Heroes of Dreamland, Book 6 1/2: The Last Sakuranoki (OLD)

The End of Cherry's Story

~ Later that day: ~

Cherry was a little bit disoriented. The last thing she could remember was reaching out to the tiny tree while whispering some sort of incantation. After that, only black, like a rare dreamless sleep. Now, the first thing she noticed as she started to 'wake up' was that she was sitting somewhere warm and firm.

Blinking her eyes open, she found that she was in some sort of cozy little wooden room, which was pretty much empty. The whole place was bathed in warm, golden sunlight, although she wasn't sure where the source was.

As she stirred a bit and began to think about getting up, she suddenly heard a familiar little whoosh of "Mama?" Immediately, she started looking around for her little tree, only to suddenly have a cheerful little brown face appear over hers and fwoosh at her happily.

"Yipe!" she stuttered in surprise and scooted away a bit, making the new member of the scene give a breezy giggle as she reached out a hand and helped Cherry up. The strange little girl was about half as tall as Cherry, and had brown skin the color of cherry tree bark. She had an innocent young face with leaf-green eyes and pointed elf-like ears, and wore a light pink short-puffy-sleeved dress that went down past her knees. The fact that she was wearing a simple farm-work style dress with bare feet made her look sort of like some sort of Elvin farm girl.

But the most unique thing about her was that instead of hair, she had a head full of cherry blossoms that reached down to her shoulders. Excited, the little one danced around the small, dome-like room for a minute before dashing in a deer-like manner back to Cherry and whooshing in jubilation again.

With a quiet laugh, Cherry asked, "So you're the spirit of the last sakuranoki, right?" The little sprite nodded happily and gave a fwoosh of agreement, making Cherry laugh a bit louder. Then, the Fairy froze and looked around her again.

Soon enough, she found what she was looking for lying on the dirt floor next to her. There was the Cherry Star Sword, carefully encased in a sheath that she'd never seen before. "Did you make that, Noki?" Cherry asked the sprite, coming up with a name for her without even really thinking about it. It just... fit her.

Noki giggled again in her windy way and nodded, her hands bashfully behind her back. Cherry grinned before carefully taking her Dimensional Cape off and wrapping it around the sword. She didn't need wings here, and besides, someone was going to come needing it someday. As long as her dream books proved true, that was-

"Oh, RIPPLE!" Her dream books were still inside the cape, weren't they? How were they supposed to tell anyone about future events if they were... wait, where were she and Noki at the moment?

Feverishly, she grabbed up her cape and dug the books out of it, Noki frowning in confusion at 'Mama's' worry. Sure enough, they were still there. "Oh, ripple," she sighed again, less upset this time. It was still something to worry about, though.

After a minute of thought, Noki suddenly grabbed Cherry's hand and drug her excitedly into a passageway that appeared out of nowhere, which led to another room that had tiny, tightly-woven branches for a floor and cherry blossoms for a roof. 

Confused, Cherry questioned, "Are we inside the cherry tree?"

Noki nodded as if it was obvious. She and Cherry were both sakuranoki spirits now, which is what made the trees sakuranoki in the first place, so of course they were inside the tree.

"Wait," Cherry added with a frown. "So were there... people, people like you inside all the sakuranoki?"

Pausing, Noki nodded and whooshed sadly while kicking at the ground once or twice.