#arboris rex

Because it doesn’t take a genius to know there’s magic in this gauntlet. It’s a single glove, brown and edged in gold with an emerald jewel in the gender of the golden band, and it could look like any old gardening glove in style, were it not for the regal addition to it. It’s oddly clean and untouched by time, despite the surrounding dirt and plant-life in the knothole around it.

Theo plucks the left-hand glove from its tidy place and glances around. Who would leave behind a lonely piece of armor like this in such a conspicuous place? It doesn’t add up. It’s too perfectly sitting here, and for who knows how long.

Shrugging, Theo pockets the glove and continues his walk, idly keeping his skeletal left arm in motion to keep it from growing stiff in the spring air.

He finds Greenthumb-ler seemingly asleep under a Truffula tree, but knows better of it. The dead don’t quite sleep, not like the living do. So he plops down beside the other and nudges his shoulder, watching Green’s eye flutter open, missing socket staring back.

“Here, I found that eye patch you wanted,” he smiles, and Green looks grateful as he takes it from Theo’s hands and ties it around his head, adjusting it over the gaping hole in his face. He sighs, and Theo puts an arm around him. “Come on, it’s not so bad, being a ghoul, Daffodil. At least we don’t have the stresses of life hanging over our heads anymore, right?”

“Yeah, but…” Green begins, and he rubs his arms with his bark-covered fingers before shrugging. “I dunno. I miss not having rotting flesh,” and he tries to joke about it, chuckling to shrug it off, and it sounds hollow. He drops the act and looks out at the valley. “It’s my fault we froze to death.”

“At least it was together,” Theo winks, and it makes Greenthumb feel just a tad better. He stands, then, and dusts off his jeans, then offers a hand. “Come on, let’s go get some honey biscuits, yeah?”

“Okay,” Green grins, and as he takes Theo’s hand and is hauled up, the gauntlet drops out of Theo’s pocket. He glances down between them, a brow raising above his eye patch. “What’s that?”

“Oh.” Theo shrugs, stooping to pick it up. He turns it over in his hands, giving it a second inspection. “I dunno, just some glove, I guess? But I think it might be magic. It was… suspiciously lain.”

Green snorts a chuckle. “Like how?”

“Like… in a bunch of bright green stuff, but it’s kinda chilly out, so it didn’t make sense. It just… looked really unnatural. But, for some reason, I wanted it, so I took it.”

Greenthumb frowns a bit, staring at the glove. “…You’re not… going to try it on, are you?”

“Well, if it’s magic, I do want to see what it can do! But yeah, I was thinking about it. Why?” Theo replies dismissively.

“I just…” Green fidgets uncomfortably, nibbling his bottom lip as he fiddles with his dangling suspenders. “Don’t think it’s such a good idea, because you don’t know anything about it, and just sorta found it in a weird place.”

The brunet laughs and nudges Greenthumb with his elbow. “Come on, Daffodil, how bad could it possibly be~?”

“That’s not funny! And I’m being serious…”

Theo dramatically puts a hand to his chest and feigns shock. “You? Serious? Whoa, stop the presses, my honeybiscuit-addict is actually being serious for once.”

“…Jerk. I mean it,” Green pouts, then gives Theo a playful shove. “Promise me you won’t do anything reckless?”

“Reckless? But isn’t that my whole persona?” Theo laughs, but he draws Greenthumb into his arms and gives him a quick kiss. “Yeah, okay. I promise. I was kidding around anyway. It’s probably not even magic, and won’t do anything, and I picked up garbage. You worry too much~,” he teases, pressing another smooch to the side of Green’s head to reassure him.

Green sighs, but nods, a small smile warming his lips. “Yeah, but it’s kind of a rule of thumb that one of us has to at any given time. Right?”

“Totally,” Theo agrees, slipping the glove back into his pocket. “Now let’s go get something to eat.”

“…I still wonder how pointless that might be. Since we’re dead.”

“Yeah, but who cares? Food still tastes good.”

Green grins at that. “Then by all means, lead the way, sir.”

----

He’s curled up behind Green, weaving in and out of sleep, and for some reason, images of carnivorous plants, brightly yellow-green and magenta, large enough to pet like hounds and feast on small creatures, keep plaguing his semi-dreams.

Theo gets restless and works up a bit of a cold sweat, and pulls away from cuddling Greenthumb’s back to take a moonlit walk. He shakes off the odd images and watches the clouds mass over the moon for a while.

----

The glove beckons to him.

The powers of greenery and growth, it seems to scream. Powers beyond the mere things Theo can do now, which seems to only make people’s hair grow too long, or will a flower to be just a little too tall. He can almost hear it, a whisper, asking him to be the host to such power. It’s drawing him nearer, and he keeps glancing back at where the glove is resting casually, tossed down with some of the other things he carries in his pockets.

With a groan, Theo frowns at it, “What do you want from me?” before picking a crab apple off of a tree and chucking it at the glove.

He misses by an inch. An inch above it; the little apple ricochets off of some invisible shield, and Theo’s eyes grow wide.

He walks away, avoiding the glove for a while.

----

One morning, Theo wakes up with the gauntlet right beside him, as if he grabbed it in the middle of the night without thinking, and slept with it.

He blinks blearily and sits up, staring confusedly down at it.

“…Theo…?” comes Green’s sleepy voice, rolling over onto his back to peer up at Theo. “You okay?”

“…Did I get up last night and grab this thing?” he asks.

Green yawns and looks at it, then frowns. “I thought I heard you get up, yeah. Is that what you did?”

“…I don’t remember,” Theo murmurs after a pause. He rubs his face with a hand and then runs it through his hair. “It’s so strange, Green. I feel like it wants me to put it on.”

“What will happen if you do, though?”

“At this point? I don’t even care. I just want this weird urge to go away, because it doesn’t make sense. It’s only a glove.”

Greenthumb looks at him worriedly, then sits up and wraps his arms around the brunet’s shoulders. “If it’s bothering you this much, then it’s okay, Theo. Just put it on real quick.”

Theo exhales slowly, then nods. “Yeah, you’re right… It’s kind of stupid how I keep avoiding it. What’s there to be scared of?”

----

When the glove comes off, Green’s face is horror-stricken and puzzled. Theo can’t remember a thing.

“…What? What is it?”

“Princess,” is all Green says, and then walks away.

Theo blinks hard. He doesn’t understand what he did while he wore the glove, nor what he said or must have looked like. He only can tell that, whatever it was, Greenthumb apparently has mixed feelings about it.

----

When Arboris Rex is in control of his host, he is in complete control. He has them under his wing before they even put the glove on; he calls out to them in any way he can, aching to be free after so many years of isolation and neglect. It feels good to have legs again, to stretch them, to touch the earth and feel the grass beneath his toes, to raise his babies from the ground and nurture and care for them again. It feels fantastic to inhale the air – more polluted than he remembers, but not so bad out here – and see with a pair of eyes the beauty he’s missed.

The Guardian has been apart from his one true passion for far too long.

----

“Green, come on! Tell me what I was like? What did I do while I wore that glove?”

“You weren’t yourself, for starters,” Greenthumb remarks. “You were someone else entirely. Different name, different personality, even different voice, mixed with your own. It was… really trippy.”

Theo frowns, cocking his head. “And? What’d I do?”

“But it wasn’t you,” Green stresses, turning to face him. “His name’s Arboris. Although, I like calling him Arby.”

“…Um, okay? And is he bad, then? Or…?”

“He’s just not you,” Green says with a bit of a sigh. He looks out at the river. “He’s really nice to me. He says I’m his lover reincarnated, or something, and that he musta been destined to have you as a host, which explains why it was so easy for him to contact you in your sleep, or whatever? And get you to put on the glove.” He pauses for a moment, looking both terrified and thrilled. “He’s really powerful, though, Theo. Like… really, really powerful. He’s like a god. He was the first guardian, you know. Of the forest and Earth and stuff. He’s ancient.”

“Um… cool? I wish I could remember it. Although… are you really his reincarnated lover? That’s kinda funny, coincidence-wise.”

“Yea, I guess so? He said my soul’s the same as hers was. That’s why he calls me Princess. His princess.”

Theo laughs at that. “Guy sounds like a hopeless romantic to me. Maybe he and I could get along after all. How does he feel about you and me, though?”

“I don’t think he minds? He seems a little possessive with me regarding everyone else, but you’re kinda the same, despite having your little harem, heh heh. Nah, I think he’s okay with it, though. I guess you guys can just share me.” He plops down on the ground and spreads his limbs out, peering up at the cloudy sky. A spring rain ought to be on the way soon. “I like him.”

“As long as you don’t like him more than me,” Theo remarks, sitting down beside Greenthhumb. He’s worn the glove only once, but for how long? It feels like over a week, at the very least, has gone by… It’s much warmer out, and Green sounds like he knows this guy pretty well. “And, uh. How long was I out of it?”

“You mean how long Arby was around?” Green clarifies with a raised brow. “It was like… three weeks. You really don’t remember any of it?”

Theo feels a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He swallows uncomfortably. “That long, huh?”

“Yeah. I missed you,” Greenthumb peers up at him, then opens up his arms.

The brunet smiles and relents, lying down on top of his lover, rolls them a bit in the grass. He kisses his nose and strokes his dark hair. “And I’m missing all that time! I didn’t even know any time passed. I was just—well, like asleep, but without dreaming. It was weird.”

“At least you’re back now,” the smiles, tucking his head against Theo’s chest. “But… Arby will need to come back, you know. So he can make his own body, and you can both be around. Then you can meet him!”

“Y-yeah… sounds good. But… n-not yet. I want to be myself for a while longer,” Theo murmurs in reply, holding Green tight. He lost all that time… and doesn’t even know what transpired during it.

----

It’s a slow decay, like watching the same plant grow, age, wither, and die over the course of months. Unmoving, staring the entire time. Each fraction of a change in it noted day by day by day.

That’s what it feels like. It feels like he’s slowly decaying away, a corpse in the ground, a flower on a downward spiral.

Theo can only sit back in horror as he drags his feet and can’t always control when he feels he needs to put on the glove, even when he doesn’t want to, and Arboris takes control, stretches out Theo’s legs for him, heals his ghoulish body for him, and spreads the forest far and wide, keeping it healthy, caring for it like a child, all while Theo curls into fetal position in his own body, mind apart from will, and sleeps. He withers away the more and more everyone visits Arboris, everyone loves Arboris, everyone is marveled by and respects the forest guardian, and Theo has become just the skin Rex walks in, not the person he once was.

It happens slowly at first, week by week, off and on, between wearing the gauntlet and not wearing it.

But the next time Arboris takes over, Theo is conscious of everything, and he feels the descent into Arboris like sinking into a pool of green slime, inching down, down, down, his very being merging with Arboris’ until Theo’s own is snuffed out, like a candle in the wind.

----

“Arby, hey… It’s been a little too long since Theo’s been around… Do you mind taking off the glove again so he can come back? I kinda miss him a lot,” Greenthumb comments one summer day, Arboris’ arms wrapped securely around him.

The forest guardian tenses in place, and he peers down at Green sadly. “I have not sensed his consciousness in a fortnight, Princess. I cannot promise removing the glove will bring him back as easily as it has done in the past.”

“What?” Green panics a bit, twisting his body to face Arboris. “What d’ya mean? Come on, Arby, that’s not funny…”

“We can try, Princess. But I apologize in advance if something goes awry.” And with that, the god stands and takes a step back, pulling the glove off of his hand.

Normally, there is a whoosh of wind and a spiral of leaves, and his appearance is shed like a skin and Theo reappears.

But this time, nothing happens. Arboris remains as he ever has, only minus the glove.

Greenthumb scrambles to his feet and gapes in shock. “N-no… Theo…”

“I was afraid of this, my love,” Arboris sighs heavily, setting the glove down. “I have become too strong, and he appears to have given up. It will take the removal of my essence from his mind entirely, and then some coaxing to bring him back into consciousness. But it should not be hopeless. Hosts are delicate things; and for a fleshwalker, Theodore has been especially lenient and strong, up until recently. But have no fear, my princess; I will find a way to bring him back to you, if it would please you.”

The younger man nods deftly, and rubs at his good eye. “Please. It would. Bring him back. What do you need to make a body to, uh, what’s the word… supp- sustain you? I can help! And… maybe that will make it easier for Theo to come back…”

“Agreed. I have a method, so there is no need to concern yourself, Princess. Leave it in my hands. I will take good care of the situation.”

Greenthumb worries his bottom lip, but nods. Arboris keeps his word on all things. “A-all right… I trust you, Arby… Just be careful, okay?”

“I certainly will,” the guardian promises, small smile on his lips, and he pulls Green close again and kisses his forehead protectively. “I swear.”

----

He grows the body from a sapling.

He molds it carefully out of bark like skin and stems like veins, vines like hair and leaves like clothing, delicate and precise, grass like facial hair and shined stones for eyes. He molds it carefully, makes sure it functions properly, and when it’s ready, after months of growth, kept somewhere dry and fire-warmed during the winter, he finally deems it bearing fruit of his labor, ripe for the picking.

“It is time,” he concludes, and he slips the glove over his new body’s hand, and placing Theo’s borrowed hands over it, wills himself to transfer over.

It requires the full brunt of his concentration, and it takes him longer than he estimated, but in the end, he’s able to absorb his essence back into the glove, his body of the earth startling awake with a gasp a moment later.

He heaves a few breaths with his lungs, converting CO(2) into oxygen, reversed from a human, like a tree; and with each breath, he blinks his green orbs and hears the creak of his barky flesh as he shifts to sit up, unstable, and clamber to his claw-toed feet.

Theo is on a heap on the floor, eyes shut and lungs breathing slowly, seemingly asleep, but more comatose than anything. His appearance has not yet faded back to normal; he still looks as Arboris did in Theo’s body, green and thorny.

Kneeling down, Arboris tests the strength of his slim limbs and lifts the unconscious young man into his arms. He feels heavy but manageable, so Arboris carries the man to a boulder to lie on and soak up some sun for his green skin, bring some energy back into him before he returns to being the fleshwalker he was.

“Come on, little one,” he murmurs, brushing hair back from Theo’s face with a woody finger. “Princess cares deeply for you, and though we have been too apart for me to get to know you, you have been my host for very long, and I am grateful to you. So please, stir, Theodore. If not for me, then for the one you love.”

----

“Wake up, Theo,” Green gently wraps on Theo’s forehead, smile on his face. “Knock, knock! Anyone home?”

It’s sunny, blinding as Theo opens his eyes. The air is white, the grass is blue-grey, and pollen is large and nearly invisible in the air, drifting amidst the sea of bright white.

“…Green? Where are we?”

“Nowhere. Just your head, which believe me, is definitely nowhere. There’s nothing here! And I thought I was an airhead…”

“…Come on, stop fooling around. You make it sound like this is some cheesy cartoon.”

“But it’s true. Look around you, Dorothy; you’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Theo blinks blearily and is suddenly standing, but he can’t recall the shift in time between lying down and standing. He only knows that he sees at a different level now, and Green is in front of him, blushing and smiling. They are whole and human again, completely. No missing eye for Green; no skeletal arm for Theo.

He frowns and peers around. They are in the sea of soft warmth, and there is nothing but white for miles, even the grass fading into mist in the distance.

“…Is this really…”

“Yes, and you need to wake, little one,” Greenthumb tells him, and his voice is different. His face is slowly tinged greener and greener, his eyes glowing brighter and brighter green. His smile fades to a stern, concerned line, and his form shifts entirely. He is no longer Greenthumb-ler. He’s someone else.

“I know you,” Theo murmurs. “I’ve seen you in my dreams. You’re him, aren’t you? Arboris Rex, the ancient guardian or whatever who’s been inhabiting my body.”

“That is correct,” the man in front of him nods curtly. “But I dwell in it no more. Come; walk with me.”

They walk and go nowhere, and the whiteness takes form in and out of memories and dreams, and Theo pays it no heed, as if he knows each scene too well to bother with it. He does; they are truly in his mind, and he doesn’t seem to realize or notice or care, but Arboris gazes at each passing scene and smiles fondly.

“You have had a very full life, for a mortal. An interesting one. You, like me, planted wherever you went. They called you Truffulaseed for it, I see. Very clever. I was not around for the joke, but I understand it because of your mind. And you have loved and lost and known many people. It’s remarkable,” Arboris comments as he glances around.

“…Yeah, well,” Theo kicks over a pebble that appears through one of the memories, then trudges onward as if he hadn’t done it at all. “Being immortal must be great. You probably see all kinds of stuff, and meet even more people.”

“Not true,” Arboris sighs. “I was sealed away for a hundred years, and aside from that, being immortal means watching mortals die over and over again. I have come to distance myself from mortals, because kind and lovely as they have the potential to be, they will only die in the end, and I will not stand to be attached to them and mourn them as I have for so many. I am through with pain. I am only grateful that, at least, out of so much pain and loss, my love could be reincarnated.”

“…Yeah, I’m happy for you about that. But why did it have to be Green? I love him, too…”

“I am well aware of that, and I do apologize, but that is how it is. I would separate the two if I could, but the best I could do was separate the two of us. Which is why I have entered your mind: I need you to awaken, Theodore. You have pulled away too far, and now it is time for you to return. I cannot do it for you, summon you from these depths; I can only beckon and nudge you in the right direction. My princess will not be happy unless you are conscious again, after all. And I have grown attached to your mind, so I wish to see well as much as he.”

Theo stops and stares at Arboris for a small eternity, and then peers around the contours of his mind. It’s peaceful here. He’s grown used to residing here, in and out of awareness and dreams.

But he loves Greenthumb. And he misses him terribly.

“How do I get back?” Theo whispers, terrified that he can’t do it as easily as merely opening his eyes. There’s a whole sea to swim through, a raging tropical storm, and he’s miles from shore.

“It will not be easy. You must latch onto a goal, a memory, a thought; anything strong, with feeling attached, and follow it out like a beacon. You must reconnect to the body you have long since given up to my will, and you must do it piece by piece; fingers, toes, knees, elbows, until you’re in full control once more. Then you ought to wake.”

“…Makes sense,” Theo mumbles, rubbing at his face. He doesn’t feel anything. “Okay, sure. I choose Daffodil. I mean Greenthumb. I want to see him again, hear and feel and kiss him again. That’s my thought, my goal. Simple as that.”

“Good. Now I will take my leave, and you keep pressing onward with that thought, and fight your way back to consciousness. Good luck, Theodore.” And then he vanishes the way sand blows away in the wind; grain by grain, until there is nothing left. Crumbling like dry dirt, fading away into the chasm of Theo’s mind.

The brunet takes a deep breath and summons Green to mind again. Just an image of him, but it’s enough. It’s enough to make his will strong again, to help him rise form the depths and peel the layers, peering up through the cracks, until his eyes meet his body’s eyes, his fingers meet his body’s fingers, and he re-aligns himself into his own skin after months of disjointed connections.

----

When Theo’s eyes flutter open, they are as brown as they have ever been, his skin as lightly tanned peach as it ever was, his sun-freckled across his nose returned to his skin. Everything about him is back, skeletal arm and rotting shoulder and all.

He breathes as if it’s the first time, and when he sits up, his head is splitting and hazy and his vision is going in and out, and he feels sluggish and too hot and weighed down, but he’s himself again, and there are all the aches and semblances of life back in his awareness, and it’s a good feeling indeed.