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The third-to-last request in Alhaitham’s grandmother’s will, when it was read out to him, was that he take care of the Tree.
The Tree was alone among the plants in her garden to be referred to as such – flowering and fruiting trees and shrubbery she had cultivated aplenty, but when one referred to the Tree there was only one entity amongst the lot who would be afforded such singularly affectionate gravitas. It stood right by the entrance, a stately old parijata rising fifteen feet high, casting its gentle shade over the front doorstep and requiring an able-bodied youth to climb up and prune the branches from poking too close to the windows.
It was a little peculiar for its species, sometimes blooming out of season and in seemingly unpredictable bursts, but one could attribute that to its age as much as anything. It was older than Alhaitham, and older than Alhaitham’s parents, and by all accounts Alhaitham’s grandmother had grown up with the tree as well; decades of stalwart growth were writ clear from size and splendour of bloom. It was as much a family heirloom as the teak dining table and the library and the house itself. It was practically family.
Alhaitham had grown up under its gnarled boughs, swept its fallen white petals up on countless mornings after they had shed with the dawn, let the sweet scent of its flowers through his bedroom window lull him to sleep, soothing as any lullaby. The Tree is part of our home’s heart, Jadda had told him, bidding Alhaitham press child-sized hands against the bark. It feels like we feel. It’s loud where we can’t be. We speak where it can’t.
Its petals had rained over the front door, the week of her death. A garland for her last goodbye.
For all its majesty and importance, however, it was a tree, and thus immobile. Inconvenient for someone who was about to uproot and move into Akademiya dorms. And what made the circumstances slightly more peculiar was the second-to-last request in his grandmother’s will – that he bring the Tree in some form with him to whatever new home he found, wherever he might go.
There was a clause there that whatever children he might have should do the same, should he wish to continue the tradition. Frankly it hadn’t been clear to him that it was ever a tradition to begin with. Not that he’d know, with his father gone so young. All he’d known was that there was a withered tree over his parents’ graves, and you could hardly discern it was the same as the Tree with no flowers or leaves or life left.
But those were all conjectures. His grandmother’s will remained, so Alhaitham honoured her wishes. The neighbours were kind enough to keep an eye out at his request, and it was easy enough to propagate a cutting into a reasonably portable pot.
So the Tree followed Alhaitham from home to his Akademiya dorm room, where it sat for years soaking up windowsill sunlight, until at last he came to a house of his own, salvaged out of heartbreak as it was. And there, unlike his grandmother, Alhaitham planted his Tree a slightly more reasonable distance away from the building, because he didn’t want to be cutting branches from his windows in a decade.
It was like a blessing. The Tree, greeting him with every leave and return. It made the place feel his.
Still the intricacies of its care eluded him. Alhaitham researched, asked around, did his level best to tend to branches and watch for rot. While the Tree grew fine, it still felt like there was something wrong because in all that time it had never once shown a sign of blooming. The leaves stayed green each season. Any precarious buds that seemed to form never lasted to yield, and no longer showed after he moved out from his little dorm room.
Perhaps it was just time, or other factors. Or perhaps it was just Alhaitham’s failing. He’d made his peace with that, this small disappointment for his grandmother beyond the grave.
An excerpt from Flora of Sumeru, Vol. II.
Pārijāta (पारिजात), also commonly known as shiuli, harsingar, Rajanī-hāsa, night-blooming jasmine, or tree of sorrow, is a species of Nyctanthes shrub native to Sumeru’s tropical and sub-tropical eastern forests. Its foliage is well-known to droop come the morning as its blooming flowers open at dusk and fall at dawn. It is widely cultivated and enjoyed for its fragrance and traditional medicinal usage, and its auspicious flowers, even fallen, are a traditional offering to the late goddess Rukkhadevata on her festival days.
The first time, but not really, was a night in the midst of the monsoon season.
There was no reason for it to be a night any different from the rest. It was a quiet evening amidst a long week of tedium and toil at work, thrust ignobly into the position of Acting Grand Sage and thus having to pick up after the collective messes of four corrupt Sages and all of their ousted lackeys. It was, to put it frankly, deeply bothersome. Nation-building was never part of the job Alhaitham had signed up for. Once the structures were more stable Alhaitham would be more than happy to ditch that uncomfortable high chair and return to his small and quiet Scribe’s office, where people didn’t harass him outside working hours because the seat of the Grand Sage apparently denied one the right to clock out on time, ever.
So Alhaitham loped away from work with the setting sun and with a headache, his headphones out of charge. By the time he was back stumbling into his own kitchen he was thoroughly ready to throw a chisel-mirror at the next person to so much as buzz in his direction.
“Haitham.”
It was Kaveh. Alhaitham merely stared at him mutely. The architect winced in the corridor and then frowned back.
“Oh don’t you sulk at me. I’ve had an absolute day of it as well, you’re not special. Haven’t you got any heart after seeing me for the first time in a week?”
He was looking sun-bronzed, frazzled as ever, and in need of a good bath. All ten fingers intact where they were gesturing in the air at least. Unharmed and needlessly indignant as ever.
Alhaitham signed back, one-handed, You should just tell them that they have poor taste instead of complaining about it after the work’s already half done. Welcome back.
Kaveh rolled his eyes, already gesturing as he walked around him to the stove, starting it up. “It’s not even just poor taste with this one, he’s also a miser – do you know the face he made when I gave him a quote and he asked – Ugh!”
He turned halfway to Alhaitham, not quite looking at his face. “A-nyways. I’m back. You haven’t eaten, have you? I got takeout. My treat. It’s been a harrowing week.”
Alhaitham signed I haven’t and thought it has been. All silent in the house for the last five days. He moved quietly to wash his hands and lay the table. Kaveh’s voice buzzed in his ears through the meal.
This had been happening more often than before. Particularly since the Interdarshan Championship. Dinners together, rather than meals that coincidentally happened to be taken at the same time at the same table. It was a habit Alhaitham had thought long withered with the crumbling of their relationship. But in more recent weeks they seemed to have moved properly past ceasefire into something more like armistice. Reparations. Cooperation. Conversation. Dinner with lamb korma. A warm feeling, prickling in his chest. It lingered even through washing up the dishes and Kaveh using up the hot water and staying up again.
Through the walls, Alhaitham could hear him muttering, rambling, dictating to Mehrak and himself, voice like the clamour of brass bells and bee-wings. Alhaitham left his headphones to charge on the nightstand, reminded himself about soundproofing renovations, and fell asleep to the noise.
(That night he had a dream.
That had also been happening more these days, dreams. Alhaitham found them difficult to parse and recalled them in splinters, which was annoying for someone who valued clarity of mind.
Though this dream was more like deja vu. He was six again, up in the night-between-twilight, and Jadda was showing him the Tree in gentle bloom. The old house loomed silently. The sky was getting lighter. His grandmother’s mouth was moving, lips forming words, but he couldn’t hear anything. Jadda was trying to say something important, he thought. Jadda’s words were always important. But all Alhaitham could make out was the rustle of dripping petals, and his own pulse, and the scent like a lullaby.
Like the falling parijata, Alhaitham woke wet-eyed at dawn.)
He proceeded about his morning quietly, groggily, sand stuck in his eyes and headphones fixed on. He put the coffee on to steep. Started making breakfast. When he heard Kaveh’s door creak open and the man start stumbling down he turned on the noise cancelling. Blissful silence followed. Though Alhaitham could feel the front door open and close through his feet.
Then as he was pouring out a cup, Kaveh waved a hand in front of his face. Alhaitham sighed and turned his noise cancelling up higher. Kaveh made another disgruntled expression. Jackass. Listen. This is enough. Kaveh signed, gesticulating with the rolled up paper with his free hand, mouth forming the words for himself as he went. It’s – your own – garden – sweep up the petals – off the front path – yourself.
Alhaitham blinked. Looked at him.
“(Hello? Haitham? Are you - gah, turn down that noise cancelling for five seconds or at least read my lips, will you?)”
Alhaitham reached up to do so and said, blankly, “Petals?”
“Oh you actually – yes, petals. From the tree.”
“The tree.”
“The one out the front door. Obviously,” Kaveh said, irritably. “It is admittedly very aesthetically pleasing but it’s hardly nice when the flowers don’t even stick on the plant long enough to appreciate and all you have now is a carpet of rotting – Hey where are you –”
Alhaitham’s feet took him out his front door and down the path within seconds. Instead of cobblestone his bare feet met a soft bed of white. Under the boughs of the Tree, Alhaitham looked up, looked down and stared.
When had it started budding? No, for that matter, how had Alhaitham not noticed? The smell, the colour? That the Tree’s barren branches had bloomed and then fallen without him noticing?
"What's the matter with you?"
"The Tree," Alhaitham said, in non-sequitur. He reached down and thumbed at a petal. There was practically a rainfall of them, it seemed. Scattered around in their dozens. Hardly any left on the tree itself, all shed like water from clouds.
"What about the Tree?" Kaveh said, echoing the capitalisation.
“It bloomed.”
“Yes, and?”
Alhaitham looked back at him. “This isn’t a surprise for you.” Blinked. “It’s bloomed more than once?”
“A few times,” Kaveh says, looking puzzled now more than annoyed.
“When,” Alhaitham said.
”Well I don’t keep records of a single tree’s bloomings or anything, I’m no Amurta scholar.”
Alhaitham stared. “When.”
“You – I just said I don’t keep track –” Kaveh huffed, before scratching at his chin. “Well it bloomed the week I first moved in, I remember that.”
“I didn’t see any petals then,” Alhaitham said, blankly.
“There weren’t very many then.”
There were now. Petals white as the snow dusting ever-distant Dragonspine, white as wedding veils, saffron-gold at the centre of their corolla. Alhaitham gathered them between his hands. Crepe-thin, soft, damp with dew, scent like his childhood lullabies. Real.
“Though I don’t think I’ve seen it yield this much before.” Kaveh sounded like his brow was furrowed. “Is it that odd? You’re acting like it came back from the dead.”
“The Tree has never bloomed before,” Alhaitham said, without inflection. He stood up wordlessly, still holding fallen flowers, still looking up and down. There wasn’t a single thing different about the plant. Bark, roots, leaves, normal – the only thing different was the last clinging drops of flowers, already drooping.
Hands came closer into his field of vision, scooping up stray flowers. “Well there’s a first for everything. Aren’t you being overly troubled by this? It’s a healthy tree. And you’ve had a Dendro vision longer than me. I’m told that makes it pretty hard to kill a plant.”
Dendro vision aside, I’ve never quite had my grandmother’s green thumb, Alhaitham wanted to say.
But what came out instead was “I have never had Jadda’s capacity to care for other living things.” And there was little more conversation after that.
He swept the flowers aside for recycling and pocketed some for testing. And that might have been not the end of it, but a lull, if not for the fact that Alhaitham walked out the morning after their Saturday game night at the tavern to another carpet of white.
So now between thankless Grand Sage work, Alhaitham had another issue to occupy his thoughts. He’d started marking the days. The patterns were incomprehensible. All these years of concern and now it was just merrily blooming without regard as to common sense. So what had triggered it?
Was it dreams? No, the first blooming apparently predated the Akasha’s decommissioning by months, so that was unlikely. Was it disease, like how some trees would put up a last death bloom before succumbing to sickness? The tree showed no signs of anything else amiss apart from the sprays of buds so that was also a low chance, and Alhaitham had gone over its entirety meticulously since he found out. Was it water? Sunlight? Fertiliser? Some human-imperceptible change in seasons or leylines? Was it –
Hands in his vision signed – Young-Book-Eagle.
Kaveh snorted when Alhaitham finally raised his gaze to him over the dinner table. “(Alhaitham,)” Kaveh mouthed, swallowing his food. “(Back with me?)”
No, Alhaitham signed back, just to see Kaveh groan visibly.
“(Fine then, go be in the clouds. Or branches. As it were. It’s rare to see you overthinking something this badly.)”
Not over, Alhaitham signed at him one-handed.
“(No, definitely over.)” Kaveh shook his head. “(Haven’t you asked Tighnari?)”
This isn’t something that warrants summoning Mushroom-Eater from the forest. He signed. Out loud he said, clicking down his headphones, “It’s just the Tree.”
“Trying to be blasé doesn’t take away the capitalisation I can hear you putting into that name,” Kaveh said.
His voice had a pleasant rasp to it after a whole day’s work. “You should make yourself some honey lemon tea,” Alhaitham said.
“Are you saying I talk too much?”
“Yes. Often.”
Kaveh scoffed at him, only half-heated. His foot found Alhaitham’s under the table, flicking at his ankle. He was warm there, like he was everywhere.
“Hah. Stop diverting. I’ve never seen so many botany books on your desk, you know? If you’re so concerned about the Tree to be this distracted you should just call in an actual expert. Aren’t you in the Akademiya daily? Gods know there’s far too many Amurta seniors just itching for a project.”
“The Tree isn’t anyone’s project,” Alhaitham said.
Kaveh raised his hands. “Fine then. A consult.”
“They’d hardly find anything to work with. The Tree is fine.”
“You’re really giving some mixed signals here,” Kaveh said wryly.
“It has never been in better health. There is nothing wrong with it. No infestation or disease, no signs of nutrient deficiency, no sudden changes in temperature, nothing.”
“And the only problem you have is that it’s actually giving us flowers.”
“Yes.” Alhaitham said. “So you understand my predicament.” Kaveh just sighed at him, spooning an extra serving of okra onto his rice.
“Eat your food before it gets cold if you’re going to be wracking your brains uselessly like this. I cooked all of this so it’d better not go to waste. And – Really, you eat like a bird, I have no clue how you ever grew….”
His nagging words were a comforting drone in Alhaitham’s ears. Sun-bright and brassy, obnoxious and vibrant. Living with Kaveh made things louder, warmer, brighter. Even if that came with fire and ruckus. Alhaitham hadn’t really registered just how much solitude had worn on him until Kaveh came to his spare bedroom.
It’ll be quiet when he moves out, he thought, and realised he’d thought when. He ate his okra without voice.
(The next morning at dawn, Alhaitham opened the door to white flowers again.
“What are you trying to say,” Alhaitham said, pressing a hand against its bark.
The Tree offered nothing except parijat flowers, falling like tears.)
Time passed. In the last week of the monsoon season, air still lush with rain’s sighs, Alhaitham came to the end of both the third month of observations and his Grand Sage position.
He was glad to be rid of the title, but in that time had gleaned nothing of actual weight regarding the Tree. It didn’t seem to be rainfall, sunlight, temperature, dendro or any other environmental predictor. There was little sensible rhyme or reason to the bloomings, only that they happened with frankly ridiculous frequency for a tree that had spent the last eight years being happily barren. To be honest by the first month Alhaitham had become used to it, no longer feeling quite as much concern that the plant might keel over and die and more getting used to picking up the flowers to give to the neighbours. Apparently Aunty Geeta was an old hand with garland-making. Nahida seemed quietly delighted when he passed her a small parijat wreath made under her tutelage.
Really the only discernible trend thus far was that the bloomings happened while Alhaitham was at home. Which was not exactly infrequent, given that this was his house. The bloomings also typically happened while Kaveh was at home as well, which, again, happened to be most days. And also –
No, not enough data. Alhaitham considered that he’d have to extend the duration of the observation period to get anything definitive. It was – vexing, to have an unsolved mystery in one’s front yard. It was his damn Tree, after all. It was his grandmother’s will.
Kaveh seemed to take all of Alhaitham’s fixation in stride, only continuing to nag and pilfer flowers, stepping around him with an air that Alhaitham couldn’t quite parse except for the fact that it felt kind. But that was Kaveh for you. Kind even in his selfish selflessness and his temper, ever-spilling with light, even for his landlord-slash-ex-friend-slash-roommate.
So really nothing had really changed, except for the flowers, so everything had.
A week into his return to his Scribe desk, Alhaitham was already seriously considering disappearing for a year, except apparently the Scribe department would fall apart without him and he’d spent too long machinating his colleagues and underlings into competence to let that crumble yet. So Alhaitham came back from another day at work.
Kaveh wasn’t home yet. He’d garnered another project, one he seemed remarkably more enthused about given it was to build housing for a village rebuilding from the Withering. Though he was supposed to be back today, and Alhaitham could see his work shoes back on the rack, he supposed he might have been caught up upon his return with other things. Perhaps wine at the tavern. Perhaps the rain. Perhaps friends.
So it was just him in the house. That was fine. Alhaitham made his own dinner, took his bath, and read through another novel before bed.
There was no noise of life through the walls. Even the sounds of water and food on the stove seemed softer. The silence itself droned, a hollow phantom swarm only drowned out by the rain. Alhaitham went to bed.
(His dreams were strange, like they usually were.
It was daytime, and the Tree was in full bloom. Sunlight lit the parijata, gossamer and white-gold stars. Kaveh was sitting next to him in the grass, knee-to-knee, shoulder-to-shoulder, close and warm. He was saying something. Petals cradled in his hands, fingers weaving together a chain.
And still all Alhaitham could hear was the wind, and the branches, and the way Kaveh’s heartbeat through his skin was a half-half-step out of phase with his own.
His heart ached in his chest. He knew it was a dream then. Alhaitham woke up.)
His sleep was interrupted this time before dawn, and Alhaitham rolled to one side unhappily. Yet when he blearily turned his head –
Out the window he could see the Tree, garlanded in white in the dark. And outside, under the dripping boughs, there stood his erstwhile roommate.
He picked himself out of bed and out the door in his nightclothes almost without thinking. The pathway was still puddled, earth and grass lush in the gloaming.
Kaveh was humming something. Alhaitham briefly registered he’d left his headphones behind.
“Are you drunk,” Alhaitham asked.
Kaveh startled, and whirled around. “Agh –! Don’t scare – Do you really think I – No I’m not drunk,” Kaveh said indignantly. “Does a man have to be drunk to behold a tree?” The scent of wine clung to him without comment.
“Not at all,” Alhaitham said mildly, stepping closer as Kaveh briefly puffed at him. “But I imagine Lambad’s learned by now to shoo you away before closing.”
“Hey. I left before that, thank you very much, I just…”
Alhaitham considered that he should have gone to the tavern himself to pick up his roommate and the tab. Out loud he hummed. “Did senior have a nice nap? Did senior forget his key again?”
“I – have my key, alright. Don’t be smug at me, it isn’t cute at all,” Kaveh muttered. His hands fidgeted. Alhaitham registered at last that he was holding parijat flowers. “If you have your key then you should stop wasting time out here and go get some sleep. And drink some water.”
Kaveh wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was on the flowers, and the Tree’s branches, arching over their heads in sweet-scented embrace.
He said, in non-sequitur, “I was trying to see if I could make any observation, but I realized…. I didn’t take much notice of your exteriors when I first moved in. Too aghast at the state of your interior design choices to focus much on other things.” His voice lulled. “But now that I’m really looking – your Tree, it used to show buds back when we were in the Akademiya, didn’t it?”
Alhaitham paused. “...You recognize it?”
“Now I do. It was the only living thing in your room other than you, between all of the books. Hard to forget.” Kaveh said wryly. “Up close it’s not changed that much.”
“....It’s grown over five times its original height and mass.”
“Well besides that.” Kaveh turned to look at him for a moment. “Growth or not, it’s still the same roots, yes? Now that you’ve planted it in the earth proper.”
“That they are.”
A raspy, brass-bell chuff. “Hah. You’re so agreeable when it’s this late. Well that aside. It’s been with you a long time, hasn’t it? You had it before the Akademiya, correct?”
“...In a sense.” Alhaitham said quietly. “It was originally a cutting from my grandmother’s Tree.”
Kaveh’s breath stilled. Even without looking at him, Alhaitham could feel the prickle of his gaze land on him, like the brush of leaves against his cheek.
“...It was part of her will that I take part of the Tree with me. To whatever new home I might find,” Alhaitham said. “So I did, and I have.”
“...You’ve done a good job with it. All those years looking after it. No wonder you were worrying so much.”
“I was reasonably concerned.”
At this Kaveh scoffed again, a wine-mellow laugh, head tipping back and listing to one side. Alhaitham caught his shoulder almost without thinking. The warm weight of him, the faint stickiness of his skin, the lingering smell of his sweat and faded attar amidst the fragrance of the parijat flowers –
Alhaitham’s heart ached in his chest. This was real, though.
“It wouldn’t kill you to admit you have feelings, you know,” Kaveh said.
The Tree almost seemed to sigh in the night breeze.
“I’ve always been honest about those,” Alhaitham said.
“Only half the time. And the rest of it you just expect people to keep up with whatever encrypted signals you’re sending.”
“They’re hardly in code. I’m just not as loud about them as certain people are, exulting in their misery.”
“Misery loves company. And airing it out is a lot healthier in the long run.”
“Says the drunkard.”
“I’m trying to give you advice, will you just – Ah, that’s besides the point.” Kaveh snorted, but seemed to have no retort. Instead his hands were engrossed in their task.
Finally he drew them up and nudged Alhaitham by the shoulder. When Alhaitham turned in reflexive response he found the sensation of a gentle weight suddenly brushing his neck and shoulders. A thin garland was looped around his neck.
“There.” Kaveh hummed a note of satisfaction. This close his eyes were like pomegranate seeds. Light caught through trishiraite, framed by the gold of his hair. Sunlight practically spilled from his lopsided smile. “I’m getting better with practice, I think. We really have more of these flowers than we know what to do with.”
They did. Pools of them, rainshowers, beaded with night-dew. Over Kaveh’s head, Alhaitham could see more peel open, the Tree almost weeping with petals in the moonlight.
His heart throbbed. We, he’d said. In synchrony he watched another flower burst open.
…Well. New hypothesis.
He had vaguely theorised it, though it seemed implausible. But the Tree hadn’t started blooming until Kaveh came back into his life.
“We do.” Alhaitham murmured, voice halting, cheeks warm. His pulse drummed. The flowers around his neck itched. “It’s late. Enough. Come back inside or you’ll catch a cold.”
Kaveh huffed at him. “Not even a thank you?”
“You won’t even remember it properly.”
“I’m really not as drunk as you seem to think I am. How bad do you think my alcohol tolerance….”
Behind them, as they steered back to the front door, the Tree continued to bloom.