a re-telling of a true Rover Three tale, without metaphor or creative expansion

TREE TEA TRANSFORMATIONS

lived and written by Rover Three

Varsi Zur.

Recluse, secluse, excluse, occludinal sapsucker, enthusiastic sapsoaker, scientist.

 

It wasn’t even my plan to meet them. 

I was on my first visit to the planet Rhizophora, brought along by Space Grandma on zir latest tisane ingredient replenishment trip. This planet was a place of legend; home to a kind of ancient existence that astounded the mind, with a civilisation of trees who could communicate telepathically. The seven Elders of these grew beyond the planet's boundaries, shaping their own nubbins of atmosphere, and it was on the branches of one of these that we landed. 

Of those who knew of, were invited, or otherwise found Rhizophora, few shared the privilege held by Space Grandma: to actually receive the tree saps of the Elder themselves, that key element to make Translation Tea work its full effects.

After landing and resting, I stepped out onto the branch, feeling the balms of breeze and marveling at this canopy that rose up and up and up, beyond the sky, soaring higher than the power of my hume eye before waterfalling down on all sides in great ripplewashes of stem and leaf and blossom.

In the warm, late morning light that pierced between the leaves, the space beneath the canopy became filled by mutational shadows, branch and bark blending with leaves and lifeforms in a lightplay where time melted into the tree around me.


Grandma placed zir hand on the tree and asked if this was the right time. A pause.

 

I watched Grandma hum, heard how the melody changed and the harmony ranged - 

and saw for myself the tree trunk open, scenting the air as a luscious sap emerged.

The whole harvest experience reminded me of the words from The Tales of Minda:

"I howled. I hoped. I heard. I hummed. I healed."

The planet is full of this family of trees; from whole groves with thick canopies, to root systems organised even into shapes as complex as geodesic domes, to those with their trunks that join the cosmos. They are sentient trees, gnosis seekers and living repositories of knowledge, some of them as old as stars, in a world without uncovered land. Only trees, and water, and the insect and animal life.

 

Or so I thought.

 

In the early afternoon we flew down on a beetle – a friend, named Neeyek, who Grandma had been hoping to introduce me to – chatting and relaxing as we drifted in loose and lazy spirals around the kilometers-wide tree, sifting with the air currents, sinking slowly with the sun towards the mangrove roots that entrench these giant Elder Trees in the freshwater seas and swamps below. 

At Grandma’s request, Neeyek takes us amongst the root networks, through their caverns gnarled and knobbled. Between trees, I skim my hand in the waters and watch the rising mists dispel in twists. We listen to the buzzes and whistles, to the calls and the cries of the slow-flowing night. Grandma hums a wordless tune oldknown to this planet, the moan of a tree as its wood expands with warmth. 

Then I hear other music – some sort of rootstrand-based instrument – and spy, to my utter surprise, the ochre burn of firelight in the mist.

 

 “Varsi is with the Tree,” Grandma tells me. “It was a long journey for them to become this close. It’s the only reason Varsi can live in the roots like this.”

 

Turns out what I thought was firelight is a nova of Aelio clustered around a blanket of moss that covers the base of the trunk and hangs through the gaps in the geodesic root dome. Within the dome was a crooked hut on stilts, and hammocks suspended high between roots over the emerald waters. 

Neeyek dropped us off on the porch and hovered. Made some of their own music.

 

I realised the strummed music had stopped. Somewhere, a gentle splash of water. 

Grandma called out: “Varsi? Still on for tea?”

 

A few notes plucked the night.

 

A kiss and a thank-you from Grandma, and Neeyek took off. We went inside.

 

“Rover Three. Varsi Zur. You're both amazing. It's time you two knew each other.”

 

Grandma put on the kettle and called some Aelio under it, who soon glowed and began to heat the water.

 

But there I was, looking at Varsi. And Varsi looking at me, lackadaisical, hazed out in the low lantern glow, the river brushing, the wood creakwarping, leaning in now for a better look at me with algae-speckled eyes, glistening pearls of sap beading out from their forehead. It was a face of the world; clothes comfortable but fit for all weathers; a body self-assured; a self body-assured.

 

From the table, Varsi picked up a piece of glass framed in sturdy wood. 

After a moment, Varsi dipped their laconic tongue into a bark pot of tree sap darkened with berries; and, after one last long heartbeat of a moment to let the sap sink in, lifted their tongue out and wrote with it upon the glass.

 

Wrote a greeting. In my birth language.  A planet I already knew Varsi had not visited. Let alone to have studied my dialect. 

 

“Varsi drinks a lot of tea."

 

Even though this was planned before Grandma and I ever arrived, even though I’ve prepared myself seven different ways for what’s about to happen, I’m still nervous.

 

“What’s about to happen," says Varsi, again in my language - and my dialect no less - "is, not just your body but your whole blooming being is going to explore resonating at a different frequency. Your body, your brains, your senses, your dreams.” 

We listened to the slow rushfilling sound of Grandma pouring each of us a cup of Translation Tea.

The tree creaked a melody.

 

Last, Grandma added the tree sap gathered that morning; only that morning, all those miles above, at the top of a Tree that could fling its seeds across the cosmos.

 

We toasted. We thanked. We drank. 

I’d had forms of this tea before – this was how Grandma and I could communicate at all to start with - but nothing like this brew. 

This was true and pure, of a quality in its own sphere, and in that misting cabin enveloped by warm waters and biogeodesic dome…

 

That night I understood in languages I’d never heard.

 

I spoke in languages I’d never known.