Chapter 2

Lilith

I bought five trees, which was all he had available: four to resell at the nursery and one for myself. The fruit was unlike anything I could purchase at any grocery store, and I just knew I'd want one of the sapling trees to take home with me to my little patio garden at my condo in New Caelora. The trees themselves were rather unremarkable—they looked like any other apple tree—but that fruit! Sweet, fresh, crisp, and perfectly tart with an almost tropical undertone… I didn't understand how this mothman hadn't flooded the market with his new creation. I made a promise to myself to go back to the orchard and buy a box of those apples as soon as I could. I knew how hard rare fruits could be to source, and it would be a few years before my new little tree would start producing.

For now, I'd placed my baby tree in a beautiful cement planter in front of my largest apartment window. It was a little bright spot of joy for me whenever I was in my cramped, dimly lit apartment, and it cheered me up every time I looked at it. At least, it did in the beginning.

I couldn't put my finger on it, but it just seemed… unhappy somehow. "Do plants have feelings?" one might ask. Well, not in the same way we do, but those of us with plant magic had long accepted that there was something there that we could feel when a plant was thriving in an optimum environment that was missing when it was not. And little by little this young tree that brightened up my dull apartment living room was slowly losing its "happy." That was the best way I could translate the feeling it gave me.

I then watched with dismay as my "feeling" was confirmed when the leaves began to yellow and drop over the following weeks. It was especially disappointing because I've always had a knack with plants. Having a green thumb is one of my defining characteristics! I could intuitively tell what they needed or what they would tolerate, and this sapling tree should have been just fine in an appropriately sized pot with plenty of sunlight and an appropriate amount of water and nutrients. Instead of joy, the plant quickly became a source of disappointment. It was a hit to my ego to have failed this plant. I was sad for the plant that it wasn't doing well, and I was embarrassed for myself that I'd potentially ruined one of that mothman's prized trees. I even asked Artem what he was doing differently with the trees in our shop greenhouse, but he didn't have any suggestions for me other than the small amount of dryad magic he lent them every time he watered. I considered plying him with beer or whatever dryads drank to come give my tree a boost of his magic, but even the trees in his care weren't doing as well as they had been for the mothman. He'd told me to just give it time.

I babied it. Checked its water level every day. Inspected it for pests. Offered it extra humidity. Less humidity. Some organic plant food. Moved the pot slightly for more optimum sunlight.

Eventually, I decided to just leave it alone and hope for the best, but every time I walked by it, I felt my anxiety rise as I inevitably scanned it for more signs of distress. So, you'd think I would have noticed when little buds started to protrude from the soil in the pot, but somehow, I missed it.

It wasn't until multiple little red fungus tops were poking from the soil that I noticed their growth, stopping in my tracks one day as I passed through my living room. There they were, little white stems with red tops clustered in the dirt. Great, I thought to myself. More evidence that the tree is dying. The roots were probably rotting. I reached for the soil to test if it was over-saturated and nearly came out of my skin when one of the mushrooms turned and looked at me . It didn't do anything else, just blinked up at me with its beady little black eyes and then returned to its original position.

"What the hell?" I said aloud, quiet as a breath. The mushroom didn't react. I had a whole-ass mushroom-person colony living in my house. I squatted down to get a better look—while keeping my distance—recognizing them as the same type that the little girl had been pulling up and repotting at the apple orchard. My soil must have been contaminated. The mothman had called them low-fae and told the old man holding a pot of them that they would bite. One of the mushrooms toward the back of the cluster peeked up at me from under its little cap, and I narrowed my eyes at it. It immediately hid its face again and froze.

I'd heard of low-fae, but I'd never seen one before, not like this anyway. Did I want biting low-fae in my house? No, I did not… but aside from carrying the tree out to the dumpster in its concrete pot, how was I supposed to get them out? Trap them in a cup like a spider? Could they even move around? Were they damaging my tree?

Watching for any sign of movement out of the corner of my vision, I finally pried my eyes off of the toadstools and took stock of my tree. It seemed… greener. The leaves looked better than they had since I brought it home. And now that I was paying attention, it had that spark of thriving I could feel in my magic. For the first time in weeks, I began to hope that it might pull through. And the only thing that had changed were these weird little mushrooms. I eyed them again, considering. If they were making the tree healthier… and they weren't hurting anything… I squinted at them and thought about poking one of them to see how it reacted, but I was afraid of getting bitten. That little girl hadn't been harmed, though.

I watched them for a while longer and eventually decided that I would leave them alone—as long as they stayed in the pot and my tree didn't show any signs of damage. But at the first sign of any movement outside of the pot, I was going to catch them with some kitchen tongs and a bucket and throw them outside.

The mushrooms never moved as I checked them obsessively for the rest of the day. None of them even twitched or acknowledged my presence, so I started to question my sanity and whether I'd actually seen them move at all, but I wasn't brave enough to poke one and see if it reacted. Every time I peeked in on them, I felt like I was intruding, but I was nervous about them being in my home. When bedtime finally came, I still felt uneasy, but finally retreated to my bedroom—after snooping another three times to make sure they hadn't moved.

Enveloped in darkness, I lay in bed, listening to the scritch, scritch, scritch of my upstairs neighbor's claws as he moved about his apartment, wallowing in my discontent. I missed my friends. I missed my street and the familiar faces at the coffee shop down the block from my condo. The barista with the cheerful smile and my regular drink order waiting for me every morning. My favorite little elvish cafe with the locally sourced potted pies that always hit the spot on chilly nights. There were elvish pies here, I'd found, but they didn't taste the same, and I'd spent hours combing the local shops unsuccessfully for my favorite starlight tea. I missed being able to rescue my uncle from yet another plant-sales-based mishap. Going out for drinks with my friends from college on a random Friday night. My morning routine of coffee with Melantha, the cousin who was filling in for me. I loved the familiar comfort of sipping our drinks as I pored over the previous day's paperwork, while she filled me in on how her parents were doing or what her new husband was up to at the kinesthetics clinic for wyverns, where he was completing his internship. Even just joking around with Jaque, the new kid we'd hired to work the sales floor since I'd moved into management. None of that existed here, and I felt so disconnected. I could send them messages through the network of spectral messengers, but it wasn't the same as interacting with them and just quietly existing alongside them.

There was no one to talk to here, or spend my days alongside. That whole sense of family—of community—was missing. Now, Artem was fine. He was a fantastic employee. He just didn't joke around or feel much of a need to engage outside of business-related discussions. Which was fine! Yet, the end result was that I felt a little out of sorts unless Jereck was around, and he only worked part time. How had I gone from being annoyed by his constant chatter to enjoying his shifts?

I was lonely and felt out of place, I admitted to myself. I didn't feel like I fit in here, and I didn't know that I wanted to. This wasn't my home, after all—I wasn't planning on staying. I'd obviously known that coming in and thought I was prepared for it, but the longer I was here, the more adrift I felt. By the time I fell asleep that night, I was resolved to work my butt off to make the new plant shop profitable as soon as possible. I would prove that I could do it—I would make my uncle proud—and then I could get the heck back to New Caelora. Back to my real home.

Two weeks went by without any change or movement from my new mushroom roommates, who only occasionally opened their eyes to glance at me when I stared at them like a loon. I wouldn't have even known they were there if I hadn't spotted them, and over time, especially as my tree grew noticeably more healthy—still not robust by any means, but I took what I could get—I decided I didn't really mind their presence. I didn't know how sentient they were, but it became weirdly comforting having them there after a while.

None of the trees at the greenhouse had shown any sign of soil contamination or low-fae growth, and Artem had just given a grumpy shrug and continued packing dirt into some seed-starting trays when I asked if he knew anything about low-fae growing in plants. My bafflement continued.

And then, one night, I walked by on my way to bed and stopped in my tracks, slopping steaming chamomile tea over the side of my cup and all over the scuffed hardwood floor in front of me. Because there was a frog in my apple tree pot, nestled down among the mushrooms.

"No," I said aloud to no one in particular. "We're not doing this." No more extraneous creatures living in my house.

Abandoning what was left of my cup of tea to the sideboard table, I reached for the frog. Heedless of the toadstools, I brushed right past them and scooped him up. He was slimy and bumpy, and his little body was cold in my hand, but I refused to allow myself to gag. I really wanted to gag . We marched right out the front door and down the hall to the stairs—me in my flannel pants, oversized sleep shirt, and bunny slippers, and frog in his slimy frog-ness. And then I full-body- slammed into a warm, fluffy wall of heat and muscle as I jogged out the door at the bottom of the stairs on my way out.

The frog leapt from my hands as I startled backward, choking on my fear as bright red eyes filled my vision. A piercing shriek rang out as the towering mothman recoiled away from me. A window opened several stories above.

"Hey, shut up! We're sleeping here!" yelled an annoyed voice before the window slammed shut again. I cringed. The mothman cringed. The frog probably cringed, wherever he was. Apartment Etiquette 101: Respect the Quiet Hours.

Alistair's antennae were flattened against his head, and all four arms were pulled tightly against his body as he practically cowered away from me with a chastened-sounding chirp. Above us, an old gooseneck lamp illuminated the entryway, its flickering light catching the mothman's enormous ruby colored eyes and making them look like they were glowing from within. I took a deep breath, and—realizing I wasn't being attacked from the darkness by some monster —asked the only question my brain could lock onto at the moment.

"Was that your high-pitched shriek?"

My question seemed to bring him back to himself. "You startled me." His answer was clipped and carried an irritated buzz as he straightened up and began dusting off his front with all four of his hands. Dust motes sparkled in the lamplight as they flew off his feathery chest and mane. I looked down at myself to see that I was also covered in sparkly dust. That hadn't been there when I'd left my apartment.

"I'm sorry," I responded quickly, awkwardly scrubbing at the dust coating my shirt with my wrists since my hands were coated in frog goo. What on earth? Moth dust? "What—what are you doing here?" I asked him.

"I live here," he said with an affronted air, before slowly beginning to return to his cringing pose as he took in my flailing attempts to remove the glittery substance from my clothes. It almost looked like he was wilting. "I fear our wing scales are not that easily removed from clothing."

I stopped the awkward scrubbing, not wanting to embarrass him. "It's fine," I assured him. Surely it would launder out. I was the one who had run into him, after all. "Were you just… standing here?" I asked, pointing at the ground like a dummy, still confused by the entirety of the last few minutes. There was no sign of the frog I'd brought outside. Alistair didn't respond for several beats, so I looked up from where I was searching the ground to find him frowning at me.

"I like the lamp," he finally answered.

"You're just out here lurking under the lamp?" I asked. My brain caught up as I remembered the red eyes in the windows above my apartment and the tapping of talons on my ceiling all night. He lives here? A quick glance at his feet revealed that he did indeed have long, sharp talons on powerful looking bird-like feet. Alistair was my upstairs neighbor.

My brain had a hard time keeping up as I processed this information. I found myself allowing my eyes to scan his form, wondering what else I had failed to notice the day I met him as I'd scrambled after him through the orchard. His legs had a backward turned hock in the same way a bird or horse does, and sturdy looking thighs led up to well-defined abdominal muscles that gave my stomach a fluttery feeling as I stared at them. His chest and shoulders held bulky muscles used for powering the massive wings he currently had folded tightly behind him. His limbs and body were covered in a soft, velvety down that was darker in color than the puffy mane of fluff around his neck. Right now, with his shoulders hunched, he looked like he was trying to disappear into his fluff. It occurred to me that he was oddly… cute. I felt my lips curve up.

"I'm… I'm not lurking," he stammered, his tiny fangs making an appearance as he spoke. "I just appreciate a nice lamp when I see one."

"Okay." I heard the confusion in my own voice and bit back my amusement, not wanting to offend him further. "Well… enjoy, I guess." I flashed him a quick smile and reached behind me to open the door, mentally apologizing to my neighbors for the frog goo I left on the doorknob. I wasn't coming back down tonight to wipe it off and risking another strange encounter of the mothman kind.

As I was turning off the sink in my kitchen, I heard the familiar tick, tick, tick of claws in front of my apartment and tiptoed to the door to peek through the peephole. Sure enough, Alistair passed in front of my unit and down the hall toward the rear set of stairs to the upper floor. Several minutes later, his tapping claws sounded through the ceiling above.

As I climbed into bed that night, something inside me relaxed for the first time since I'd come here. The scritch, scritch, scritch was suddenly familiar instead of foreign, now that I knew who it was, and I wondered what he was doing up there. I pictured him dusting a shelf or tidying his apartment. Maybe he had a plant. I had difficulty imagining him doing the same mundane household chores that the rest of us participated in—maybe he wore a blue gingham apron while he dusted his apartment with a fluffy, white feather duster that matched his antennae, or perhaps he had two sets of matching pink dish gloves to protect his perfectly sharp claws while he did the washing up—but the effort of doing so tugged a small smile to my lips and lifted a bit of the heaviness that had been collecting in my chest over the last several weeks.

I'd changed my shirt but had been too tired to take another shower, and the scent of his scales still blanketed me as I lay in bed. Soft, warm musk and crisp night air. I wondered why I hadn't seen him around the apartment before. I'd seen the middle-aged elvish man who lived next door as he came and went, and the younger goblin in her stylish, pressed suits who lived across the hall, along with several others as we were coming and going, but never the mothman.

I realized as I drifted off to sleep that he must be nocturnal. I wondered if he had any friends, or if he was lonely. Like me.