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Rida was waking up. It took a while. A few weeks, sometimes, and she could spend as much as a week just catching up on any modifications to the building that happened. Of course, she was able to just wake up instantaneously for emergencies, but she avoided using that ability unless necessary. Her tree, a giant red oak on the outskirts of the garden groaned. It didn't like giving up a part of itself, even if Rida was her own entity.
She dropped from the upper branches where she had been fused to the ancient bark. While she was in that state, her body turned to wood, but now her body was virile muscle and bone, blood where sap had been only moments before.
Her green eyes began the slow adjusting that most people went through whenever it suddenly got bright in a dark room. She held her hands out in front of herself and played piano in mid air, getting her phalanges and shoulder blades used to precise movement. Next came her legs. She bent her knees and stretched like a marathon runner. She'd done it many times before.
Finally she looked up at her tree, and ran her right hand from waist height to as high as she could reach, and spoke endearingly to her partnered soul.
"That's right. I'll be back, dear one. Patience is the greatest virtue of a tree."

{[| Sorry it took me so long to post. Long story short, I was distracted by Dexter. |]}

Rida's hearing was blunted, but she made out a masculine voice in the distance saying something about the 'Earth Goddess'.
"John, is that you?" Her voice was hoarse. She wasn't ready. Sleeping for three years can make a person's body a little rusty with the basics. She shook her head, cursing to herself about the length of awakening. Aaeride moistened her lips with her tongue, swallowing hard to lubricate her vocal chords.
At this point, she could hear birds in the nearby foliage. Her hearing was coming back. Her sight was ready, and her sense of balance had never left. She took a step, as if to test herself, but found herself steady. The dryad skipped forward, did a somersault and made her way to the garden's path.
It wasn't any different from the last time she had seen it except that the sun was higher in the sky. It did a lot of good knowing that she wouldn't stumble into new architecture this time around.


{[| I just went with they knew one another, since they're both staff and they're both unaging. |]}

She caught sight of his vibrant red hair before anything else. While she was even more ancient than he, she held onto names that were relevant, especially since she basically only managed to come out of slumber by the the presence of her substitute family, which were the inhabitants of the school. She appeared a few feet from where he had been standing, almost refreshed. Her physical body was back to useful condition, she now only needed to update her social connections and her general information.
"Little Johnny, you forgot my name again, didn't you." She smiled triumphantly, mocking him for countless other times he had let it slip his mind. She never had a problem with memory, a trait granted to her by her dryad ancestry and the huge memory banks carried by the great oak behind her that she was connected to.
She held out a palm to shake hands, 'bright-eyed and bushy-tailed' and mischievous as only an old woman in her second childhood equipped with the body of a twenty year old, could be.
"Nice to meet you once more, my darling pupil!"

She looked at him with one eyebrow raised, her head cocked a little to the right. Her grin faded into a mock frown of disbelief. The untouched hand she had offered him lowered onto her hip, Aaeride's stance widening for the assault.
"You better be joking, Jackalope, dear," was all she said, but she turned the air bitter with the accusation. The electrified stare soon exploded into laughter, her personality getting the better of her. She wasn't able to be too annoyed with the man. She slapped him on the shoulder in a friendly manner as she turned him towards the school.
"I'm sure you'll remember after a bit. In the meanwhile I have a school to terrorize, and I think I'll start this year off with the music hall. Lead on, young man."
She looked on at the building that was built with her tree, fabricating a network of nerve-roots beneath the school and connecting her with the mainframe so she could monitor the goings-on. It was a brilliant design that hadn't required her tree's flesh to be used in the actual building, a very risky and painful operation that was used for most other magically protected buildings. In those places, the chance that the tree would be too weak and die, killing the tree as well as its dryad was about 50%. This way had taken more time, having to physically move each growing root to the destined location of walls until she was strong enough to control the direction herself, but it had been certain that the buildings would have a guardian from the beginning.

Her chuckle sprinkled the air like raindrops. It wasn't too often that she was forgotten, despite her multi-year disappearances. She was like an explosion of life and activity when she was in this form. Being part of a tree for half her life gave her a reason to live as spontaneously and thoroughly as possible.
"How'd you guess?" Her clever wink in his direction posited that his guess was correct. Aaeride was excited to visit the music hall once more. It had been three years, and the only music heard in the garden had been a student or two practising their instruments, not exactly perfect, and not usually anything fun.
A smile spread to her face, thinking of how much joy it brought to the plants, despite the terrible sounds. It was a rare thing, someone offering their entertainment to the silent audience of trees, but each time, her tree had felt warmer and grown more quickly. She quickly decided to let the student body know, and invite them to express themselves to the plantlife.

No surprise there, she rolled her eyes. It wasn't exactly a revelation, considering that she was a dryad, a tree nymph. It was slightly disappointing that she would have no one to steal the spotlight from in the music hall, but she returned the pull and continued towards the building. She would make the others come to her, intoxicate them with a display of musical and physical prowess.
"Don't you remember 'Leaves Are Falling'? I made more than half the student body appear at that stage to watch. All they needed was a bit of," she undid her hair and threw back her shoulders, her silky locks draping her neck and chest.
"Romance." She threw her mischievous grin at the Native, inciting a response that all female nymphs received. Then she became determined, her tantalizing mischief in sight. She needed to know what the most popular way of getting a message around was these days. Seven thousand years ago, there wasn't much choice, but these days it changed every other day it seemed.
"What's the newest thing, dear? E-mail is a dinosaur by now, I assume, or have they found another magic method to adore?"

{[| I'm going to bed. Goodnight. |]}