Anemone

The world, so far as you can tell, does not end overnight. But it doesn’t move that far back from the brink, either. Amber’s plant invasion may not be the most danger Forrester’s Crossing has seen since all this began, at least not if it stops where it seems to have stopped for now, but it was the most aggressive overtly supernatural crisis so far. People are panicked, confused, and searching for answers very few have. All they have instead are the first signs of the tension between the church and its enemies boiling over into war. You don't wake up to the sounds of gunfire, at least. Then there’s the issue of how few answers you have, as four of the five or six people with the fullest picture of what happened yesterday. Assuming that Amber and Garrett had some kind of productive exchange where neither of them died while you slept, anyway. You have people to protect and promises to follow up on and not nearly the information or energy you’d like to race into either. So, when morning comes, what do you do first? Mechanics + Stage-setting During this section, assuming you don't race into anything preposterous, you're going to have an effective week of downtime. Yay! This should also be enough time to refresh all of your strain, and you can find the mechanical options for how to spend your downtime on page 88 of the book. The suboptimal circumstances section does not apply here - I'm not penalizing you for the fact that you're (probably) not going to have access to PMC-grade medical and psychiatric care at any point during this story. I'd just like to see how everyone's spending this time. What are each of your next steps? Do you have any plans with each other? How much do you explain to your friends and family and community, if anything? Do you check in on Amber and Garrett, or any other persons of interest? Investigate the stele prior to breaking out the information-magic nuclear options, or follow up on anything else of interest to you?

Amber does visibly relax at that, if only a little. "Alright. Then yeah. That's, I mean, they did just show up and start trying to cut me down, but I don't want anyone to die unless they really really have to for some horrible reason. And I get it. You four probably just... saw what you saw, and I know it was pretty gross. It scared all my friends away when I made it. It scared me. But it was still mine, still part of me, and... it was my first time trying this. I wasn't very good. So I couldn't find a way to make it pull itself out of the ground and scoot into the forest or somewhere. With the garden, I was really trying to make everything as nice as I could. I wanted to leave something nice behind if..." She trails off, glancing back into the woods. "You know. If this didn't work out."

"...Yes? But um, thanks. I think, I don't know what you've been doing, but it'd be my first... you know, and of course I really don't want to. Or I guess, if those guys who tried to cut me down don't make it, I don't know what happened with them after... yeah," Amber mutters back. "If no one else is around and it's me or the world, I don't want you holding back on that account," Garrett insists. Amber goes still, then nods slowly. "I'm, yeah. I was already... ready to hurt people if I really had to," she sighs. "Urgh. Now I have to ask. What did happen with those guys?"

"Okay. That doesn't exactly rule out there being, I don't know, some contagious crazy-brain thing going around, but it does seem at least more likely that this is what you say it is. Which would be real bad, yeah," Garrett mutters, still scratching away at his arm beneath his sleeve. "Look. Tree girl. It doesn't look like there's any way we can sit down and work this out to your satisfaction right this second. Sorry about that. But if it's as urgent as you say it is, and you're willing to try an approach other than throwing down over whether I'm working too slow... how much have these kids told you about me? I've already told you, what I'm managing here is not a permanent fix. Not even for our little corner of the woods. I know that. But it will work better, and hold for longer, the more I understand the thing I'm trying to ward against. So if you want to have a sit-down and talk about this, trade information... hell, maybe we figure out what we're missing here. But worst case, you'll be stretching this doomsday clock out a little longer while the rest of these folks have a chance to sleep on all this. That sound fair?" Amber glances uncertainly between your group and Garrett's shack. For a long while, she's silent, and her shield of roots is still. "What if you're what does it? What if we find your glyph, or something about me makes you start seeing them, and you..." "If something you say makes me go crazy, kill me. Then the walls fall and you can try and do whatever you want about it. Four witnesses here who can all say I told you to do it, if there's anyone left to object," Garrett says, utterly without humor. Even Amber looks a bit taken aback. But after another quiet stretch, she nods. The roots around her pull back, not out of the clearing but no longer held as weapons at the ready. "...Alright." She turns and says to you, a little quieter: "I'm, um. I don't really know what happens next. I don't know if there'll be a world in the morning. But... thanks for trying to listen, I guess. After the first thing."

"Didn't mention sigils or the stele a minute ago. They part of this?" Garrett asks. "Fine! Nevermind what's safe to say if it's the only way to make anyone listen!" Amber snarls. "I, I saw one of those glyphs, written in the forest... no, not written, it was just like they were always there. In patterns on the veins of leaves, the crags of bark. And every time I saw it, it told me, showed me, how I could... kill everyone with my power. And all the ways other people could do so much worse. How bad things were going to get if I didn't." Garrett narrows his eyes at that. "People've been studying that stele since it showed up. I've been studying it. They turn up in other places, too. Sometimes just graffitied around town, but for a while I was seeing them in the river. Some of those college kids who threw themselves into this damn hole said they were seeing them inside it." "I know! That's how I know it's coming from there!" "Could be. Haven't seen them in the river since I put up the wards, at least," Garrett nods, his voice flat and even. "So why hasn't it taught me how to blow up the world? What's the difference? Has anyone else had these visions?" "YES! They have!" Amber points back to your group, first to Sam and lingering for longer on Eavan. "You saw, didn't you? You know. This isn't in my head and it isn't just about me and it needs to stop."

"Amber the tree girl?" Garrett turns around and slams the door behind him. Several seconds later, he reappears. "Okay. That's a different story. The influences line up. WHAT'RE YOU THINKING, TREE GIRL?" he yowls. Amber shifts uncomfortably in her nest of roots and branches, but after a moment, she nods and takes a deep breath "UM! I'M GOing..." She stumbles over her best attempt to match the men's volume, her dry, scratchy voice lapsing into a coughing fit. Reluctantly, she and her external limbs stretch farther out into the field. "There's something in the Hole. Something really, really bad, like-" "You don't say," Garrett grumbles, mostly to himself. "NO! YOU DON'T GET IT! Bad in a way I don't even know if it's safe to tell you! Contagious brain hazard bad, kill-the-world-or-worse bad, and what you're doing here is not stopping it from doing whatever it wants! So... so I, or we, or someone, we need to get in there and kill it. Stop it." "Stop it how?" Garrett asks, in a voice like he's humoring a child while she explains her plans to eat the moon. "...I... don't know," Amber admits. "I just know we need to do it as soon as possible." "You wouldn't be the first to throw yourself into that Hole and die, or whatever happens down there. Don't know if you were paying attention, but the last times didn't go so well for any of us." Garrett reaches one arm into his other sleeve, scratching furiously. "Just sounds like you're asking me to take down the wall so you can kill yourself, and this thing you can't even tell me about can come all the way back out. Just sounds like the hole inside you talking." "The hole inside what? What are you... no, doesn't matter, IT'S ALREADY OUT! It's out and it's everywhere and it needs to stop! If it's not already too late!" "Come back with a way to stop it, or, I don't know, anything I can use. Then we'll see. 'Til then, I already know damn well that I'm standing here plugging a dam with my little finger. I'll keep right on buying what time I can, hoping someone comes to me with something real," Garrett says bluntly. Amber's roots twist and contract, tensing up with barely-constrained fury.

"HELP HOW?" Garrett hollers back from inside. He can't compete with Ray's volume, but he does make an impressive effort for a scraggly middle-aged man. "HOLD ON, I'M-" The shack's door slams open. Garrett looks out across the field, narrowing his eyes as he spots Ray, and narrowing them into scowling pinpricks at the sight of the writhing plants bundled around Amber. "Whose idea is whatever you're about to float? What's your source?" he asks.

It’s difficult for Ray to read Amber’s bearing at a distance, in the dimly lit grove. It’s easier to see her plants twitching and stretching nervously. “Okay,” she finally says. “If you all think this’ll work, I’ll… I should try it, at least. Maybe it’ll help. I don’t know. Let’s go and see before it’s too late.” And without another word, Amber sets off through the unearthly beauty of her forest, circling around you to make her way back to the Hole. Not as a new friend who’s stood down and joined your group – she travels through her domain alternately climbing between and carried by a fresh procession of roots. The forest parts to clear her path and yours, offering a clear route back to town roughly parallel to hers. True to Amber’s word, when you cross the treeline and the Hole comes back into view, the plants around it are maintaining their ceasefire. The invisible barrier they were raging against when you last passed is… once again invisible as ever, impossible to tell at a glance if it’s damaged or in what ways, and Garrett’s shack remains a flickering bonfire of fluorescent light. “So,” Amber mutters from behind a thick wall of roots drawn protectively around her. “What now?”

Vines all around the treeline shift to regard Ray. "Yeah. Uh. Maybe not." Amber says after a moment. "I hope that's okay for you. Really. I hope no one's tried to kill you for how you look." She can't quite keep the bitterness from her voice. "Thank you, though. For calling them off. I guess, yeah, I'll try and do that if my phone still works. But... the future's the future. So what's your plan, exactly? Would it, I mean, would it help if I'm there to talk to this guy? No one's ever listened to me before."

Back in the grove, Amber shimmies down from her great tree, helped along by branches that bend and stretch to accommodate her climb. She settles on a limb near the bottom, still safely ensconced in risen roots. More than anything else, beneath the verdant bark coating her skin and flowers blooming from her face, she looks... tired. Frayed. "I've done my best to back off. No one's chasing me yet... I don't think. It's hard to see through some of the plants when things are too far away. So... what happens next? I don't really know if anyone's going to listen to me, like. Like this," she mutters, touching a finger to the skin around her blossoming eye socket.

The phone rings on and on, chirping into the quiet winter night. A bioluminescent paper-lantern bulb above seems to blink and fade in time with the sound. But finally, after a long enough wait that it feels like the call should have gone to messages, the sound stops. “Sam? Oh, thank goodness, are you somewhere safe?” Emma asks. The almost motherly concern in her voice comes through undisguised. Looking around at the twisted forest, Sam sighs out a long plume of vapor into the chill night air. “Hi Auntie. Y-yeah.” They swallow. An urge to just… hang up is building in their chest. It would be so easy to just run from this too. “I… uh… I heard… there was trouble. Are you okay? Is Dad…?” Sorrow and fear tightens their throat. The thought that Jack was dead, there had been shooting, that was hours ago, how bad had things gotten…? “...Ah,” Emma sighs. There’s a pause just long enough to be ominous. “News travels fast, I suppose. Of all the ways, at all the times, to declare war… no, I’m sorry, I should say this much first. Simon is fine. Safe at home, to my knowledge. If this is a situation where we’re all in especial trouble, it isn’t yet clear to me. And should it become one, I’ll gather everyone I can in the safest place available to us immediately. What about you? I hate to press, but we still know so little about what happened, who may be targeted… are you certain you aren’t at any risk?” Clutching their arms to their sides, they nod. Stupid. “Y-yeah. My friends… uh, my friends, and, well, me, we talked to the… person, directing the vines. Got them to stop. Things are… uh… complicated.” Another long, pensive silence. “Well,” Emma says slowly. “I can only imagine. But whatever you’ve done… good work. I could hardly scold you for diving into danger in good conscience.” She lets out a dry, tired chuckle. “A person, you said? Is there anything I should know about this? Or inform our friends in the field of?” “I think this was all… an accident. The church, we… you weren’t what they were going for. They wanted to do something else, and, I guess, uh…” This was the wrong way to go about it. “They pulled back. They don’t want to hurt anyone in town. Uhm…” They pause, trying to think about how to phrase this, to rally Emma into fighting the True Evil, hiding down in the Hole. In a moment of dissociation, Sam thinks about how profoundly silly this whole situation is. “Mm?” Emma presses, very gently. Gathering themself, they return to reality. “There’s something dangerous in the Hole. They were trying to get down there and stop it. I k-know that you have no reason to trust me,” Sam begins to barrel on. Emma was listening. She always did. The guilt is burning in them, the desire to unburden themself. Maybe Emma could help fix this, to bring Greg back- No, now isn’t the time. “Well, this person, they’re right. At least, about the root cause, uh, the source of the problem. I have, well, first hand evidence. But how they were handling it, that was wrong, and it got a lot of people hurt, i-including some of my friends. And Jack…” Sam swallows, “I’m sorry. Well, they’re sorry too. Friendly fire in the d-dark. That’s… that’s why I’m calling. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.” “I see.” There’s no conspicuous pause this time. “Not completely, I’m certain, but well enough. Some unknown actor saw a threat in the Hole, hardly a reach, and went about what sounds like a… well-intentioned but ill-considered plan to address it. I’m not in a position to accept their apology, but I’ll make sure I pass it along to Jack when he returns,” Emma says matter-of-factly. “It does sound like spreading this information could be, ah, time-sensitive, though. Should I get to that? If there’s nothing else you need, that is?” Sam blinks. Could it be that easy? “Uh… Y-yeah. This person was… not fully… in their right mind. This helps. I don’t think it’ll happen again.” They swallow once more. Their water bottle had run dry a little while ago. They look up, listening. “I have… a weird question…” “What’s that? All of our standards of ‘weird’ have gotten rather stretchy, these days.” Out of nowhere Sam laughs, a big donkey bray. Emma was so funny. Sam didn’t realize how much they missed her dry humor. “Sorry, sorry.” They’re smiling, despite everything. “Have you or, uh, anyone else in the church seen any… weird drawings? Like spiral symbols? Sigils? Or started talking about how they can… I dunno… save the entire world?” “Sigils? Like… those markings on that slab by the beach, sigils? Unless anyone’s been down there to look at it, not to my knowledge,” Emma says. “And no, I don’t know of anyone who thinks our reach extends quite that far. It’s enough work trying to keep our town from falling apart.” “Okay. That’s good. Great! Those beach slab sigils are, like, super dangerous. If anyone says they found one, or they want to save the world. Please, PLEASE, don’t trust them.” Sam pauses, listening. “I… I should be getting back, I think. Is… is there anything… I can do… to help you?” they ask quietly. “I… see. I think.” For the first time, Emma sounds more than a little uncertain. “I would like to know how you came about all of this, if you’re willing to share. But another time – there’s more important things to do, it sounds like. So for now, just keep doing whatever you have been. And please do remember that if you’re in any trouble, or you just need a place to stay, you’ll always be welcome with me for as long or as short a time as you like.” A second later, Emma mutters a wordless exclamation to herself and tacks a bit more on to her heartfelt goodbye. “Oh, and, ah, before you go… should we perhaps remove that slab, given all this? It’s quite large, yes, but as far as I know, it’s still there just because no one’s seen a reason to take a jackhammer to it.” What a truly brilliant idea. Emma was always a woman of decisive action. Sam had always admired that in her. On second thought, however, Sam wasn’t so sure. “I think… you should leave it alone for now. You have… lots on your plate. My friends can handle that, if it comes to it. And… thanks. I’d…” They trail off. It would be so nice to sit in Emma’s cozy living room, have some fresh pastries, like it used to be. It can’t be. Nothing can. “Well, that would be nice…” Sam hates themself for deflecting. Coward. “I-I need to get going. Love you, Auntie.” “Take care, Sam.” After another short, silent delay, Emma hangs up. Sam stands in the forest, under the strange flickering plants. Their face screws up as they hastily plug in a phone timer, just sixty seconds. Hiding their head in the crook of their arm, they cry quietly until the beeping starts.

"No one listened. No one would listen. They looked at us and ran screaming and still they thought they could help if I'd just calm down. How's anyone supposed to be calm ever again?" Amber murmurs. "...Maybe..." The grove goes still. Vines slither through the foliage, climbing the base of Amber's pearlescent tree. "Maybe if you can make them listen. Maybe that can work. But it needs to STOP, do you understand? It needs to stop and there's... if we don't do it right now, there's going to be people who see them. If there aren't already. And they all need to stop, too, or we need to stop them. You understand, right?" she asks. Her voice breaks on the last words. "I'll do it. If I have to. But I can stop right now. If you're really sure you can get people to help." Slowly, the thick cluster of roots you followed here pauses in its march, then contracts, winding back into the grove and rising up from the earth around the tree, like the half-submerged limbs of a great octopus. "I can pull back. For now. Just... make them stop, okay? I won't let them hurt me again."

"Only as good..." Amber mutters, mostly to herself. "But don't you get it? That's, that's not good enough! Making a bigger wall, locking it in there, it's not stopping it! We need to get rid of it! I just, I..." She trails off, scratching at her tree's bark with her nails. "I don't know how. I don't know if I can," she admits. "I just know someone needs to do it!"

"...Perfect," Amber croaks. "No. Oh no no. Was yours in there? Did it get you? I told you. I warned you. Don't. You can't. I don't want to hurt anyone." All around you, the garden twists and coils with barely-contained nervous energy.

"Coming up? It's ALREADY HERE!" Amber cries. Her voice breaks. "You, didn't you see? It's here, right now, doing whatever it wants! Maybe it's already too late, I don't know, but we won't know unless we try something other than just LEAVING it there!"