Kunibert looked out the window moodily. Snow was falling on Below, gentle puffs of white landing on the ground and covering the world in a white sheet. Sound was deadened from outside—the sound of traffic and trains were muffled in the distance, and there were few bird songs to be heard. They’d gone south for the winter, or whatever it was that birds in this upside-down world did. This wasn’t to say that the school was quiet—far from it. The sound of Solstice songs echoed through the halls. There was giggling and laughter, and people were hanging up signs, wreaths, and paper chains everywhere to celebrate the season. Few, if any of them, Kuni privately suspected, were Dryads. He and most of the rest of his people were getting a seasonal case of the sleepies, as they always did this time of year. It was wretched, but it happened, and Kuni had had enough time over the past two years here to get used to how the academy got festive around his yearly bedtime. He was, by now, used to catching naps in the hallways between classes and falling asleep in bed to the sound of soft music leaking out from around his roommate’s earbuds. It was…well, it wasn’t quite comforting, but it was…it was something.Kuni had a puppy on his lap as he contemplated the falling snow. Mushroom was almost an adult now, and he was filling out nicely. It was hard to recognize him now as the kit who had stolen from him for a month this summer. He seemed just as devoted to Kuni as he had been back then, and seemed determined to drag his Daydream out of his moody mood. That was the best explanation Kuni had for why Mushroom was slathering his fingers with his slimy, purple tongue. Kuni hadn’t eaten anything for hours that could possibly make him taste that good. The only reason the Dryad could come up with for why he was suddenly getting so much love from his pup was this black mood he was in.
Kuni was sitting at his desk with a pile of papers in front of him. They were letters from home—not an entirely unprecedented state of affairs, honestly. He got letters from home at least once a month, and he usually replied to them promptly. Within a day of receiving them, his reply would be stamped and addressed and ready to update his family on his adventures in the twilight world. This time, the letters on his desk were…old. The eldest were two weeks old, the next were a week old, and the latest were only three days old. He was waiting, even now, for the mail to arrive at the center of campus. He had about half an hour before he had to bundle up in his warmest clothes and make the trek down to the school post office to pick up the fourth set of letters. He knew his family well enough to know that they’d sent more letters.
The first set of letters must have seemed innocent enough to them—they had sent him some brochures from local colleges and universities. Local, that is, to his family living in Above. The message was clear: Time to come home and attend college where you belong.
This might have seemed like an unusual attitude for a family of traditionalist Dryads to take, and indeed, it had surprised Kuni at first. It wasn’t until the second round of letters that he got an explanation. His mother, Ogdena, had written a letter to him explaining her point of view and begging for a reply.
I’ve always known in my heartwood that you would never Root far from me, she had written. You may have been born an acorn, but there is a touch of redwood in your heart. When other parents have told me that I should encourage you to get out more, I have ignored them. You are a homebody, and whatever else our ancestors tell us, there is nothing wrong with this. I know you miss home—please don’t feel like you have to pretend that you don’t.
Kuni huffed. Of course he missed home! He hardly saw real sunlight these days, except when he was on vacation back home. There were times he thought his leaves were withering from the lack of real sunlight. He had a UV light in his room to keep himself healthy, but that wasn’t the same as real sunlight. It just wasn’t. And it was true, it had only been with great reluctance that Kuni had gone to Below in the first place.
That brought Kuni’s thoughts to the letter one of his sisters had written. I don’t even know why you came to Below, she’d written in her second letter. You don’t seem to like it very much, although I guess mostly you don’t like Nightmares, and you’ve never really liked Daydreams very much. Which is okay, I mean, that’s who you are, you big dummy. Kuni had smiled. He and his next-eldest sister had a playfully vitriolic relationship, but he could tell that she cared. You said you wanted to study engineering. There are scads of great engineering schools out here, and only, like, what, one in Below?
Yes, there was—it was Leviathan, and it was pretty well-regarded, at least around the Academy. That made sense—cache children had a big discount to go to Leviathan, so naturally it was the academy for STEMM (science, technology, engineering, math, and magic) in Below. There were apparently a few out in Zephyros and elsewhere in Euros, but no one paid any attention to them at the academy. At the academy, it was Leviathan or go home. Sadly, “go home” was a viable option for Kuni.
You said you wanted to study engineering, Kuni’s youngest sister had said. Something about how much fun it was to build houses in the wilderness when you did Naked and Afraid. I think you’d be really good at it. I remember you teaching me how to build towers with my blocks when I was a kid! There are some really neat engineering programs in Above (we toured their campuses the other day for you, they’ve got some amazing design contests and stuff). I think you’d like them out here—one of them’s got a forest on-campus with lots of oak trees, so it would feel just like home. We’d only be a couple hours away, so you could visit us on the weekends no problem. I hope you reply soon, Mutti’s getting really worried that something’s happened to you.
Kuni absently rubbed Mushroom’s ears. Yes. Engineering. He wanted to study engineering. He wanted to design and build things, things that would last. Dams. Bridges. Tunnels. The possibilities were endless. Nai had even gotten him some engineering books as a “welcome back to school” gift a few months ago. He’d devoured them within days. So why was Kuni so angry at his family for sending the brochures? Why was he so annoyed that they were asking him to come home? He loved Above. It was where he was born and raised. He still imagined everything described to him in a book happening in the bright light of the sunlight world, not the gloomy dimness of Below.
Perhaps Oma’s third letter was the most enlightening. Kuni’s grandmother lived with them, a Driftwood, unable to take care of herself on her own. She was still a tough old oak, strong-willed and strong-minded, even if her body was failing her. Her first letter had been innocent enough, as had her second one. It had been solicitous, but not demanding like Kuni’s sisters or mother. Her third letter was where she had knuckled down.
My daughter and granddaughters want you to come home, and I can understand that. Some people are born seedlings. They drift in the wind for a while, seeing and learning new things, before settling down. But you, meine Eichelchen, were born a root. You set down your roots early and you set them down strong. When you said you wanted to go to Below, I was shocked. I couldn’t imagine you pulling up your roots—it was like you’d become a Driftwood before your time. But I think I understand now. Trees are never as linear as we imagine them to be. They branch out wherever there’s sunlight. What was once a budding bow may die; where once there were no branches, now branches may leaf in profusion. There is nothing wrong with this. You must grow where you need to grow. You must root where you need to root. If you want to root in Below, that’s fine by me. If you’d like your acorns to be half-Nightmare, that’s fine by me. Don’t worry too much about what your mother and little sisters think—they have to grow where they can grow. No one can dictate that for you. That’s the whole point behind the seedling-root tradition, after all.
Kuni sighed. “I left Above because I vanted to feel like a real seedling,” he confided to Mushroom. “I don’t sink I’d ever planned to go back to Above, zo. I guess…I sought I vas being banished. I sought I vould never be able to return. I never sought I vouldn’t vant to return.” And it was true. That was why he was struggling so much with this. He didn’t want to return. He wanted to stay here. He wanted to stay in a place where he’d been forced out of his comfort zone. He wasn’t the Kunibert Ogdenasson who had left Above two years ago. He was a different one.
Kuni nodded in decision and pulled a sheet of paper towards him. He started with a letter to Oma, then to his youngest sister, his mother, and his elder sister in turn. Each of them was slightly different, but bore the same message:
Thank you for your concern, your consideration, and your assistance. Thank you for thinking about me, and for loving me and sheltering me in your arms. However, I would like to make Below my home. I have grown fond of this place and the people who live here. I will be applying to Leviathan university’s engineering program as soon as I post these letters—they are a school with a good reputation, even if their weather leaves something to be desired. I will be coming home for Solstice, and look forward to seeing you all then…
