It wasn’t that I didn’t like being a tree.

I just wanted to explore, you know? I think everyone longs for that time when they were just a seed, blowing through adventures with the wind, the time before they settled and took root. So when a passing soldier, sweaty as his horse, peeled off his armor like bark, hung it on my tree, and went to swim, I took the chance and floated in, feeling the new mold of the armor around me, a strange trunk. We could inhabit almost anything, for a while, we dryads, as long as we were rooted in the earth, but I’d never tried a human stem before.

I looked down – how strange to look down from only two bright buds, instead of hundreds – and saw my trunk split cleanly in two, a double stalk. I lifted one – a foot, it was called, and laughed when I saw it lifted easily, light as leaves, just resting, not rooted, in the ground. I walked! And as I walked, I swung my branches though there was no wind, these two bent branches with sprays of twigs at the ends, all soft and pale as new-peeled bark. Arms.  Two trunks, two buds, two branches – what was it with humans and twos?

I walked – a strange movement, it felt like bouncing while blown – and saw the pond, where the soldier still floated, eyes closed. I could use a drink, so I stepped in, closing my buds and waiting for the water to flow upwards into my branches. It didn’t. I felt the ends of my trunks grow cool, but no water flew towards my thirst – it must be different, how the humans drink, I thought. So I stood there, half-hidden by the brush, and watched the soldier, as he floated and splashed like a water-bug, until finally he stood upright in the pool, raised his branches and drew the twigs together at the ends of his arms, and brought them up close to the buds – a mouth. The water in his twigs disappeared. I almost laughed again – drinking from one’s branches, instead of the roots? How did they slake their thirst?

Experimentally, I tried it, copying his movements as exactly as I could, but the water flowed through my branches. There must be something else. I watched him again, and this time I saw it – he gathered the water only with the soft twigs, shaping them like curled leaves and bringing them towards his mouth. When I tried again, I did not spill, and I drew the water in, opening my buds wide as I felt my thirst diminish and the coolness flow downwards, so different a sensation. With this mouth, their odd version of roots, I drank in more water and closed it, feeling the corners stretch in a smile that surprised me, turning my face towards the sun. Feeling the warm stretch on my face, the coolness in my trunk, drinking in the light through my buds, I decided humans were happy, happy though strange.

Walking again, leaving the pond, I cast a glance back at the solider, who was standing still, his own buds wide, a yelp of surprise escaping his mouth. I smiled again, waving a branch in friendly greeting, and kept walking, enjoying the swing of my branches, the easy movement of my once-rooted trunk. I would take this form for a while, I thought. I’d explore.