Welcome to Gaia! ::

After his and Ysalone's latest trip to the bog, Roamer had returned to the Homewood feeling like he was ready for something. He had spent a few days pacing around, unable to stand still, until Ysalone had finally asked him what was wrong. The answer hadn't been immediately apparent to him, and it had taken hours of rumination and careful thought to decipher why he had this inexplicable jittering in his limbs.

What he felt was a pull. A call, as it were. And once he'd recognized that, he'd realized what it was - the Grandfather Tree was calling him, telling him that he was ready at long last for the next step in the wild journey of his life. It was time to go back. The feeling of an impending something was driving him nuts. He had never liked suspense.

It had been a while since Roamer had come to the Grandfather Tree, and yet he remembered the way there as if he'd just made the trip yesterday. It felt as if he could retrace his steps even with his eyes closed. The sights and sounds were all familiar to him, and the buck breathed in deep as he made his way closer to the ancient tree. Power and potential hung in the air, intermingled, in a way that he hadn't quite noticed the first time. Being in the tree's presence was invigorating.

Roamer came to a stop at the base of the tree, looking up and feeling dwarved under its majestic branches. "Grandfather," he said, feeling the same awe as he had the first time. It seeped through him like an odd tingle, as if every hair was on end. There was something... wonderful in the air, or in the future perhaps, waiting and beckoning to him. All he had to do was take the step.

The buck felt his breath catch. The first time he had come, to unlock his gift, he had felt confident. This time, he felt less certain of what the future would bring. He wasn't sure what he would feel or how it would turn out. And yet, he knew, it was something he had to do. "I'm ready."

Roamer looked around him. The place, it was both eerily familiar and wholly unfamiliar at the same time. He didn't recognize this surroundings, but something told him he had been here before.

The trees looked burnt and lifeless, and everything seemed... dead. The grass had long been stripped from the land, leaving cracked and barren earth underfoot. It felt fragile. Every step he took lifted a cloud of sand up from the ground, and and uneasy silence sat all around him, waiting.

Roamer wandered forward, determined to know where he was. Could this be a vision of the future that the Gradfather Tree had sent him? Some new area created from the Barrens that needed his help? He couldn't tell what it needed the most. That unsettled him. The buck had found that, for the most part, when he entered a new land, he could feel instinctively what it needed most. Sometimes it was his power as an Atmos user and other times, it was not. The places that needed the help of the Atmos called to him the most.

This place though. This place was just dead.

It didn't feel right. He kept moving, winding his way under long-dead husks of trees that had one towered high and proud. Eventually, he found tracks. Little clawed footprints. The buck followed them almost eagerly, until he found a cockatrice perched atop a dead bush. The bird was thin, clearly having seen better days. It crouched upon a crackling branch and eyed him with equal parts suspicion and dislike.

"Excuse me," Roamer said politely. "But where are we?"

The cockatrice didn't blink. "Just a dead forest," it said rather harshly, ruffling its wings. "Nothing here. It was some kind of wood once. Like a home to some animals."

Roamer felt his spine tingle with dread. "... The Homewood?" he asked, his voice hushed. "Where are... where did all the nouls go?"

The cockatrice cackled, eyeing him up and down like he was a young, ignorant little thing. There was a sort of derision in its gaze that Roamer didn't like whatsoever. "Oh, you're one of those," the bird answered. "No use looking for them now. They're all gone. You lost. You said you would heal the planet but you were no better than the Others at all." The cockatrice huffed and moved to take off.

"Wait- no, please, wait," Roamer said hurriedly, stepping in front of the bird, though his body wouldn't have done much to stop the cockatrice if it really wanted to leave. "We failed? I mean... all that work, and... we lost it all?" His mind and body couldn't fathom it. A tremble started to shake his hind leg.

"Hard work?" The cockatrice echoed. It shook its head, as if it couldn't believe was it was hearing. "Maybe in the early days, long before you or I were born. You all took it upon yourselves to fix everything, but there came a day when putting in the work didn't sound so appealing to you all anymore. You just stopped. The numbers of you that actually tried to help dwindled. You all just stopped caring."

Roamer's ears dropped. This couldn't be. His kind wouldn't simply abandon these hopes and dreams and promises. And yet... he lifted his eyes to the world around him, the Homewood that had been so abundant in his memory, reduced to nothing but a graveyard of trees. He shook his head.

"But surely, if someone still cares..." he began.

"Listen, kid. Just give it up. Nobody cares anymore. This is the world we live in, that's it. Even the planet doesn't care anymore. Just leave the thing in peace and let it die." The cockatrice huffed, and shuffled its wings in a motion that resembled a shrug. It hopped down from the bush and began to strut off, each step kicking up a cloud of dust.

"No. It's not true," Roamer said, steeling himself, watching the bird leave. Despair threatened to overwhelm him. So much work, so many generations. All for this. But he refused to buckle, and instead, drew on his ability, which still thrummed inside him as it always had. It always would. He couldn't imagine forgetting about it. Slowly, he drew on the power and formed a small cloud above him. It condensed, and rain began to drip, one by one, down in a thin drizzle. "Please. Please, please, please. You haven't given up. Vykeli. I'm here. Even if I'm the last one who cares, I'm here."

He let the water fall, tried to create a little pocket in the dust with his hoof to catch it. At first, it all simply vanished, soaked up instantly by the ravenously parched earth. And then, after long moments, he saw the ground begin to turn wet. Just the surface. Just enough. He held the drizzle as long as he could and then he fell into an exhausted slumber right where he stood.

In the morning, he awoke, and by his feet there stood a single tiny green sprout. Roamer saw it and his heart leapt. Vykeli was not dead. There was hope after all.