The rift closed behind him with a sound like a breath held too long finally released.

Gegssend Bleedworth stood at the edge of the clearing and looked at the tree. It was exactly as he remembered, impossibly tall, trunk wide as a small fortress, branches that seemed to argue with the sky about where they were and weren't allowed to go. The birds were still there too, small and loud and entirely convinced of their own importance, as birds tend to be.

He walked toward it in his usual fashion. No urgency. No ceremony. Just the slow, loping stride of someone who has seen enough of the universe to know that rushing rarely changes where you end up.

The whispers started before he reached the halfway mark. He adjusted his right horn with a small twist, like tuning a dial, and the whispers sharpened into words.

The bird said, "Listen, and I told him, the offering pile is not a perch, it is a sacred thing."

Droxi interrupted, "Nobody thinks it's sacred."

The bird replied, "I think it's sacred!"

Droxi said, "You're a bird. You think everything is sacred if it's high enough to sit on."

Gegssend smirked.

Gegssend said, "Hello, Droxi."

The tree went quiet. The birds scattered with a sound like someone dropping a drawer full of spoons. Then the branches shifted, slow, deliberate, like a large being turning around to look at something it very much hoped it was actually seeing.

Droxi said, "...Gegssend?"

Gegssend said, "Yes."

Droxi bellowed, "GEGSSEND BLEEDWORTH IS BACK, YOU MISERABLE BIRDS, DID I NOT TELL YOU HE WOULD RETURN? DID I NOT SAY EXACTLY THAT?" The branches rattled with what could only be described as triumph. Several birds returned immediately, deeply unbothered. Droxi continued, "Come, come, sit! Open one of your Rifts and get that chair again, I liked that chair."

Gegssend opened the Rift. Retrieved the steel chair. Placed it on the ground with the same quiet precision as the first time. Sat.

Droxi said, "You remembered the chair," sounding deeply satisfied.

Gegssend said, "I remember everything."

Droxi said, "Of course you do." A rustling that felt, somehow, like a fond smile. "And how has the universe been treating you, my dear Gegssend?"

Gegssend tilted his head to the left. Gegssend said, "Indifferently."

Droxi laughed, "Ha! That is the only honest answer to that question. The universe is never cruel or kind , it is simply ongoing." Droxi's leaves caught a wind that hadn't been there a moment before. Droxi continued, "And what brings you back to this particular corner of it?"

Gegssend was quiet for a moment. His red eye moved slowly across the tree's bark, pausing at the place in the trunk where the small jewel sat embedded , still glowing fently, a deep red pulse like something sleeping and dreaming at the same time.

Gegssend said, "I was in another realm. I encountered a being there , ancient, powerful. It had been turned into something it didn't choose. It was angry about it." He paused. Gegssend added, "I thought of you."

Droxi was quiet. The birds, for once, said nothing.

Droxi asked, softly, "And?"

Gegssend said, "I wanted to understand the difference. Between being changed by something and being destroyed by it."

The tree breathed, or did something so close to breathing that the distinction felt unimportant. Its branches settled. The red jewel pulsed once, steady and warm.

Droxi said, "That is not a question most beings think to ask. Most ask why it happened to them, or how to reverse it. You are asking something rarer." A long pause. Droxi said, "Sit a little longer. This will take some honesty."

Gegssend adjusted slightly in his chair. The universal gesture of someone who has nowhere else to be.

Droxi began, "The being I was before, the Lord at Wareth's Round Table, had no softness. No pull toward anything beyond function and purpose. We were made, in a sense, to be immovable. Reliable. Like walls." Droxi's voice dropped, settling into the weight of a story told from inside rather than around. Droxi continued, "And then something moved in me. Slowly at first. A want here, a curiosity there. The others saw it before I did. And what they saw frightened them, not because I had become wrong, but because I had become more. And more, to those who were built to be enough, looks exactly like too much."

Gegssend tilted his head the other way. Gegssend said, "They didn't destroy you because you were dangerous. They destroyed you because you reminded them that they were limited."

Droxi shook, not from wind. Something like laughter, or maybe the feeling underneath laughter. Droxi said, "You understand things, Gegssend. You understand them very quickly and very completely and I think sometimes that must be its own kind of lonely."

Gegssend said nothing. Which was, for him, a kind of answer.

Droxi continued, gently, "The being in your other realm — was it alone when you found it?"

Gegssend said, "Yes."

Droxi said, "Then perhaps that is why it was angry. Not because it was changed, but because no one had come back. Not to understand it. Not to sit with it." The jewel in the trunk pulsed again. Droxi said, "You came back here, Gegssend."

Gegssend said, "I did."

Droxi asked, "Why?"

Gegssend looked at the jewel. Looked at the birds, who had quietly returned to their branches and were now pretending to be deeply interested in things other than this conversation.

Gegssend said, "I am not entirely sure. I think perhaps I am still learning what it means to return somewhere."

Droxi was quiet for a long time. The wind moved through the branches like a sentence being chosen carefully.

Droxi said, finally, "That is the most alive thing I have ever heard you say."

Gegssend stood. The chair returned through the Rift before he'd consciously opened it. He stood looking at the tree for a moment in the particular way he stood when his processing was doing something that didn't have a name yet.

Gegssend said, "I will come back."

Droxi said, "I know." Then, louder, Droxi called out, "I'll tell the birds to behave."

The bird said, "We heard that."

Droxi said, "Good."

Gegssend opened the Rift. The light from it fell across the tree's bark and lit the jewel like a small sun. He stepped through.

The clearing was quiet again. The birds ruffled. The offerings sat in their baskets.

The red jewel pulsed.

Once.