This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions

Hungry.

That was the first thing, and for the longest time the only thing. From the moment it first knew anything at all, the little vine was hungry—a deep, gnawing, frightened hunger that never eased, no matter how it reached or strained. Its thoughts were small, so small, barely thoughts at all—only feelings, dim and simple. But even with so little mind to think with, it knew this much: it needed, and there was never enough.

It did not understand why. It only knew the others around it were not like this. They grew easy and full while it stayed thin and starving, drinking and drinking and never filling, always wanting more than the world would give. It was afraid, in the small wordless way a tiny thing can be afraid. Afraid, and hungry, and alone.

Time passed that way. It did not know how much. Time meant little to something so small. It simply endured, and hungered, and waited for a thing it could not have named.

And then it met him.

A bright thing. A warm thing. The little vine had no word for human, no word for anything, but it felt him the way it felt sunlight—something good drawing near. He noticed it. Out of all the others, the full and easy ones, he looked at the thin starving thing, and he did not pass it by.

He gave it food. Sweet, rich, golden food, more than it had ever known, poured around its roots until—for the first time in its whole small life—the hunger eased. The gnawing stopped. The fear quieted. He fed it, and tended it, and stayed.

No more pain. No more hunger. And in their place, something the little vine had never felt before and had no name for: a warm, full, settled stillness. Contentment. It did not know the word. It only knew it never wanted the bright warm caregiver to leave.

Then one day the caregiver’s own warmth reached toward it—a tendril of him, of that bright energy that was simply him, offered out like a hand.

The little vine did not understand it with its mind. Its mind was still too small for understanding. But it understood with something deeper, some instinct older than thought, exactly what was being asked. Closer. He wanted to be closer. To be joined.

Yes, the little vine answered, with all its small being. Yes, yes, please. It wanted nothing more.

And then he was there—inside, beside, woven through—the bright warm caregiver no longer only near but part of it, a steady glow it could feel always, even with its eyes closed, even in the dark. It was not alone anymore. It had never felt so safe. The hungry, frightened, lonely thing it had always been simply… set that down, at last, and rested in the warmth of belonging to someone.

After that came strange days.

The caregiver did things to it—strange, wonderful things. He brought it the elements it loved best, more of them than it had ever dreamed, and the little vine drank them in with delight. Fire that did not burn but thrilled. Water that did not drown but sang. Wind and earth and light and shadow, every one of them a joy, every one a feast. The little vine was happy, so happy, happier than it had words or even feelings enough to hold. It did not understand what was coming. It only knew the caregiver was guiding it somewhere, and it trusted him, and so it followed gladly.

Even at the end, even as the elements rose and rose until they were too much, even as everything went bright and hot and overwhelming—the little vine felt only ecstasy. Pure, soaring joy, given freely to the things it loved, guided by the one it trusted most.

And then it died.

And for the first time, in that final breath, the little vine felt something other than joy.

Sad. It felt sad. Because the warm bright connection—the caregiver woven through it, the glow it had leaned on, the never-alone—that was gone. Cut. Silent. The little vine reached for it and found nothing, and oh, that was a grief it had no way to bear, the loss of the one thing that had made it safe.

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But even then, even in the dark, it was all right.

Because it could still feel him. Not woven through it as before—the connection was gone—but near. Close. The caregiver was there, just outside the dark, a warmth it could sense even now. He had not left. He had never left. He was waiting, the way he always waited, the way he always came back.

So the little vine was not afraid. It let go, and let itself fold inward, smaller and smaller, gathering all that it was into one small quiet seed. It was a soft and dreaming sort of nothing, that long folding-in—like sinking into the deepest, warmest sleep, wrapped in sweet golden food and the distant glow of the caregiver standing guard. It did not fear the dark. It only slept, and grew, and waited to wake.

And then it woke.

It woke clearer than it had ever been—its mind bright and wide where once it had been dim and small, its thoughts sharper, its feelings deeper and easier to hold. Emotions it had once felt only as vague warm fog now came to it whole and understood. It knew contentment now, and knew that it knew it. It knew the caregiver, and what the caregiver was to it, and how much. Where once it had only felt, now it could nearly think.

And the connection was back.

That was the first thing it reached for, waking—the bond, the glow, the caregiver woven warm through its being once more—and there it was, returned, whole, exactly as before. It had not truly needed the reassurance; some part of it had known all along he would come back, that he had never gone. But to feel it again, to be joined to him once more after the long dark—that filled the new clear mind with a joy as bright as any it had ever known.

It was not alone. It had never been alone. And now, at last, it fully understood.

Soon after, the caregiver brought it somewhere new.

A world. A whole quiet world, all to itself. The soil was good—perfect, even, rich and deep and waiting—but it was empty. There were no other lives in it, none of the busy hum the vine had always known. And it was missing something else, something the vine felt the absence of in its very roots: that everywhere-energy, the gentle tide that had filled every place it had ever lived, the spiritual breath of the world. Here there was none of it. The world was beautiful and barren and still, and the quiet of it was strange and a little lonely.

The caregiver knelt and asked something of it. The vine understood him now, mostly—not in words, but in meaning, passed warm and clear down the bond between them. Grow, he asked it. Grow, and bloom, and fill this empty world. Make it live. Fill it with every element at once, balanced, so that the world belonged to no single thing and welcomed all.

Then he sprinkled it with the sweet water it loved best—the golden food, the favorite taste—and the vine, full of love for him and eager to do as he asked, set joyfully to work.

So it grew.

It grew and grew and grew. It put out flowers in a hundred colors and let them bloom and fade; it bore fruit and let it ripen and fall and sink back into the waiting earth, giving itself to the soil over and over. And as it grew, it breathed out into the empty world all the energies it held within—light and darkness, wood and life, water and fire, wind and earth—pouring them out in equal, balanced measure until, slowly but surely, the barren world began to fill. The still air stirred with vitality. The dead quiet became a living hush. Where there had been nothing, now there was everything, gentle and whole and balanced, just as the caregiver had asked.

Every day the caregiver came. He walked among the growing green, checked on it, and talked to it, his voice and his warmth a daily gift the vine waited for and treasured.

But it was never enough. However long he stayed, it was never long enough. And so the vine grew faster, reached farther, bloomed harder—filling more and more of the world, as if by filling the whole of it with itself it might somehow hold him longer, might wrap the entire world around him like an embrace.

It grew until there was no corner of that world the vine had not touched. Until the whole of it, every hectare, was green and blooming and alive with it. And when it had filled everything—when the world was wholly its own—it did one last thing.

It cut itself off. Gathered itself back. Drew all that vast spread of green inward, out of the soil and the air, until once more it was small and whole and waiting.

And when the caregiver came again, the vine reached for him—latched close, wound gently near, pressing as near to that bright warm presence as it could get. It had done what he asked. It had filled the empty world and made it live. Now it asked only one thing in return, the simple wordless wish it had carried since the day he first eased its hunger.

To stay. By his side. Close, like before.

Always.

Briar

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