Everything moved too fast for his eyes. He was already aware of his limited capabilities compared to his master, but before Xochipilli could notice, Aloe had dashed to his side and was hiding him behind her body. What's happening?

  "Is it you?" A soft female voice asked.

  "Who are you?" His master inquired back and Xochipilli tried to see how she was talking to.

  "Yes, it's you! I knew you were out there!" Then she saw it, a figure similar to Aloe when she had first met her. It was lither and smaller, but wilder.

  "I'll not ask again. Who are you?"

  "It's me! I'm your daughter, mother!"

  Mother? Simultaneously, Xochipilli thought that as Aloe expressed her own doubts.

  "But where is our other mother, though?" That was when he finally realized that the female-looking figure that had been talking was one of those dryads the old lady from yesterday was talking about. She had been right, the dryad and his master looked alike.

  "O-other… mother?" Aloe's voice trembled, a gesture so out of character that Xochipilli had not thought possible. "Ah…"

  As a howl left her lips, the source of light she had been carrying fell on the ground. His goddess was trembling and that scared him. Unconsciously, he took one step backward. It was a moment later that the tree of a woman that was Aloe fell down on her knees.

  "Aloe?" Xochipilli cried in alarm as his master writhed on the ground, barely holding herself on her knees with her trembling arms.

  "Ohheavensohheavensohheavens," she started cursing at speeds so elevated that it was almost unintelligible to him. "I-it's… hers. I am a mother… and the child is mine and… Aaliyah's."

  Then she puked.

  Her beautiful goddess, supreme and eternal, let out copious amounts of yellow vomit like a common drunkard. It didn't sit well with him. Not at all. Aloe Ayad, his master, was a gift of the very heavens, a true divinity, and gods didn't portray such… crude images.

  "What have you done?" Xochipilli snapped at the dryad, the culprit of this desecration.

  He started shifting the rhythm of his blood to match the potency internal infusion, but he was too green, and as hard as he pushed, it would still take him minutes.

  "What have you done?" He repeated again, saliva flying out of his mouth as he shouted like a rabid dog. He stood between his master and the culprit, loyally protecting his goddess.

  "N-no, no!" The dryad replied, her body shrunken like a scared infant and her visage crestfallen. "It's not me!" She grabbed her face in despair, her wooden claws viciously scratching her succulent skin. "I didn't do it!"

  "You did!" He incriminated her, his arms expanded to make his body appear bigger as if he was fighting a wild animal.

  "No! Y-you lie!" The moving plant continued protesting, amber sap poured from her self-inflicted wounds and her eyes.

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  "Then what is this?" Xochipilli screamed as he pointed at the regurgitating goddess, but he kept his eyes locked on the foul monster.

  "No…" The dryad collapsed on the ground, her legs failing her, and she… whimpered? "No! I wouldn't do that to mother!" The plant woman wiped her eyes with her wooden arms, but more sap kept flowing out of them no matter how many times she wiped them.

  It was then that Xochipilli noticed the dryad was crying.

  He didn't know why or how, but the dryad was crying at the notion of bringing Aloe to such a state. But regardless of whether she felt remorseful or not, his rage couldn't be quenched. His fist brimmed with power even if he still hadn't switched to potency.

  That plant deserved a thousand…

  Death.

  Xochipilli and the dryad suddenly stopped to a complete still. No sounds nor movements coming from either of them, and exclusively from Xochipilli's part, his nose stopped breathing and his heart beating.

  A sensation of utter decimation filled the place, of a prey being stalked by an apex predator. One wrong step would be the death of them.

  Behind him, he heard the rustling of leaves and clothes. Only then did he notice the source of the noise had been Aloe once she walked past him.

  The goddess sluggishly approached the dryad, her head was awkwardly moving from side to side like a cloth doll, and her whole body was limping and sagging with each step. Even as death incarnate approached her, the dryad refused to look away or react in any form.

  Then the most beautiful woman in the world knelt on the grass and embraced the plant. The dryad whimpered at the embrace, but Xochipilli became aware of the substance trickling down Aloe's cheeks.

  Water.

  The dryad was crying sap, but the goddess was crying water. Like a human.

  "M-mother?" The plant whimpered pathetically. The sight was surreal. Her shining yellow eyes kept flowing with sap, and even if the creature was deprived of any irises or pupils, those eyes showed emotion.

  "Yes," Aloe whispered loud enough for him to hear at a distance with his weakened senses. "You are my daughter; I can feel it deep inside me."

  "Mother!" The dryad broke into an infantile bawl, but she returned the embrace of her… mother.

  Xochipilli couldn't understand what was happening. His eyes saw the two women embracing one another, with Aloe caressing the dryad's hair slowly like she would do with him yet his mind was unable to wrap around it.

  Mother? He asked himself again.

  After a few minutes, Aloe undid the embrace and wiped the sap out of the dryad's cheeks. She licked the amber liquid in her finger and pondered for a moment before growing a Blossomflame that healed the plant's self-inflicted wounds.

  "I'll need you to answer me some questions and do some things for me. Can you do that?" The goddess asked, her voice the utmost pleasurable of songs.

  "Y-yes," the dryad responded as she stretched her arms to her, now missing the embrace. Her greed knew no bounds. "Anything for you, mother."

  Aloe blessed them with one of her smiles and grew an Aloe Veritas on her skin, her body bountiful as the forest they were in. She broke one of the leaves of the succulent and rubbed the cut section against the dryad's cheeks.

  "Ah, as I feared." It was a perfectly calm voice, and precisely because it failed to portray any emotion, it shook the disciple down to the core of his being.

  The voice was so peaceful that it reminded him of death, the eternal rest.

  "Xochipilli," his name suddenly came out of those hallow lips.

  "Y-yes, Aloe?" He tried his best to contain his thundering heart as he rushed to her side, but he utterly failed.

  "Let's put your lessons to the test," she lowered the cut Aloe Veritas leaf to his level. "Can you read what it says?"

  The child grabbed the leaf and didn't deny it or present doubt, he simply read, for such was the command of his goddess, and her word was law.

  It took him time, but he finally said aloud the contents.

  Species: Aloe Aaliyada

  Sobriquet: Dryad

  Description: A member belonging to no family, their species is known for their high adaptive capabilities, female-only population, and ability to assimilate other living beings.

  Alignment: Life

  "Good job, Xochipilli. It makes me happy you have learned this fast." Aloe congratulated and patted him after he managed to read the whole description, but as much ecstasy those words and caresses produced him, he couldn't control the uneasiness in his heart.

  If she's so happy then why she looks so… dead? The boy chose not to voice out his thoughts. It had to be him who was dead, who was in the wrong, and not his goddess.