, arms spread wide.

“It’s working! Thank you, thank you for your wisdom, Warlock! The sun’s scream no longer deafens me! This is incredible!” Vesna exclaimed. She cautiously opened the coat slightly, showing off more reflective leaves on her chest. "I can feel the sun without burning my wings! It's still... present, but muted, like hearing thunder from inside a stone room instead of standing in the storm. Like enjoying the rain without getting wet. Ahhh! I love it!"

“Seconded,” Minnow voiced from her hair, her voice taking on a distinctively feminine tone to it. “The sun does not drain me beneath this cloak of life. A job well done, you two.”

"How does it feel compared to your full night-form?" I asked.

"Different," Vesna replied from behind her mirror-mask face. "Weaker in some ways—I cannot fully access the deeper Astral—but clearer in others. The world seems... more solid. Less like a dream and more like..."

"Reality?" I suggested.

"Yes," she nodded as she looked left and right and then suddenly settled on my person. "It's been centuries since I experienced daylight like this, without the pain of sunlight clouding my perception."

I stepped left. Her head turned, following me.

“Wait. You can see me?” I asked her, my heartbeat accelerating as I automatically reached for my knife.

“Not see… but I can sense… something through the light reflections of the life-shawl,” she said, blinking at me. “Something… human-shaped. Can I… hug you?”

The question came at me like a runaway train. I considered it and slowly nodded, holding onto the knife in case she tried anything untoward.

She cautiously approached me, lanky arms spread wide. Then, Vesna slid down on one knee and embraced me very softly, her eyes sparkling with trails of tears visible between fluttering reflective leaves. “I can… feel you,” she whispered with a shudder. “Not through my Astral senses but through my domain-shawl. I’m no longer completely blind and deaf in your presence. Thank you. Thank you for this. Thank you for freeing me from the dying oak and for guiding me to create… this new, outfit-domain! You’ve no idea how much this means to me, Ioan!”

I glanced back at the shed as she let go of me, retreating away. Where the corpses had lain, only gray dust and cloth wrappings remained. The crystal shawl had consumed them completely.

"The bodies are gone," I observed. "So, will the shawl need... feeding... to maintain itself?"

Vesna tilted her head, listening to something beyond my perception.

"No," she finally said. "It's stable. It draws a bit of magic from the boundary between night and day, existing in both without being consumed by either." She ran her talons along the shimmering leaves beneath the furry coat. "It is very young and weak but it will grow stronger with my songs, but it needs no blood or flesh to sustain itself. I don’t wish to repeat what happened to me."

"Good," I said. "A symbiotic relationship then."

"A what?" She looked confused by the terminology. “You keep using that word and I know not what it means.”

"You help each other without harming each other," I clarified. 

"Yes," she nodded, understanding. "We nurture each other, as friends might." She paused, adding softly, "As Lisabella and I once did, before the Blight twisted everything."

Her expression softened as she touched the crystalline leaves again. "It feels... content. Not hungry. Not demanding. Just present, like a cat curled beside a hearth."

"We should test its limits," I said. "See how well it protects you in different conditions."

"Always testing, always questioning," Vesna remarked, but without rancor. "Is that how you see everything? As a puzzle to be taken apart and understood?"

"Yep," I admitted. "Understanding how things work gives me greater control over them. Control means survival."

"An interesting perspective for a Nordstaii man," she mused. "Most magic-wielders simply accept the gifts of the gods and use them without questioning their nature… violently gaining power over others."

"I'm not most magic-wielders," I reminded her. "I think outside of... confining boxes."

"No," she agreed. "You certainly are not."