❰ of all the places to find respite from the insidious shadows, lalli hadn't expected to have such fortune at the park. honestly, they'd just been passing through as they made tracks for honir's realm - but this domain's patron god took emil's shadow and painted a tree with it.

'what is this?' lalli asked her without entirely realizing he'd spoken, and she explained that it was emil's life, or the things he'd felt during it. red for anger, blue for sadness, yellow for happiness. then she made similarly short work of lalli's, and (after finding it far less interesting than emil's) she departed to do the same with some newer, more fearful arrivals.

all of which leaves lalli to stand here and gaze up the length of the tree, brows knit. there aren't many colors on it. most of the trees are filled with colors, but aside lalli's isn't. not until just over head-height, when the few scattered smudges of blue and red grow more numerous, more vivid, interspersed even with bright streaks of yellow. that must be the expedition. he never quite realized how little he felt, before they left keuruu.

and then, a foot or two farther up the trunk, a jagged splash of deep violet hovers conspicuously near the top of the colored segment, tinged on the edges with an equally dark navy blue. he knows what that patch is, dark like rot, dark like the infection itself, and he can't quite tear his eyes away from it. ❱