For Rix_Scaedu‘s Prompt in Mini-Giraffe-Call January 1

This story takes place after Harvest (LJ) and after Xenonegotiations.

“Looking at the trees – talking to the trees – there’s going to be some cold weather coming.”

Aoife had the strange position, although, all things considered, it could have been stranger, of being Ambassador to the Trees on what they were calling Happy Accident (Because “Oh Fuck We’re Screwed” had been declared far too depressing a thing to name a planet, and nobody wanted to teach that name to the children they hoped would come).

The trees would communicate with other people, roughly, stay out or go here. But with Aoife, they would actually explain things.

“How cold is cold?” Rostislav and Caliber were the most concerned, Rostislav for the village and Caliber for the plants.

“They just said… ‘very, but no more than usual.'” Aoife shrugged. There was only so much you could do with plant speech.

“Very, but no more than usual” didn’t leave them a lot of room for planning. So they did the best they could; they stored food and made thicker clothing and fortified their buildings. They found firewood and moved their cookfires inside, tanned furs and covered their walls and beds and selves with everything they could.

In the end, it was nearly not enough; the snow started falling out of a clear sky and just… kept falling. And kept falling. Faster, longer, thicker snow than any of them, even Armanie-from-Minnesota, had seen.

The trees, it turned out, curled up on themselves, becoming short lumps the snow just slid off of. Even the tigerators were hibernating. Before long, the humans, beginning to think “Oh Fuck We’re Screwed” was a better name for the planet after all, were going to have to learn do the same.

Next/Concurrent: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/451034.html

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