Esk Tales {TWWM-ARPG Writings Collection}

Gardeners {Majanthi #4- Interactions}

Gardeners

Prompt 4- Interactions
{Majanthi}

.:+:.

Offerings and gifts were not an uncommon occurrence for the Wanderer- she often received many trinkets from her followers, or grateful souls she may have helped, and even small bounties bestowed to her by the earth. And while she did not think of herself much as someone attached to material objects, these were the things she allowed herself to hang on to, and wove them into her mane and fur so she may always have a piece of those she met along the way, even long after they were gone and time had trudged by.

She gathered many things, was gifted many more, and rarely did she ever falter when presented with an offering.... But there were a handful of times where something had made her pause.

This was one such time

Majanthi stood still, her pale eyes stuck to the gift lain so gently at her feet, the beady black eyes of the bird who had presented it too her stuck to the Wanderer as she eyed the gift, expectant.

The light of the sun overhead glittered off the object's shiny surface, intricate gold inlay of carefully tempered metal wound around even more carefully crafted glass- dyed in unnatural hues of green and blue. It was man-made, even close to something her fellow Wanderer X might have crafted and certainly belonging to that Boundary X and mankind called their own.... but the shape it was made to be was more Majanthi's place, and surely that was why it was being offered up to her now.

It was clearly meant to look like a succulent, or otherwise some desert faring plant with spread outward from a central point in neat triangle shaped sections. Though for what purpose other than mimicking real life the object had, Majanthi was unsure.

The Wanderer peered down at the offering a few seconds more, before lowering her head enough to press her muzzle against it's surface- a faint sense of all things connected to it and where it belonged flooding her senses as she did.

Little wisps of bountiful spaces filled with vegetation of all kinds, hints and impressions of water and life, and a buzz of peaceful energy so abundant it had rubbed on the little item... hmm.

Majanthi pulled away, her attention moving off the gift and to the one who had brought it- her pale eyes matching with the bird.

"Where did you find this, little one?"

.:+:.

This place was.... different.

Majanthi paused on the fringes, the bird that had guided her here perched on the spines of a cactus nearby and over what line there was between the Wanderer's Biome and another. An invisible line, one without any clear indication as to where it was drawn, and a bit of a muddy one too- but a line nonetheless, and one Majanthi would not cross it, even in her wonder fit the origin of that strange gift given to her.

But she did wander along that muddy edge, skirting the unseen border and dancing on that line that seemed to bleed in both directions, intermittent and unclear. It was in most ways still the Arid Lands she called her own, but they had been altered- nurtured, nudged, changed... Touched by human hands, even if it didn't seem so apparent.

It did mostly look like her land, if not for the subtle way in which plants had been placed and lined up just so, or where pods of vegetation clumped neatly together where normally they would be more spread out. There were little tracks woven between the plants that were too tidy to have been made by animals, and rocks buried in the sand like stepping stones- and were certainly not at all natural. And then dotted here and there stood manmade things, seemingly designed to be inconspicuous in the surrounding landscape but noticeable all the same- and a clearer indication of that blurry line between Arid and Developed the Wanderer was skirting along.