V. The Story of Everything

With their legs finding the strength to walk, the young Datura carried their feet across the desert, step by step, into their naming day.

Before long, the young Datura found themselves at the heart of a market, with Datura of all shades and shapes towering over the smaller frame of the young one’s still-meager stature. To the older folk, the young Datura was a confusing out-of-place shape in the sightlines of their day. To the young Datura, the community market was a sea of waists.

The little Datura had stepped into the flow of the market with the intent of going what they would soon understand to be “upstream”, and found themselves compelled to follow the flow elsewhere. Not willing to cause a fuss or attempt to muscle their way outside of the traffic of feet, they make three entire rotations around the twin cacti at the center of the fuss before seeing a window to exit the flow, completely turned around from both their original location and intended destination. Excited and frustrated, the young one’s eyes blurred and focused as they looked around for any means of getting their bearings.

Their eyes eventually settled on a clay structure just a quick hop from where they found themselves, standing out from the others by the curiously specific drawing dug into the clay near the door. Above the door was an impressive series of branching lines that confused the young Datura, and to the left, a Sun and Moon.

Seeing no reason to avoid this clear reference to the elders riddle - a great twist of fate! - the Datura braved another rivulet of bodies and breached the open arch of the doorway.

The building was surprisingly deep, deeper than the outside out have hinted, deeper than the young one had first assumed. Large windows kept it bright, but a sort of staleness hung in the air, specifically towards the wall left of the door. From floor to ceiling, the wall had been scooped out - or maybe brought forward, in thin lines - to create many series of shelves, each containing different scrolls, tokens, items, and books. The young Datura had seen very few books - leather-strewn tomes kept by the Nursetrees, mostly - but none with this odd script, or this oddly intricate binding. These shelves broke out at perpendicular angles from the walls at times, odd clay tumors meant to hold even more trinkets and tomes. It gave the distinct impression that the clayclaw had built two walls of uneven length, deciding to fix the issue but just folding one wall in on itself.

As their second foot crossed the barrier of the arch, they felt the whiff of a wire dance across it, followed quickly by the ring of a bell immediately above the doorway. Without delay, a bespectacled head popped above one of the middle book-tumors, eyes wide and magnified in such a way that the young Datura likened their face to that of an owl.

“Little one! What brings you to my burrow this day? Have you something interesting to tell me?” Large lidless eyes found themselves inching closer and closer, pushing away sand and dust in the air highlighted through the open cuts in the wall that passed for windows, lenses fogging with heat rising from their small cup. Their wheels moved at an even pace, though the young Datura certainly could not see how.

“What brings me here is…” The little one looked out the door once again. “...Your etchings, outside!”

“My...etchings?” The Owl-Datura looked confused, and the wrinkles in the skin of their face suddenly made sense.

“Yes, outside. The ones of Sun and Moon?”

The Owl-Datura looked stunned, then amused. “Ah, haha, yes.” They adjusted their spectacles, smothering their reaction in the rim of their small teacup. “What...about them drew you in, little one?”

“I have been asked a question about Sun and Moon, and I thought…”

Again, the Owl-Datura’s face shifted, this time to pure delight. “...And you thought that visiting a Rootwarden could clear things up! Yes, Child, how delightful! I would be honored to assist you today.”

A Rootwarden, like Calathea! The young one appreciated Rootwardens, bringer - and taker - of stories. It is said that when Rootwardens dream, they meet in a secret den, and they tell each other the next chapter in the Story of Everything. Sometimes they get too excited, and they tell stories that haven’t happened yet, so they must rest longer and wait out the future they have foretold. This is why you are likely to see a Rootwarden sleeping in - and why you must never wake them.

“Hello, Rootwarden!” The young one excitedly called out. “Please, tell me all you know of Sun and Moon, and where they go when they are not in the sky.”

The large, unblinking eyes returned, and the young Datura got the distinct impression that the Rootwarden was having a robust conversation with themselves behind them. Eventually, the expression broke, the rootwarden rolling themselves out towards one of the mis-shapen windows, one that happened to frame the Sun perfectly in the distance.

“Little one, what do you know of perspective?”

The young Datura shook their head, unfamiliar with the word, or at least how the Rootwarden used it.

“What if I told you that Sun is just a particularly close star in the sky? That the Moon was a large stone, though smaller than the ground, and that it moved around us, but that the Sun was large, and we moved around it?”

The young Datura cocked their head, briefly glancing a confused glance towards the Sun, which was notably and observably much smaller than the dirt, their home, the window. Even the Rootwarden’s teacup radically dwarfed the bright orb in the sky.

“That doesn’t seem right to me.”

The Rootwarden smiled. “No, not everyone believes that. Many believe that the stars are holes in a firmament in a grand crystalline wall that separates our home from other homes, from a place we once called home, and that the Moon is enchanted metal and the Sun is an ever-burning fire hung low.”

The young Datura sat in contemplation. They had not anticipated two answers, let alone homes before homes. The Rootwarden did not pause.

“And there are more, from others outside of our sands, stories of Gods and Kings, gate-keepers and tricksters. I’ll be happy to tell them all to you, child. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

The young Datura was stirred. “But… isn’t there an answer?”

“Oh yes, child.” a paw adjusted their spectacles in a way that the young Datura read as vaguely menacing. “Many.”

Feet turning to a mild pace, the young Datura marched across the floor of the burrow. “No, I mean, a real answer! Not just..” they turned to face the window and seated Rootwarden. “Not just stories!”

The Rootwarden smiled warmly. “Well, if multiple answers confuse you, this will surely twist your stems: What is the difference between a story, and history?”

The young Datura’s eyes pleaded for an answer, something to resolve the tension in their mind, further unsettled by riddles that are answers to questions poised by answers to riddles.

The Rootwarden took a beat, letting the silence sit, murmuring to themselves something unheard. They turned their head out towards the window and, with some grace, reached a hand up towards the Sun, plucking it out of the sky. They brought the luminous orb down, dunking it twice in their tea, before returning it again to its proper glory.

Eyes wide with wonder, the young Datura’s body was filled with excitement. “I understand, Rootwarden! Your sign, your answer - Everything!” Their body shifted once towards the door, before taking a moment to observe the books and trinkets on the wall, this time with a note of reverence. “It’s a matter of Perspective!” Their face turned back towards the seated Rootwarden. “Thank you, Rootwarden.”

The Rootwarden, sensing the young one’s desire, nodded in acknowledgment. The young Datura chased themselves out of the burrow, and the Rootwarden did their best to call out after them, rolling themselves towards the entrance. They glanced at the Sun and Moon etchings hanging above their door, and barked out a loose chuckle to themselves.

“If you have a story to tell, child, A Rootwarden will always be there to listen! Day or Night!”

Wherever they might go next, it is only closer to themselves.