fic, Tales of Vesperia, Rita/Estelle, "For You in Full Blossom"
So I wrote this, and then I realized it may be impossible on a technicality due to [endgame spoilers], but I'm too lazy to reconfigure at the moment, orz. Pretend it's AU or something! Hey, look over there! Lesbians!
Another femslash Porn Battle pr0n failure, more girlish makeouts. Writing a tsundere is exhausting, who knew.
ToV, Rita/Estelle, postgame, PG.
For You in Full Blossom
It was strange, the mayor told them--more than strange, miraculous--that even with the barrier gone, monsters still kept their distance from the town of Halure. Or kept their distance from the great tree, rather: it was as if a new barrier had replaced the old one, invisible but just as strong, its boundary marked by the spread of branches above and roots through the earth below, beyond the furthest house into the fields.
"It's the spirit," said Estelle. She stood next to Rita at the base of the trunk--it always felt like standing at the foot of a blooming mountain--peering upward. Except for a few children playing among the huge buckled roots, the two of them were alone on the crest of the hill. The blossoms covering the sky seemed more abundant than ever. "I'm sure of it. The flower maiden who gave me the veil."
"That's the hypothesis," Rita agreed.
"It has to be her. She was the one who gave me that ability--'to protect my companions.' If she can grant it, wouldn't she also have it herself? She's protecting the town, just like she always has." Estelle clasped her hands and closed her eyes. "Thank you, great tree."
Rita watched her, quirking her lips. She wasn't about to start praying to plant life herself, but neither was she about to tell Estelle not to. "You know, it's only a matter of time before somebody builds a temple here. Or a shrine or something, whatever. I mean, if people used to worship Entelexeia? Some of them are bound to get over-enthused about spirits. And this town practically worships this thing already." She waved at the tree.
Estelle had opened her eyes again. "Do you think that's bad?"
Rita shrugged. "I don't think it's good or bad, it just is. What I want to know is, why are some spirits doing this, but not others? Functioning as barriers, I mean. If that's really what they're doing. But we have to confirm this one's doing it first. Assuming we can get it to talk to us. I hope it will, since it talked to you that time before."
"Right." After a minute Estelle's sober expression melted into a dreamy one. "I'm glad we were able to come when the tree was in flower. I keep wondering what it would look like from further up, if we could climb into the branches. It must be like floating in a cloud of blossoms."
A cloud of blossoms. Floating. Dreamy Estelle.
Even to the romantically impaired that sounded like a beautiful formula. Better than beautiful--inspired. Rita scuffled her foot on the bare ground, as if scuffling could generate courage as well as rearrange dirt. A year ago she'd have been able to just blurt the offer without hesitation, but it wasn't so easy now.
Finally she managed. "You wanna see?"
When Estelle only looked at her blankly, Rita huffed and made an upward gesture, raising her fingers as she fluttered them in the air. "Hello, levitation skills? The ones I learned ages ago?"
"Oh!" Understanding dawned in Estelle's eyes, and then rising delight, and that was more like it, thought Rita. Lowering her hand, she blew on her fingernails and pretended to buff them on the front of her tunic. Estelle bounced on the balls of her feet as if the prospect itself were enough to propel her upward. She reached for Rita's arm. "Yes, let's go!"
*
Botany had never been Rita's field, but it was hard not to be impressed when they landed among the boughs.
"This is amazing," said Estelle in a hush.
She was breathless, either from awe or from laughing too giddily the whole time they levitated up, or maybe both. Rita had to admit the looks on the faces of the kids playing under the tree had been priceless when the two of them suddenly took off. Little brats were probably still catching flies with their gaping mouths.
"It's not bad," she allowed, letting go of Estelle's waist as their feet settled. The froth of blossoms all around them really dld look like clouds, some thicker and puffier like rainclouds (if rainclouds were pink), some more gossamer, with strands of sunlight falling among them, and smooth dark paths running between. The branch Rita had landed on was nearly as broad around as the roots near the base of the trunk, wide enough for the two of them to stand or sit or turn cartwheels if they wanted. Not that she'd let Estelle fall, ever, no matter how skinny the branch. Rita walked a short distance, facing away from the trunk, before sitting down and flopping backward. She crossed her arms for a pillow behind her head and looked up at the nimbus of flowers.
Estelle followed, folding her hands piously (though she seemed to be fighting a smile) as she spoke to the general vicinity. "Please excuse Rita, dear tree. She doesn't mean to be rude."
"What--" Rita lifted her head, frowning. "How was I rude? All I said was 'not bad'!"
"Don't you think the spirit might be listening?" Estelle adjusted her skirts and sat down at Rita's side. "It's not polite to disparage a lady's beauty. Especially not if you want to be on speaking terms."
"Okay, first? She's not a lady, she's a tree. And yeah, okay, nice tree, but maybe I want to save my compliments for the one I really--"
She clammed up, catching herself, but it was too late. Estelle was leaning, no, looming over her with dangerous innocence, smiling down.
"...The one you really?"
Rita scowled and looked away. At this rate she was going to turn pinker than the stupid scenery. "Now you're just fishing."
"Fishing? In a tree?"
She scowled harder. "Don't play dumb!"
Estelle only laughed into one folded hand. Rita resisted the urge to hunch on one side and turn her back on the laughter. With her luck she'd wind up hunching right off the branch, no matter how comfortably wide it seemed.
It was starting to drive her a little crazy, not being able to tell whether Estelle really was playing dumb. For a while Rita had wondered whether she herself was being too subtle, but Yuri had said she was about as subtle as a fireball the last time she'd brought up the subject with him. Which was the last time she meant to bring it up with him again, ever. He didn't have to grin like that. Jerkface.
Anyway, the person she really ought to bring it up with was right here.
Estelle was lying back on the branch, settling as primly as she did in any palace bed. "This tree's so full of stories," she said. Her voice was hushed again, as if the two of them were huddled in the library at Aspio instead of in a giant tree. "It's like I can hear it whispering them to me."
Trust her not to take credit even for her own inventions. Rita huffed. "Actually, no. You're making them up. But you can tell one anyway, if you want."
"Should I?"
It would put off the moment of truth a little longer. Besides, she liked Estelle's stories, liked listening to her tell them in that graceful voice, even when they were sappy (which was more or less all the time). "Sure, why not."
"All right," said Estelle, "I'll tell one, but you have to promise not to interrupt. You can't say anything until the story's over, and while you're listening you have to close your eyes."
Rita rolled them first, just for good measure, but did as she was told. The backs of her eyelids were as pink as everything else. Maybe she was starting to go blind to every other color. It didn't seem fair to blame only the tree for that.
"Closed," she announced.
"Promise?"
"Yeah, okay! Promise."
"All right." She heard Estelle take a deep breath. "Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a palace. The princess loved old tales more than anything else, the kind where handsome princes swept maidens off their feet, or knights went on quests to rescue fair ladies. She'd read every book of romances in the palace library, and she knew all of the endings, happy and sad."
This was suspiciously familiar, thought Rita--but she'd promised, so she kept her eyes and mouth shut with scarcely a mmph.
"The princess grew up reading those tales, and for a long time she dreamed of being in a tale like that herself. When she made up stories, they were always about maidens and princes, ladies and knights. She thought that was how romances were supposed to be. But when she went out into the world herself, she met someone on her travels. She met all sorts of people--knights and princes included--and some of them became her closest friends. But out of all of them, the one she fell in love with after the journey's end wasn't a knight, and wasn't a prince."
There was a rustle of fabric as Estelle shifted on the branch.
If Rita had wanted to open her eyes before, she didn't dare to now. She was having enough trouble trying to breathe. Her fingernails clung to the bark of the branch under her, digging in.
"It wasn't even a boy."
Rita froze.
Estelle paused for a long, wobbly exhale before going on. "At first the princess didn't know what to do, because she'd never thought that kind of thing could happen--that a princess could fall in love with a girl. She'd never read any stories like that, and she knew the people at the palace wouldn't approve. She didn't know who to ask, so she asked the spirit of an ancient tree, one that had stood guard over a peaceful village for hundreds of years.
"The great tree said, 'Princess, I have sheltered more lovers in my time than there are petals on my boughs. To me it makes no difference whether they are lords or ladies, boys or girls. If the love in their hearts is true, there will always be room for them under my branches.'
"When she heard that, the princess was so grateful that she watered the tree's roots with her tears. She made up her mind that even if it was strange, even if it never happened in stories, she would tell the other girl what was in her heart."
There was another pause, then, one in which Rita felt she might violently (if not spontaneously, since there was a clear catalyst here) combust. She opened her eyes to stare at Estelle--she couldn't help it--and made another mmph noise, more frantically this time. More of a MMRRMPH.
"Oh," said Estelle, in a voice gone very small, "that's all. You can talk if you want to."
Rita shot upright, ribbons flailing. The tree, the barrage of flowers overhead had nothing on her now. They were only pink, whereas her face was burning with the red of a thousand fiery blastia cores. Blastia cores that didn't even exist.
"What kind of ending is that?!" she burst out.
Estelle sat up with her, wide-eyed and blinking. "It's, um. A work in progress? Unless...unless you have an ending in mind."
"Oh, I'll give you an ending! How about 'AND THE OTHER GIRL ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK?' Or maybe, I don't know, 'The princess could've said something sooner, because the other girl was totally failing to hide a crush the size of Nordopolica?!' Or something? THE END."
She slumped over her skewed knees, hiding her face in her hands. The only trouble was she couldn't stand to hide for long.
When she peeked up again, Estelle was smiling. Possibly beaming.
"I think that could be a good ending," she said. "But something's missing."
Rita's heart flailed. "Missing?"
"Yes. If it's a real romance there has to be a kiss." Estelle closed her eyes and arranged herself, hands folded in her lap, chin tilted upward just the slightest.
Waiting.
Rita gibbered. Not that she didn't want to, but--this was all so sudden and-- "Aren't I supposed to sweep you off your feet or something first?!"
Estelle opened her eyes. "You already did," she said, making the same fluttery gesture Rita had made before they took off from the ground. Then she closed her eyes again, still smiling.
"Oh. That." That moment of inspired suavity. Right. With an effort Rita quashed some of her panic. She edged closer to Estelle, scooting sideways along the branch without getting up. "So, um. 'The other girl, who was the best mage in the land, was a genius at lots of things, but maybe not so much at this.'" She was beginning to wish she'd asked Yuri for more advice, after all. "Because she'd maybe never, um, done it before."
"'Neither had the princess,'" said Estelle. Serenely.
If Rita hadn't been so in love, she might've decked her, or at least grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her into a rightfully agitated state. How could she be serene? Was this not a big deal to her? Couldn't she just picture Yuri grinning, Judith smirking, the old man breaking into a horrible leer? Couldn't she hear Karol chanting Rita and Estelle, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N--OW! RITA, YOU SUCK! even though Karol and all the rest of them were in separate cities, miles away?
She edged closer again. Her leg--her entire thigh--bumped up against Estelle's. If the panic didn't immobilize her, the happiness would. "Um," she gulped, "there's another thing. 'The other girl, she, she might have acted all brave most of the time, or tried to, but there were some things she was really nervous about. Nervous, and. And really shy.'"
That was where she hit her limit, or thought she had, until Estelle reached for her hands.
Held them and clasped them. Rubbed her thumbs over Rita's knuckles. Opened her eyes, which weren't so serene at all.
"'The princess knew that. She was, too.'"
They looked at each other. She leaned, they both leaned--and it was easier that way, to meet in the middle. At first their noses collided, but then they tipped their heads and got it right. Exactly right. Like the best formula ever.
It turned out kissing was easy, after all. As easy as falling off a branch, which they were maybe in grave danger of doing. Rita wasn't sure how she ended up with her leg hooked over Estelle's, or how Estelle's arms got around her waist, but by the time she noticed them they seemed like brilliant ideas. The tiny squeak Estelle made when Rita's lips found her ear, that was brilliant, too. Genius, all of it.
When they stopped they were both flushed, with fallen petals strewn all over their hair. Estelle laughed and brushed the petals out of Rita's, letting them scatter across their laps. Rita was about to return the favor when a glimmer near the trunk of the tree caught the corner of her eye. Startled, she turned.
The glimmer intensified, and soon it was a ball of pure light hovering like a star. The voice that spoke from the light was familiar, ethereal and bright.
"I wish to thank you," said the spirit, "for another lovely story. And--" It giggled. "For the rest, as well."
For a second Rita could only stare in outage at the eavesdropper. The voyeur. The peeping Tom.
Peeping tree.
Then she blazed to her feet.
Estelle leapt up with her, clinging to her arms to hold them down. "Rita, no! We want to talk to her about the barrier, rememb--"
*
Far below, the children of Halure flinched at the blast of an explosion, and craned their necks to see a tidal wave of petals pouring down from one limb high above.
Another femslash Porn Battle pr0n failure, more girlish makeouts. Writing a tsundere is exhausting, who knew.
ToV, Rita/Estelle, postgame, PG.
For You in Full Blossom
It was strange, the mayor told them--more than strange, miraculous--that even with the barrier gone, monsters still kept their distance from the town of Halure. Or kept their distance from the great tree, rather: it was as if a new barrier had replaced the old one, invisible but just as strong, its boundary marked by the spread of branches above and roots through the earth below, beyond the furthest house into the fields.
"It's the spirit," said Estelle. She stood next to Rita at the base of the trunk--it always felt like standing at the foot of a blooming mountain--peering upward. Except for a few children playing among the huge buckled roots, the two of them were alone on the crest of the hill. The blossoms covering the sky seemed more abundant than ever. "I'm sure of it. The flower maiden who gave me the veil."
"That's the hypothesis," Rita agreed.
"It has to be her. She was the one who gave me that ability--'to protect my companions.' If she can grant it, wouldn't she also have it herself? She's protecting the town, just like she always has." Estelle clasped her hands and closed her eyes. "Thank you, great tree."
Rita watched her, quirking her lips. She wasn't about to start praying to plant life herself, but neither was she about to tell Estelle not to. "You know, it's only a matter of time before somebody builds a temple here. Or a shrine or something, whatever. I mean, if people used to worship Entelexeia? Some of them are bound to get over-enthused about spirits. And this town practically worships this thing already." She waved at the tree.
Estelle had opened her eyes again. "Do you think that's bad?"
Rita shrugged. "I don't think it's good or bad, it just is. What I want to know is, why are some spirits doing this, but not others? Functioning as barriers, I mean. If that's really what they're doing. But we have to confirm this one's doing it first. Assuming we can get it to talk to us. I hope it will, since it talked to you that time before."
"Right." After a minute Estelle's sober expression melted into a dreamy one. "I'm glad we were able to come when the tree was in flower. I keep wondering what it would look like from further up, if we could climb into the branches. It must be like floating in a cloud of blossoms."
A cloud of blossoms. Floating. Dreamy Estelle.
Even to the romantically impaired that sounded like a beautiful formula. Better than beautiful--inspired. Rita scuffled her foot on the bare ground, as if scuffling could generate courage as well as rearrange dirt. A year ago she'd have been able to just blurt the offer without hesitation, but it wasn't so easy now.
Finally she managed. "You wanna see?"
When Estelle only looked at her blankly, Rita huffed and made an upward gesture, raising her fingers as she fluttered them in the air. "Hello, levitation skills? The ones I learned ages ago?"
"Oh!" Understanding dawned in Estelle's eyes, and then rising delight, and that was more like it, thought Rita. Lowering her hand, she blew on her fingernails and pretended to buff them on the front of her tunic. Estelle bounced on the balls of her feet as if the prospect itself were enough to propel her upward. She reached for Rita's arm. "Yes, let's go!"
*
Botany had never been Rita's field, but it was hard not to be impressed when they landed among the boughs.
"This is amazing," said Estelle in a hush.
She was breathless, either from awe or from laughing too giddily the whole time they levitated up, or maybe both. Rita had to admit the looks on the faces of the kids playing under the tree had been priceless when the two of them suddenly took off. Little brats were probably still catching flies with their gaping mouths.
"It's not bad," she allowed, letting go of Estelle's waist as their feet settled. The froth of blossoms all around them really dld look like clouds, some thicker and puffier like rainclouds (if rainclouds were pink), some more gossamer, with strands of sunlight falling among them, and smooth dark paths running between. The branch Rita had landed on was nearly as broad around as the roots near the base of the trunk, wide enough for the two of them to stand or sit or turn cartwheels if they wanted. Not that she'd let Estelle fall, ever, no matter how skinny the branch. Rita walked a short distance, facing away from the trunk, before sitting down and flopping backward. She crossed her arms for a pillow behind her head and looked up at the nimbus of flowers.
Estelle followed, folding her hands piously (though she seemed to be fighting a smile) as she spoke to the general vicinity. "Please excuse Rita, dear tree. She doesn't mean to be rude."
"What--" Rita lifted her head, frowning. "How was I rude? All I said was 'not bad'!"
"Don't you think the spirit might be listening?" Estelle adjusted her skirts and sat down at Rita's side. "It's not polite to disparage a lady's beauty. Especially not if you want to be on speaking terms."
"Okay, first? She's not a lady, she's a tree. And yeah, okay, nice tree, but maybe I want to save my compliments for the one I really--"
She clammed up, catching herself, but it was too late. Estelle was leaning, no, looming over her with dangerous innocence, smiling down.
"...The one you really?"
Rita scowled and looked away. At this rate she was going to turn pinker than the stupid scenery. "Now you're just fishing."
"Fishing? In a tree?"
She scowled harder. "Don't play dumb!"
Estelle only laughed into one folded hand. Rita resisted the urge to hunch on one side and turn her back on the laughter. With her luck she'd wind up hunching right off the branch, no matter how comfortably wide it seemed.
It was starting to drive her a little crazy, not being able to tell whether Estelle really was playing dumb. For a while Rita had wondered whether she herself was being too subtle, but Yuri had said she was about as subtle as a fireball the last time she'd brought up the subject with him. Which was the last time she meant to bring it up with him again, ever. He didn't have to grin like that. Jerkface.
Anyway, the person she really ought to bring it up with was right here.
Estelle was lying back on the branch, settling as primly as she did in any palace bed. "This tree's so full of stories," she said. Her voice was hushed again, as if the two of them were huddled in the library at Aspio instead of in a giant tree. "It's like I can hear it whispering them to me."
Trust her not to take credit even for her own inventions. Rita huffed. "Actually, no. You're making them up. But you can tell one anyway, if you want."
"Should I?"
It would put off the moment of truth a little longer. Besides, she liked Estelle's stories, liked listening to her tell them in that graceful voice, even when they were sappy (which was more or less all the time). "Sure, why not."
"All right," said Estelle, "I'll tell one, but you have to promise not to interrupt. You can't say anything until the story's over, and while you're listening you have to close your eyes."
Rita rolled them first, just for good measure, but did as she was told. The backs of her eyelids were as pink as everything else. Maybe she was starting to go blind to every other color. It didn't seem fair to blame only the tree for that.
"Closed," she announced.
"Promise?"
"Yeah, okay! Promise."
"All right." She heard Estelle take a deep breath. "Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a palace. The princess loved old tales more than anything else, the kind where handsome princes swept maidens off their feet, or knights went on quests to rescue fair ladies. She'd read every book of romances in the palace library, and she knew all of the endings, happy and sad."
This was suspiciously familiar, thought Rita--but she'd promised, so she kept her eyes and mouth shut with scarcely a mmph.
"The princess grew up reading those tales, and for a long time she dreamed of being in a tale like that herself. When she made up stories, they were always about maidens and princes, ladies and knights. She thought that was how romances were supposed to be. But when she went out into the world herself, she met someone on her travels. She met all sorts of people--knights and princes included--and some of them became her closest friends. But out of all of them, the one she fell in love with after the journey's end wasn't a knight, and wasn't a prince."
There was a rustle of fabric as Estelle shifted on the branch.
If Rita had wanted to open her eyes before, she didn't dare to now. She was having enough trouble trying to breathe. Her fingernails clung to the bark of the branch under her, digging in.
"It wasn't even a boy."
Rita froze.
Estelle paused for a long, wobbly exhale before going on. "At first the princess didn't know what to do, because she'd never thought that kind of thing could happen--that a princess could fall in love with a girl. She'd never read any stories like that, and she knew the people at the palace wouldn't approve. She didn't know who to ask, so she asked the spirit of an ancient tree, one that had stood guard over a peaceful village for hundreds of years.
"The great tree said, 'Princess, I have sheltered more lovers in my time than there are petals on my boughs. To me it makes no difference whether they are lords or ladies, boys or girls. If the love in their hearts is true, there will always be room for them under my branches.'
"When she heard that, the princess was so grateful that she watered the tree's roots with her tears. She made up her mind that even if it was strange, even if it never happened in stories, she would tell the other girl what was in her heart."
There was another pause, then, one in which Rita felt she might violently (if not spontaneously, since there was a clear catalyst here) combust. She opened her eyes to stare at Estelle--she couldn't help it--and made another mmph noise, more frantically this time. More of a MMRRMPH.
"Oh," said Estelle, in a voice gone very small, "that's all. You can talk if you want to."
Rita shot upright, ribbons flailing. The tree, the barrage of flowers overhead had nothing on her now. They were only pink, whereas her face was burning with the red of a thousand fiery blastia cores. Blastia cores that didn't even exist.
"What kind of ending is that?!" she burst out.
Estelle sat up with her, wide-eyed and blinking. "It's, um. A work in progress? Unless...unless you have an ending in mind."
"Oh, I'll give you an ending! How about 'AND THE OTHER GIRL ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK?' Or maybe, I don't know, 'The princess could've said something sooner, because the other girl was totally failing to hide a crush the size of Nordopolica?!' Or something? THE END."
She slumped over her skewed knees, hiding her face in her hands. The only trouble was she couldn't stand to hide for long.
When she peeked up again, Estelle was smiling. Possibly beaming.
"I think that could be a good ending," she said. "But something's missing."
Rita's heart flailed. "Missing?"
"Yes. If it's a real romance there has to be a kiss." Estelle closed her eyes and arranged herself, hands folded in her lap, chin tilted upward just the slightest.
Waiting.
Rita gibbered. Not that she didn't want to, but--this was all so sudden and-- "Aren't I supposed to sweep you off your feet or something first?!"
Estelle opened her eyes. "You already did," she said, making the same fluttery gesture Rita had made before they took off from the ground. Then she closed her eyes again, still smiling.
"Oh. That." That moment of inspired suavity. Right. With an effort Rita quashed some of her panic. She edged closer to Estelle, scooting sideways along the branch without getting up. "So, um. 'The other girl, who was the best mage in the land, was a genius at lots of things, but maybe not so much at this.'" She was beginning to wish she'd asked Yuri for more advice, after all. "Because she'd maybe never, um, done it before."
"'Neither had the princess,'" said Estelle. Serenely.
If Rita hadn't been so in love, she might've decked her, or at least grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her into a rightfully agitated state. How could she be serene? Was this not a big deal to her? Couldn't she just picture Yuri grinning, Judith smirking, the old man breaking into a horrible leer? Couldn't she hear Karol chanting Rita and Estelle, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N--OW! RITA, YOU SUCK! even though Karol and all the rest of them were in separate cities, miles away?
She edged closer again. Her leg--her entire thigh--bumped up against Estelle's. If the panic didn't immobilize her, the happiness would. "Um," she gulped, "there's another thing. 'The other girl, she, she might have acted all brave most of the time, or tried to, but there were some things she was really nervous about. Nervous, and. And really shy.'"
That was where she hit her limit, or thought she had, until Estelle reached for her hands.
Held them and clasped them. Rubbed her thumbs over Rita's knuckles. Opened her eyes, which weren't so serene at all.
"'The princess knew that. She was, too.'"
They looked at each other. She leaned, they both leaned--and it was easier that way, to meet in the middle. At first their noses collided, but then they tipped their heads and got it right. Exactly right. Like the best formula ever.
It turned out kissing was easy, after all. As easy as falling off a branch, which they were maybe in grave danger of doing. Rita wasn't sure how she ended up with her leg hooked over Estelle's, or how Estelle's arms got around her waist, but by the time she noticed them they seemed like brilliant ideas. The tiny squeak Estelle made when Rita's lips found her ear, that was brilliant, too. Genius, all of it.
When they stopped they were both flushed, with fallen petals strewn all over their hair. Estelle laughed and brushed the petals out of Rita's, letting them scatter across their laps. Rita was about to return the favor when a glimmer near the trunk of the tree caught the corner of her eye. Startled, she turned.
The glimmer intensified, and soon it was a ball of pure light hovering like a star. The voice that spoke from the light was familiar, ethereal and bright.
"I wish to thank you," said the spirit, "for another lovely story. And--" It giggled. "For the rest, as well."
For a second Rita could only stare in outage at the eavesdropper. The voyeur. The peeping Tom.
Peeping tree.
Then she blazed to her feet.
Estelle leapt up with her, clinging to her arms to hold them down. "Rita, no! We want to talk to her about the barrier, rememb--"
*
Far below, the children of Halure flinched at the blast of an explosion, and craned their necks to see a tidal wave of petals pouring down from one limb high above.