Welcome to Gaia! ::

A pair of eyes appeared from the foliage and a face moved forward as a head extended outward from a tree. "I was going to ask you that," the head said, its voice feminine and high, perhaps with a touch of fear, as it regarded the young man. "I didn't know there were humans left in this place. You...are a human, aren't you?"

Frowning slightly, the face looked at him with distrust in her pale green eyes before reforming the rest of her body from a tree into a young woman. A...rather naked young woman. "I'm a dryad. A tree nymph," she told him, keeping a safe distance away. "Your kind were the ones who forced nature's hand. It serves you right for trying to suppress mother nature, you know." Her words were scornful, but there was still fright in her eyes, as if he were a scorpion she had to assure herself she was bigger than.

"Children grow up. And even children carve into trees and snap off branches for their own pleasure. To exert their own small power over the few things more helpless than themselves," she said scornfully. Still frowning, she moved forward to try to stand and face him, her long hair somewhat covering her figure. "And gardens are basically humans treating plants like pets. You prune them if they go the wrong way, even if they're starving for sunlight. They're ornamental things to you, nothing more. Why do you not look at me when I'm talking to you?!"

"Trees don't fall on purpose!" the dryad retorted, outraged that he would even compare such a thing. "If they fall, that means they're dead! They can't help it if humans are - were - so numerous that they were always in the way," she complained. "Nature takes its course. Death is natural. Humans aren't natural. They try to overrule nature because they think its rules don't apply to them." She threw her hands up in exasperation, as she had seen others do. "Mother nature balances life and death. Humans have done so much damage in favor of their own survival - just a single species - that she has no choice but to try to equalize things. And, given how grossly over-populated you became, that meant killing you off. It's better this way for everyone," she told him. "Now you have more resources to share with the rest of Earth's animals. If the fungus spores that killed the others of your kind don't kill you too, that is," she added casually. Seating herself on a rock, she brushed a lock of hair over her shoulder and out of her face. "I'm a nymph, not a naked! What are you talking about?"

"Am I really so ugly to you that you can't bare to look at me? And here I'd gone through the trouble of taking on a humanoid form to set you more at ease!"

"Maybe you started out that way, but obviously your kind doesn't know the value of temperence," Catreena answered, crossing her arms over her bare chest and raising her nose. "Sorry, I meant 'didn't'. Hopefully now, what's left of them will learn. As long as they're not as stubbornly stupid as you." Her lips twisting into a scowl, she narrowed her eyes at him. "Insults are nothing compared to actions! Hundreds of forests are gone forever because of humans, so it's only fair they paid the price to replace them." However, her brows contorted in confusion as he spoke about friends and family. "...That's silly. You've got a weapon. Humans kill other humans with weapons. How could you care about anyone but yourself?"

Standing up again, she glanced down at her body. "I don't see anything wrong with my shape! Is there something not to your liking? What's a naked?! Is it like a knot or a - a scar?"

"Well they didn't try very hard, now, did they?" she answered, pouting, though it was clear that doubt had started to creep into her voice. "And you already said that! I know plenty. More than you, probably. And more than enough to not be sorry that humans are all but extinct now."

Her gaze drifting to the weapon, she listened to his words and her eyes widened. "What? How can a weapon be a friend?" she wanted to know. "Have you already gone mad from lonliness, human? Weapons are like rocks; they do not feel or think or need nourishment. They are tools you beings created. I've studied them." Though she said this last part proudly, she fell back a step and yelped as she stumbled over some piece of ruin, startled by his eyes staring into hers.

With a slight whimper, she sat up, rubbing the side where she'd fallen. "Humans...had nothing to protect themselves from," she countered, trying to retain her dignity. "You had no need for thorns or teeth when you considered yourselves at the top of your food chain. Explain that."

"If I know nothing of human beings, it's because you don't make any sense," she said, pulling her knees up to her chest. "And of course I don't have leaves in this form. Except in my...'hair'. I don't really know any other place a human might grow them." She peeked down at her body once more, growing more conscious of it by the second. "Reproductive...?" Confused, she tried to consider this. "Oh...mammals. I forgot." But then her features appeared more puzzled than before. "But why reproductive parts?" She wasn't sure which, exactly, those were on her humanoid body, or if they even functioned the same way as humans' did, but it seemed silly to her to cover that up. "Flowers show off all their reproductive parts and you humans don't seem to think it's rude to look at them. How else would they get pollinated?"

"Stop trying to compare yourselves to animals! That's not what you are. You...you're the monsters," she answered, her voice wavering with uncertainty. "You kill more than just to eat. It's not the same!" But the mention of other monsters gave her pause. She had been called that, after all. "I thought that's what you did already," she confessed. "Killed any who crossed your path."

Staring at the weapon, she blinked at it. It still seemed to her like the human had lost his mind, but she had heard of Byakko before. "...If you say so," she murmured, though her doubt was obvious. If he wanted to believe that inanimate object was a Byakko, who was she to shatter his delusion?

"...I know that place," she said thoughtfully. "My mother sent me to school there. Halloween..." Staring at the young man, she tried to replay his question in her head to understand it better. "Well, yes, but I mean...we don't kill without reason. That's worse." She had previously thought all humans did, but this one perhaps didn't. Maybe he had just been fighting who he believed to be the threat to his survival all this time.

"Mod-es- tee..." she repeated, unfamiliar with the term. "But that is deceiving because those feathers aren't yours! When you reproduce, your children will not carry on those genes! It does nothing to help the fittest survive!"