Thirty-one

"Playing the great white hunter," the leafy end of the branch explained. "And failing horribly..."

"No wonder; the sea seems rather far away", Sylvie answered automatically - she associated 'great white hunter' with a species of whale - while parts of her memory jumped up and down to get her attention.

She stepped around the branch and had a close look at it. It would be easy enough to just lift one end, but that would cause who-or whatever was trapped under the other some discomfort, to say the least. But with a bit of trickery...

Concentrating on the problem directly at hand, she ignored both Weft and the still rather excited creature.

"If you're thinking of letting that charming animal loose, it may well attack either one of you immediately," Weft added. "And the same applies to the griffin, of course."

Sylvie smiled absently, as she scanned the earth below the branch. "I think I can manage, if you don't get in the way."

Rich, moist soil, a plethora of seeds, light... yes, she could work with that.

Weft shrugged and didn't reply for a while, padding around in his near-silent manner and peering between the leaves. He wanted to estimate the extent of Fochs's injuries, if any.

He had no clue what "in the way" was supposed to mean, but in general he kept a pace or two's distance the whole time. That should give him a chance to react, even if the magicianesque girl decided to throw the branch at him suddenly.

Sylvie knelt down, laid her hands flat on the earth, closed her eyes, and tuned out her normal senses as much as she could. Her learned perception changed into a world of textures, where her immaterial feelers could permeate the ground to find what she was looking for.

First she needed a general picture; the two big animals were quickly locaated. The freshly broken wood of the branch was distinct, and Sylvie assessed the weight and balance. Combing the earth, her sense touched dozens, hundreds of seeds, recognising their kind, and fixing the most useful ones.

Growing spells were easy, especially with something as fast-growing as vines. It took barely more than pouring energy into the seed to make the plant sprout and grow. Just not too much at once, if you needed to nudge them to grow in the right direction. The idea was not to produce a big knot of vine, wood and a Great White Hunter and his Chicken-Shaped Nemesis, after all.

For some minutes there was nothing interesting to see for anyone who watched her. Then fresh green started crawling out of the ground, concentrated around the trapped creatures and around Sylvie's hands. If either of the creatures was likely to get agressive, restraining both before reemoving the branch was the logical solution. Considering the two-legged one seemed to be a person rather than an animal, she thought exercising a bit of politeness by having the plants hold down only his arms instead of turning him into a green mummy seemed in order.

"You know," Sebastian, who had been watching with a little curiosity, "I always did think the Lady of the Land fancied me."

He didn't say anything else in addition to this comment and so he just watched confusedly. It was all rather depressing: him, whom very few chains had kept in one place for more than an hour at best (that one time had been, to say the least, overkill) was being held down by... vines.

He sighed audibly.

Weft fully intended to cut him loose as soon as the branch was gone, of course.

Sylvie concentrated her energies below the balance point she had estimated for the branch. She had to get the vines to twine around each other for a solid enough support, and still had to take hold of the branch itself to stabilise it. It rose slowly and started rotating. Sylvie moved out of the way. She extended her feelers once more to make sure the two animals would not be hit, and let her spell collapse. The branch hit the ground between them with a dull thud, nearly on her feet.

A short look over her shoulder at the griffin, which was securely wrapped up, then she took a wobbly step and slumped to sit on the branch, facing Sebastian. She was swaying and blinking slowly, dizzy from the loss of energy and the change of perception that was still not completed.

"Ah, a wizard," Sebastian murmured and tensed in his "chains". "It's been a while since I've had both a wizard and Weft in my vicinity." He stared blearily at Sylvie, unaware of the fact that his defences were down. Just one question and...

"Are you all right?"

"I guess. It's all the same." He blinked and analysed what he had said for a while - it did occur to him, slowly, that this wasn't exactly a very good answer. Not just because it was, well, utterly unhelpful, but because it struck a bit too close to the truth. "So... that getting up thing..."

Weft pinned down Sebastian's left arm ungently and, without so much as a by-your-leave to Sylvie, severed the creepers with hair-raisingly precise slashes. He followed up with the other side.

Sylvie frowned at Weft. "That was your idea, you know. You said he might be dangerous." She was speaking slowly to keep her speech from slurring. That last bit had been a bit more difficult than she'd expected.

Uncertain of whether or not it was him or Weft she was talking to, Sebastian just sat up slowly and tried to set his bearings. It was official: the Fox had been concussed. He had experienced it before, and was smart enough to force himself to become a little more... guarded. How well it would work, he didn't have a clue.

"I didn't say tie him down, just be careful." Weft realised he'd snapped rather than spoken, without meaning to.

Being trapped beneath something; restraints... something about it really bothered him, though he didn't consciously register it. He just felt annoyed.

Sylvie looked hurt for a moment. When concentrating on a spell of this scale, her attention needed to be focussed, and during and shortly after the process sudden movements as well as her smaller defensive spells were out of the question, so the ways in which she could "be careful" were limited. Apart from that she hadn't planned to leave him there longer than necessary. But it didn't seem the right time to argue.

Leaning forward still made her head spin a little, so she rested her elbows on her knees, watching Sebastian with genuine concern.
"Seriously, are you all right?"

"Yes, yes," Sebastian murmurred and twisted his head around, producing a few snapping sounds from the base of his neck. Ohhh, that felt so good.

A pause.

"Who were you again?"

"My name's Sylvie. And yours?"

He had to seriously think about that one. "Oh, whatever you want, really, but Sebastian's all right."