Dipak went up to the Life Tree and knocked on its trunk. Happy yellow sparks shot out around him when a gap opened in the tree and he skipped through. Large white and blue mushrooms lit the way and sung to him. He sang back, long ago learning their song. At the heart of the tree he sat down and crossed his legs, waiting. There were times that Enaid was not able to show the form that she once held as a human. But that didn't bother him. When she didn't reveal herself right away, he sat and waited. Either she would come or she wouldn't. Then she was there; a thrumming in the back of his skull.
"Who is he?" Dipak asked.
"I don't know," she said, her voice soft and intimate in his mind.
She sounded tired. Amser had said that she had turned the stranger away...
"How is he getting back in?" Dipak asked.
She sighed. He could tell that she was annoyed with him as Amser had been. He hated this part of having a new life. While his memories of his previous lives were intact, he still returned to the childhood he was born into. At first, he was a blank slate like any infant. But the older he got, the more his past lives came back. By the time he was five, it was always completely restored. He believed that he was seven now, but he wasn't really sure. Seemed like something he should know with certainty, but several lives ago he stopped caring about as much about age. It didn't matter much. Except when he was a child. Everyone around him knew that he was a Life Spark. They expected wisdom and seriousness, but what they got was a child. When ever this reality occurred to him, he annoyed himself.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes feeling the adult embedded in him trying to suppress the biological reality of his age. This was important and he needed to focus.
"What should I do?" Dipak asked.
There was a long pause and Dipak began to wonder if Enaid had left him.
"I don't know," she whispered.
This made both of them afraid.
Enaid invented all the rules for the Wandering Wood from the moment she created it. Anything that came here immediately came under her rule. There had never been a time that she was not pulled in a direction of action. This frightened her, making her feel lost and floating in her own tree.
But for Dipak it was a little freeing. In every life, he had a purpose and was driven to abide by it. When times like these came it was exciting because it returned that freedom to him. If Enaid didn't have a dictate, then he could decide for himself. But it scared him because he had no inspiration from the Goddess to be sure that his actions were right.
