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The sky on Palisade on the morning of their descent was a shade of violet that Xylem had only seen in two other places. Once in the distilled light of a teacher who took the form of a stained-glass window when lecturing on the history of Divines in the Golden Branch. Once on the faded wall of a border checkpoint when it left its home to find answers in the light of distant stars.
To be a scholar of light was to be a scholar of color, and in its research, Xylem had studied the many hues that made up the body of Resolute Welkin. They shifted subtly depending on her mood, sometimes bright cerulean joy or inky curiosity. In this small ship her anxiety bloomed in shades of pearl and heather. She hadn't said a word since they entered the atmosphere. The silence was a far cry from their long days at Skarnoc, where their conversation had flowed effortlessly. It reached out a hand, shaped like hers, but of sanded and lacquered oak, and she gripped it tight. Xylem imagined it could feel her ping-ponging exchange of consciousness with Wakeful, more rapid than it had been the entire time they had known each other. It wondered if Wakeful could feel its hand in theirs.
***
That afternoon in the debris fields when Resolute had told it that she was leaving was the first time that Xylem had really felt a desire to communicate with Wakeful rather than the delegate before them. Resolute, of course, would argue that they were one and the same, but Xylem struggled to see the gestalt as a larger whole that she was just a part of.
One of its old lovers liked to take the form of a mycelial network, a vast and fractal system of mushrooms at the foundation of a forest. Ze would intertwine with Xylem's roots and speak in spores about what it was like to spread zer consciousness across miles of soil. Ze could touch the roots of a hundred plants at once, and from each one get a picture of what life was like in the air without ever leaving the loam. Xylem always preferred a form that could enjoy the properties of light, but when it communicated with zem in chemicals, it understood that being spread out was not necessarily the same as being spread thin.
This was how it understood Wakeful, as a being spreading its tendrils out to connect with the world around it. What it couldn't comprehend was that a facet of that being might have her own name and history outside the group. When Xylem took the form of a pile of kindling, there was no gap in understanding between each stick, nor had each piece of wood had a life of its own before it was a part of the pile. Yet here was Resolute, who had told it of her history as a librarian in the universities of the Fabreal Duchy, but who understood herself as the reaching limb of some greater being, even when the connection between the two slowed to one pulse out of every six.
It didn't want to lose Resolute Welkin when she returned to rejoin Wakeful, but it wanted to understand why she would consent to be subsumed. It wanted to follow her wherever she went, even if that place had no room for a person like itself.
So it reached out. It curled a branch around her face and tried to make itself something like her. Something that could be in and of Wakeful while still being the one called Xylem.
What reached back was a tug like gravity at its core.
When Resolute charted the path to Palisade the next day, it felt like they were going home.
***
They were to meet with other representatives of Wakeful at a place called the Temple of the Threshold, where once colonizers from across the galaxy had come to hear the words of the prophet Gur Sevraq. It stretched across the city-chasm known as the Diadem on a hammock of multicolored cloth, the bone-white building at the center like a spider on a web. They landed their ship at the lip of the canyon, careful not to disturb the many support structures that kept the temple from crashing to the ground miles below.
It was not until Xylem stepped out of the vessel that it realized how long it had been since it had been on a planet. There was an atmosphere here that it had not produced, and the ground beneath the feet of its envoy form was covered in a sparse layer of wiry grass. It dropped down to examine the tiny plants as Resolute laughed from above. She pulled it away with the promise of more plants in their future, and the two of them set out across the ribbon-bridges that held the temple.
***
What shocked Xylem most about the temple was the number of people there who were not part of Wakeful. It could tell them apart not by their lack of Delegate shell (for there were Delegates separate from Wakeful here, and that too was shocking,) but by the way that they stared as it and Resolute passed down the long marble hallways. Wakeful, of course, knew of their arrival, but the Humans and Apostalisians and Columnar who were attending to business there had never seen a Branched before. It felt itself shifting under their gaze– OakMapleMahoganyPine until Resolute took its hand once more. She guided them through a nondescript door (composite wood, but solid throughout, they could tell) into a conference room.
The delegate across the table rose to greet them as they entered. Her body, shaped in silver to resemble musculature, felt dissimilar to Resolute Welkin, despite the size and shape of their frames being nearly identical. She shook hands with Xylem and offered Resolute a small nod, to which Resolute nodded back.
“I am Lucent Reflection, delegate of the being Wakeful. I have been brought forth because I am one of the fragments of Wakeful that once interacted with the Branched known as Phrygian.” She sat down and motioned for the two of them to join her at the table. “We are hoping that my experience might help us understand how you might join us, or if your attempt to join us is a wise decision in the first place.”
Xylem tried to ignore the sting of that last statement. “Phyrgian and I were not acquainted,” it said. “I know that they were also a Branched researcher, sent on an earlier mission than mine. I know that they did the people here a great service by disabling the Stellar Combustors. But I also know that the Branched are anything but a monolith. Please judge me based on me alone.”
“Of course,” Lucent smiled sheepishly. “Now, we know that Resolute Welkin has told you a great deal about Wakeful. You know us to be an entity composed of Divines and Delegates. But even during our short existence, it has not been so simple. Already we have been pressured to remove elements of ourself so that they might face justice for actions that they took before they were Wakeful. It was painful, but it was necessary, and we do not wish to do it again.”
Lucent leaned forward, lacing her fingers together. Xylem took note that unlike Resolute, she did not shine with her own light. Instead the various curves and planes of her body captured the light around her and spit it back out at different angles. “The parts that make up Wakeful as we are now hold no hatred towards the Branched. We were not a part of the Principality’s endless war, and as we said before, we owe a great deal to the Branched known as Phrygian. However, we cannot pretend that the only barrier to letting you be a part of Wakeful is the logistics of you joining us. The actors who pushed us to divest parts of ourself were aligned with Millenium Break, so they would likely not object to your inclusion, but others might. We are new, and that makes people fear us, particularly when we expand our being to include more individuals. There are those on this planet who see your shape-shifting ability and consider it demonic. If we take you in, we are taking a side in a very long war.”
“Is it a side that you wouldn’t take otherwise?” Xylem said quietly. Of course it knew that it was in enemy territory, but it had thought, naively perhaps, that this wouldn’t be a problem on Palisade, which had maintained some independence from the Divine Principality.
“One moment,” Lucent Reflection said. Her face froze, and when it came unstuck, her posture changed completely. She sat up straight in her chair and tugged at the collar of the shirt that she was wearing.
“I am Cavalier Righteousness,” the person before them said. She shifted the chair slightly closer to the table. “I won’t hide it from you, because Resolute will probably tell you anyway: there are disagreements internally about the answer to that question. We’ve been trying to come to a consensus since you proposed to join us. Personally, I don’t think that associating with you will end with the entire force of the Principality against us. We already worked against them when we kicked out all of the Nidean Divines, and they didn’t retaliate then. If they did feel the need to make us their enemy, we could probably count on Millenium Break to come to our aid, since they were allied with Phrygian, and we could make the pitch to the Qui Err Coalition that our sovereignty needs to be protected. Those Twilight Mirage people are very into personal freedom and all that. Not to mention the fact that you have some defenses built in, what with your war form. Can we see that, by the way? So we know what we’re working with?”
Resolute reached out and grabbed Xylem by the arm. “You don’t have to,” she said, the first words she had spoken since she entered the room. “All your research… the work that you’ve done so that your people can give up their war forms… if Wakeful was the kind of being to demand that from you, we would be no better than the Principality.”
Xylem turned its arm into a flexible willow stem and carefully slipped it from Resolute’s grasp. It brushed a stem over her shoulder so she knew it wasn’t mad. “As Resolute said,” it began, “I ventured out of the Golden Branch to research light and study any properties that it might contain that could bring an end to the war. For the Branched, taking on a war form is a compromise between our true selves and our struggle to keep our home safe.” It stood. “I will show you, because you deserve to know every side of the person who wishes to join you. I just hope that you won’t ask this of me again.”
Xylem looked around the conference room. Late afternoon sunlight poured through the windows, painting the walls a rosy gold. “I’m going to need a bigger space than this,” it said.
Cavalier Righteousness leaned back in her chair and grinned. “I know just the place.”
***
The heart of the Temple of the Threshold was an arena, rows of benches cascading down to a central stage, on which sat the main body of Wakeful.
Just before Xylem had left the Golden Branch for its research, it worked with another scientist who was an expert in gravitational fields. When working in a lab, they took on a form that resembled thousands of aluminum cans crushed by a trash compactor, but on their days off they preferred the form of a drifting island of debris caught up in ocean currents.
Wakeful looked like it existed at the crossroads of those two forms. Thousands of textures and patterns overlapped, forming shapes that only verged on the coherent. Here the impression of a gear, there the polished handle of a leather briefcase, far above, the eye of an enormous whale.
It was beautiful, and it was ugly, and it was closer to being Branched than anything Xylem had seen since it left its home.
Cavalier Righteousness led the two of them to the ground floor of the arena. Even with Wakeful occupying the space, there was an empty space large enough that Xylem and Resolute could have parked their ship there with ease. Cavalier gestured to the space and then, with a smile and a wink, she plunged herself into the ever-changing mass.
“You really don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Resolute said as she pressed up against its side. In response, Xylem twined a branch against the corner of her lips and up around the back of her head. She was still so bright, even under the blue-white stadium lights. It wished it could drink in her light until every sun around them collapsed, and maybe then the fighting would stop.
Xylem took a breath of the air it made itself and stepped forward. It let its legs form roots, slipping into flaws in the concrete floor and lifting up the foundation from below. Its body became vast and spiked. It brought forth hawthorn, holly, acacia, and at the tip of each thorn, a different poison. In this shape it lumbered like a bear or a piece of heavy machinery. This was not a body that struck the enemy hard and fast. Instead it took the hits it was given and returned them tenfold.
“As Resolute Welkin said,” it rumbled, “I do not take this form lightly. I hope there comes a day where it ceases to be necessary. So I must ask you: if I were to become part of Wakeful, would you ask me to take this form for you?”
The gestalt body creaked and thundered like a factory. When more than a minute had passed without a response, Xylem looked over to Resolute, who did not meet its gaze. Instead she stared at the main body of Wakeful, her expression blank.
“We're debating,” she said. “I've hardly ever seen this kind of indecision. Some are saying that if you join Wakeful you should be obligated to protect the whole in whatever way you can. Others are arguing that we have a shared history of trauma, and subjecting a part of ourself to further trauma goes against what we stand for.”
The colors of her body suddenly shifted, all clouds disappearing to reveal a clear icy blue. “Welkin thinks that we should see if you can join before we waste any more time arguing.”
“Which Welkin?” Xylem asked. It knew that Resolute had a few dozen delegate “siblings” who had joined Wakeful.
“Not a delegate. Welkin.” She pointed to the top of the gestalt, where an enormous whale breached for a second before disappearing back into the chaos.
Xylem let its war form fade away. If it was going to try to merge itself with another being, it was going to do so in a form that it felt comfortable in. Thorns fell and disappeared, and heavy bark twisted to form long branches covered with lichen and moss. It reached out and touched Resolute briefly before it stepped forward, one rooted foot in front of another until it was so close that it could no longer look at the top of the gestalt. With a dozen new shoots it began to climb and grow into the gaps in the surface. It wasn't sure what it was looking for, really. Some pathway to the heart of Wakeful, or a place it could plug itself into. It tried to imagine the rhythm of thoughts from a greater consciousness, a steady one-two one-two, but it was met with nothing but the pulse of sap moving through its branches.
It's Divines and Delegates, Resolute had said, but what was a Divine, really? It seemed easier to classify the Delegates, who shared an origin. Xylem's people had been fighting Divines for years and none of them could agree on what made a Divine divine.
It tried to focus instead on Resolute, her brightness, her clarity. The pinkish-orange hue that her skin took on when she was mulling something over, and the sickly green shade of the light where they had met. When it brought her to mind, it felt like she could be right there next to it.
I am here , she said, but not in words. I’m reintegrating with Wakeful, Xy. Try to follow me.
It saw something then. A light in a hue that it could not name, but which was unmistakably her. And like it had done all those months ago, it let itself tilt towards her brilliance.
Without warning, Xylem’s senses lit up like a magnesium flare. When it finally adjusted to the brightness, it could see that the space was illuminated by hundreds upon hundreds of individual lights. Then all the lights began to speak at once, layers of sound that wasn’t sound, because it wasn’t traveling through the air, but then how could it be so loud? There was no space for it to think until a light that it instinctively knew as Bright Mercy said Back off! Give it some room to breathe!
The movement then was tidal, like a wave receding just after pushing you to shore. Xylem looked around the space that was not a space with eyes that were not eyes, and in that moment it understood.
Then a voice said You made it! and it knew in an instant that it was Resolute Welkin, even though it had never seen her like this before. Her form was luminescent, containing the glow of a thousand colors without joining to become white, as light so often does. When Xylem reached out to touch her, it could see that it too was light, but when it tried to study the wavelengths of its being, it found patterns unlike any it had seen before. It folded itself into Resolute’s embrace, and the touch was not like touch as it knew how to experience it before, but it was touch all the same.
This was Wakeful from the inside, a vast, babbling network, a constellation of thoughts and beings. And like the tide returning again, the thoughts of the whole returned, and they were overjoyed and shocked and curious and pensive all at once, and Xylem was them just as much as it wasn’t, and from the view of the many it couldn’t help but notice properties of light that it had never seen before.