 Emmeline Teapot Occamy| gryphons&giraffes&goats,OH MY | chaser of the truth | flutiful❧
THE TEARS WERE SEEDS! THIS WAS HOW THE TREE REPRODUCED! It all made sense now why the tree cried! So the tears hardened into amber? Weird. ”How does it turn into amber? I thought amber was crystalized resin?” These tears didn’t have the consistency of resin. Seemed to fit with the mythical origin story, which was just that, a myth, but didn’t make sense with what she knew amber to be. Whatever, what she needed to know was that drying the tears made a seed.
Uncorking her vial, Isa carefully squeezed out a drop of the liquid inside into her hand. Satisfied with the droplet in her hand, Isa cast a drying charm on the tear droplet and watched as it hardened into amber. This was the seed of the weeping willow. How did weeping willows make seeds naturally though if charms were needed to get the tears and make the seeds? Was this a variety of willow created by herbologists? That theory didn’t really fit with the fact that the tears were a recent discovery. After all, if you bred a magical hybrid tree to cry, you would know that it cried and that wouldn’t need discovering. Maybe the properties of the tears other than for use as seeds would be discovered, but you would have to know how to make the tree cry to make more seeds, and making the tree cry required knowing that the tree could cry. ”How does the weeping willow tree reproduce naturally without human intervention? Maybe it cries when it’s threatened or dying so it can reproduce?” It seemed logical that the tree would make baby trees when the tree was in danger of dying, because that would ensure that there would still be plenty of living weeping willows even if the parent tree were to unfortunately die. Isa didn’t like to think of plants dying because that was sad, but it was all part of the natural cycle of life. Plants needed to be able to reproduce on their own in order to keep the species alive. Succulents were great at that. You could take a cutting from a succulent, and the cutting would establish roots and form a whole new succulent. The succulent that the cutting had been taken from would naturally regrow too. Succulents were cool.
After making her first seed, Isa squeezed another small droplet out of her vial and used the drying charm on it to create a second seed. Professor Myers had said that they didn’t have to plant them, so Isa was going to save them. She knew she wanted to plant one at home for mum. Mum would love a tree that might have undiscovered magical properties. Maybe mum would even discover something new about the tree.
Isa dug around in her pockets a little bit to find one of her small envelopes that she always carried with her for collecting interesting seeds while she was out walking in nature. She pulled an empty one out, labeled it with the date and what plant the seeds were from, and slipped her two seeds into the envelope. Carefully, she placed the seed envelope back into her pocket. There, now she had two seeds ready to plant where she wanted to.
Once she was finished making and storing her seeds, Isa put the cork back in the vial and handed the vial to Professor Myers. ”Professor, what will you be doing with the leftover tears in the vials?” Maybe they would be used for making more trees, or for researching the magical properties and possible uses of the tears. Isa wanted her own weeping willow to experiment with, and she was planning on planting at least one of her seeds at home. For now she had no intent of leaving right away. Isa was staying to ask questions and plant nerd with Professor Myers.
Oh, what was going on with Emmeline? Someone being curled up in a ball like that was usually an indication of not being okay, especially in a lesson. Isa went over to Emmeline, sat down next to her best friend, and put an arm around Emmeline. She spoke softly, trying not to further upset Emmeline. ”Em? What are you upset about? it it the tree? I don’t like making it sad either, but this is how the tree makes seeds so there can be baby trees, and it’s important for the tree to do that so there can be more weeping willow trees. Want to come to the creatures barn with me and we can talk?” Hopefully the knowledge that the tears were how the tree reproduced would somewhat comfort Emmeline for the time being, and Isa knew how visiting the creatures always helped Emmeline feel better. Staying to ask Professor Myers more questions was completely out of the question when she had an upset friend to comfort. Not even plants were as important of friends. Isa valued her friends more than almost anything else except her family.
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