ORIGIN

Titanite hesitated, then pushed back up. He was still ankle-deep or so in the water, which for a digitigrade creature implied a foot or so of stream. But he waded out, pulling up roots, and to the shore. He didn't want, after all, to put out the little fire (such as it was) with the water of the brook.

After a moment of studying it--in which he tried to gauge if it would be hot, and burn him (a primal tree instinct warning him from it, with fear)--he offered a brief and reluctant push to the wisp in an attempt to knock it back to James. His wooden forelimb missed it, and he stepped back, uncertainly.

Was it cold fire, or was it hot-? He didn't particularly want to find out.

"It is... fire?" he queried, uncertainly. And then, with the infinite wisdom of the ages: "Fire burns.

"I cannot make... fire," Titanite responded, lurching into motion, on all fours, to lean down and sniff where the wisp had disappeared.

It didn't smell scorched, at least, and it hadn't felt hot in passing, anyway. Strange. It wasn't sure what to make of this; its instincts told it one thing, its new experience (and new friend) another. Titanite turned, and passed one hand over the dirt, rumbling in thought. A small carpet of tiny mushrooms sprouted up, there, barely visible, at first, without close inspection. "I can... do this?" it offered, turning half-hopefully to James; "Is this... fun?"

Like a dog watching its child at play, Titanite observed: not fully understanding, but content enough at being involved. James was manipulating the flow of water, though Titanite was unsure why. He was shoving sticks, with his soft muzzle and blunt teeth--or gums?--into the ground.

"...Us-sized..?" Titanite queried, at length. He trudged forward, and then paused rocked back on his haunches, one forelimb hanging loosely over a knee. The other he reached forward with, a long index-talon trailing lightly through the little cluster of fungus and sticks without actually touching any of them. Only faintly did his imagination actually stir, brief imagining of tiny forests fluttering at his mind, and even then only for a moment. Then he was back to staring, wondering is this fun?

After a very long moment of silence, Titanite raised its hand. A banana appeared within it--the magical sort, the sort that made you gleam and sparkle after you ate it.

This he placed, planting it peel and all--and no seeds--into the center of the bizarre little garden.

In no way whatsoever was this helpful, but he looked to James afterward nonetheless, almost expectantly. "Is this... good?" he asked, uncertain.

Titanite stared, mind struggling to keep up. The child was fast, not only in movement but in activity in general. Where Titanite often spent days barely moving at all, James was darting between this activity and that, this idea and that--and the tree-beast half-struggled to keep up with it all.

Leaf-shacks, and meteors. Rocks and bananas.

For a long moment Titanite merely stared, unable to quite decide which thing to comment on, or interact with. Banana, or rock? Would he ask what 'radioactive' was, or...

Ahh, plants. He knew plants, at least.

Titanite shambled forward, moving to the leaf-shack, inspecting carefully the way that James had set it all up. The stone, after a moment, within Titanite's chest began to glow green, again illuminating the mostly-hollow cavity. Then slenders vines--hardly more than brown threads, really--rose up from the forest floor, even as Titanite raised his branch-taloned hands skyward. He seemed to weave, without touching, each vine slipping through the edges of the leaves, carefully strengthening the little shack and binding it all together.

After a moment, the shack was more firmly in place: less flimsy and more permanent, at least until the leaves decayed. It had a roof, now, too, and Titanite turned, peering at James.

"This... is building? Is this--good?" It paused, glancing back at James, and at the litttle 'town' of plants and rock. It struggled, plant-like mind churning, to get into the spirit of things. Plants, to Titanite, were 'safe;' all this other stuff was unknown and so this factored into its limited attempt at imagination. "Perhapss... this place..." (and taloned fingers gestured at the plant-shack), "isss... a safe place... for when the stick-place... is dangerouss?"

Titanite looked at James, uncertainly--was he doing it right..?

...Now this might be where Titanite shined. Activity, energy--those weren't his traits, but a slow, meandering, boring narrative to tell a child falling asleep? That was exactly his sphere of usefulness.

The tree-beast slowly folded branching limbs, collapsing down in a gradual, deliberate, cross-legged sit beside the foal-inhabited leaf-shack. He looked at James, and considered.

"I..." (a long moment's thought, here--hard questions, apparently) "I stand. The light... comes down, through the leaves. They... russstle... shift. They whisper, but... they do not speak... There is wind. The birds call. I can hear... the water, far--here, in the streams--but I am fa. The birds are loud... The grass moves, too. I feel... the worms in the soil. The ants. There is life in the dirt. I watch the seeds... sprout. And grow... "

"I watch the lights... go dim. And it is dark... and then light again. The water falls... rain. Fog. And then it is clear..." Titanite went on, lost in the reverie of a plant-beast's perspective of the world: the slow changing of day to night and back again, of weather, of light and minerals and insects. And for him, that seemed fascinating.

For James... perhaps not so much?