Creating Fusion

Iki had an idea. Recently, while traveling with her mother, uncle and cousin, she'd seen a tree unlike anything else that she'd ever seen. At some point in the trees life, it had been struck by lightning, splitting it in two. She assumed in some stroke of luck during the storm, part of another type of tree had been lodged in the center. In time, those tree segments blossomed and grew, fusing themselves together into a totally new type of tree. The young woman was absolutely amazed by what she'd seen and had taken quite a long time investigating the strange occurrence. On the journey home, she wondered if she might be able to do the same thing, only in a much less invasive fashion.

Once home, Ikigai took several of the Akita guards, one of the only good things to come from her father being part of Ashen, and set out to the Fern Gulley.  The princess still wasn't comfortable going out on her own and perhaps she never would be. With the dogs, she felt safer and she knew that she needed to start leaving pack lands, if only to learn how the world worked. This would be a good reason to do so.

This place was full of plants and various trees, so Iki thought it would be an ideal place to find a sapling or two for her experiment. There was so much to choose from that she spent quite a lot of time walking back and forth down one main path, shopping for saplings. It was then that one of the dogs growled low and Iki's attention was pulled away from the greenery. The young princess stood tall, her long, obsidian tail snaking across the grass as she, and all of the dogs, turned their attention towards the mouth of the path to see what was coming their way.

WC-314
Total-314/1500

"Ikigai"