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“I would rather not,” I laugh as well.
She starts walking again, just looking around. She walks over to a tree, then wraps her arms around it, pressing her cheek to the rough skin, closing her eyes. I try not to disturb her, but I watch over her every single moment, just in case.
She opens her eyes, walks over to the second tree and does the same thing. Then, she does it again and again. She hugs ten trees, and nothing happens. But she isn’t discouraged. When she wraps her arms around the eleventh tree, we both realize this one is special.
All of a sudden, the tree hugs her back. Its branches lower down and wrap themselves around Bianca’s body. She smiles as she’s pressing her cheek against it. A moment later, someone peers from behind the tree. The branches pull away instantly. Only Bianca is doing the hugging now.
“Hello?” she calls out.
I watch, making sure not to disturb this precious moment. I’m pretty sure that no vampire in ages has seen something like this, the first meeting of two dryads, one of whom didn’t even know she was one.
The face behind the tree hides instantly. But curiosity wins over. A red curl appears, then two green eyes.
“I’m Bianca,” she says softly. “I won’t harm you.”
The stranger hesitates for a moment, then steps out into the light. Her hair is red and long, falling all the way down to her lower back. She is dressed in a white robe that floats down to her feet. She is barefooted. She tilts her head to look at Bianca curiously.
“You are one of us,” she says simply, as if that’s the most normal thing in the world.
I can see Bianca trying to suppress a chuckle. “Yes, I think so. Actually, I’ve only found that out lately.” She turns to me. “You see, Edmund here, he is the king of– “
“You,” the dryad says, interrupting her. “You look like someone I knew.”
“I do?” Bianca asks, all hopeful.
The dryad approaches her, takes a strand of Bianca’s hair into her hand and brings it to her nose, inhaling deeply. To be quite honest, it is much less solemn than I thought it would be, but maybe this is the better option. The two of them obviously seem to be having fun, which is what matters. They are getting to know each other. Hopefully, this dryad might be able to tell Bianca more about her past. If she doesn’t, this will still be a good thing for Bianca. We are already being more lucky than we thought we would be, having stumbled upon a dryad willing to show herself to us.
“You look like Villosa,” the dryad says.
“Who is Villosa?” Bianca asks, her voice rising as she asks more and more questions, becoming high pitched with impatience.
“A dryad I haven’t seen in a long time,” she admits, sounding melancholic. “She fell in love with a human. We told her not to go with him, and after thinking about it long and hard, she left with him. I don’t know what happened to her, but you look so much like her.”
“I don’t know who my mother is,” Bianca admits. “I was found as a baby and taken in by the shifters.”
“The shifters?” the dryad squeals, pulling away, her face taking on a horrifying grimace. “Are you one of them!?”
“No, no,” Bianca shakes her head immediately, and I rush over to be by her side, again, just in case.
Dryads are kind and benevolent, but they can be meaner than a pack of vampires when pushed. It is better to play it safe. We don’t know her, and she doesn’t know us.
“I left them,” Bianca explained. “They thought I betrayed them, but I didn’t. They wanted to kill me.”
“They always want to kill those who don’t think like they do,” the dryad says, seemingly appeased by what she’s heard. “I’m surprised they took you in.”
“Me, too,” I add, quickly biting my tongue for interfering. The dryad shoots me an icy stare. Not very welcome, but then again, it is not because of me that we are here. I will endure whatever it takes for her.
“Edmund,” Bianca says. “He is the– “
“King of vampires,” the dryad immediately recognizes me, although I have never seen her before. “I knew your father.”
“You did?” I ask.
She smiles, and it feels like the sun exploded all around us. The flowers extended a little higher to be closer to her. The grass trembled underneath her feet. The branches lowered themselves a little.
“I live a little longer than all of you other supernatural creatures,” she tells us. “I have seen it all.”
She walks around us, still eyeing just Bianca. “I sense a great power in you.”
