Diana had left the compound. A walk into the garden turned into an escape. She'd had it. She couldn't take it any longer. The stone cages, the hemmed in rooms, the lack of air, the lack of anything natural unless it had been clipped and pruned into aesthetic pleasure. She had to get out. She had to find fresh air. She had to see her children. She had to flee this humanity that crushed her senses and made her feel fragile. She could feel this body dying all around her.

And so, she had fled. The moment she was deep enough into the forest, she placed her palms against a tree, and held to it as tightly as she would a long-missed lover. She released a half-sigh, half-sob of relief, and gradually began to fade into the tree's surface until there was no evidence of her to be found.

The woods were silent. No birds, no barking foxes, no screeching kestrels and squealing rodents. All gone. All swallowed by the earth, bones beneath roots. The mud was red with blood beneath the autumn leaves.

Her children grieved their children. Conkers, leaves and acorns fell from their parents with silent wails and unheard sobbing. Her presence soothed their anguishes. They relaxed into the presence of Mother, her life breathed into their solid insides and renewing their spirits. There would be cold, and dormance, and sleep. Much sleep. And then spring would come, and life would be renewed.

Hoofbeats crossed the ground.

She felt their tremors. She heard her children whisper. The trees watched as Christiana Maelyss unwittingly stumbled into their sights, they sensed her bitterness. They sent the message back to Mother;

Woman.

Soon, Jenova's eyes watched along with her children. And a twinge of recognition touched the corner of her bark-crowned cheek from the heights of a great oak, her body as branches and her skin a dark grey.

Christiana.

It hit her in an irrational wave. Diana would have experienced this. But Jenova would not understand the complexity of her commonplace anger until the deed was done. For now, she assumed herself territorial and hungry and generally hateful of Those That Move.

There was a long moment of silence.

And all in a flash, the roots came. They punctured out of the earth in one twisted collaboration of strength and crushed through the belly of her horse, oblivious and unhearing to its squeals and her shriek when they rose through her crotch and out of the back of her neck. They parted within her, stretching through her flesh and popping through her clothing - only to wind back into her and begin the sucking process.

She would soon be gone. The strength for screams would be sapped. And the last thing she would see was the furious face of the tree sprite responsible for her murder, the last thing she'd hear was Diana's voice in her mind.

He belongs to me.

And in that moment, she took great pleasure in extending one rootmade hand into her breast. She enjoyed getting them into her heart, in severing her arteries and drawing the unbeating thing out of her. Her tongue extended and split off into two wooden tentacles, and forced themselves into the thick walls of the organ to personally taste the blood of her rival. Only when it became a weak, floppy, pale chunk of meat did she toss it to her children to devour. They had already dragged the horse's corpse into the bowels of the earth for their suckling.

She kept Christiana to herself. Her personal vines drained her dry. Every last drop left her body until Jenova was satisfied, until her rage had been abated by the taste of copper and red. When she was done and stained with her, she dropped her to the ground, and watched her skull crack open and be hauled beyond the dead leaves into the graveyard that had devoured the forest.

Only then did she pause. She melded back into shimmering gold and blue, and looked at the red on her hands.

Was Mother hungry?

Not especially.

Then why did Mother savage her so?

There was silence.

Mother?

More silence.

She was not worthy of him.

Mother, you must come home. You are becoming one of them. You love Beloved. Do not turn from Beloved.

Jenova looked like an animal caught in a trap. Her hands clawed, and she fidgeted, her limbs snapping as fresh roots rose to capture her knees. Her breathing became distressed.

She had killed, and fed, and she had not been hungry. She had killed out of cold blood. She had killed out of emotion.

She was succumbing. It was penetrating her even now, sinking into her mind, clouding her with the smudged lines and blurred borders of the human brain.

The trees wailed, and she howled. In genuine agony, herself and her children caved in on themselves and suffered for her humanity. She bared her teeth and shrieked her horror at her infiltration. She curled into herself and clawed at her stomach, as though it might help her shed this incurable warmth.

This is impossible.

And regardless, when those pale eyes returned to Valwyn, when they turned on him, they'd shine a little brighter - from Diana, from Jenova.