Rotten apple

Meletria kicked the stand and ignored the clatter of potted plants threatening to fall to their death. The spell meant to keep them secured in their places did its word as usual as the frustrated teenager continued to look for her own trees in the courtyard.
She knew it was pointless, she had looked everywhere already, even behind the bushes and under the chairs where her grandfather and her mother sat to embroider handkerchiefs and overgarments.
It was time to give up and ask for help, she knew it. But she also knew that as soon as she mentioned this to anyone her magicless, half deaf grandma would hear every word and appear faster than any traveling spell, just to lecture her for having lost the trees. She would ask why she wasn't ready for the Returning, and remind her of every time she had told her to prepare with enough time. Of course, Meletria would talk back and everything would escalate into a never ending screaming contest.
She had wasted enough of her day already and she didn't want to expend the rest of it dealing with the rage of the loveliest woman ever born. There was no rush anyway. Well, it was, because she had to transplant the chosen tree in less than two days, but she didn't have the new pot yet; therefore she had time.
Twenty hours later, her mother found her there, moving plants around in the stand again.
"You don't recognize your tree, do you?" she asked, shaking her head patiently.
"No, it’s not... Well, yes, I don't recognize it. There are like a hundred wishes here. But..."
"The one on the square basket," Ilid pointed. Then, as an afterthought, she pointed at the miniature wayfarer's apple that decorated the garden's table "That's the other one, in case you are wondering. But don't take it to a temple. Your father is fond of it."
"Oh. Thanks, mom."
"Have you chosen a..."
Their conversation was interrupted by the raspy unsurprised voice of Grandma: "You are not ready yet. Didn't I remind you every day that the Returning was tomorrow? Do you even picked a pot for it? I hope you are not thinking of skipping the ceremony."
"Mom, please. She would never do that. Right Meli? She will hurry up to get the tree ready, we should let her work."
The elder nodded begrudgingly, and let herself be guided back inside. Before entering, she turned around to say: "There are some broken trays and teapots on the top of the stand... and your great grandmother's box of needles, too. Use one of those if you don't have a planter."
Grandma was always so thoughtful. And so convinced that Meletria would ruin everything. She was usually right, but the teenager wasn't about to admit that. Especially not today. Because this time she was ready. She didn't have a recyclable container as the local tradition dictated, but she had made something. That morning it had looked horrible, not because it was made of branches but because she had attached them poorly. Now it was a solid box, dark as a moonless night and strong as the faith of the Nature's Children. All thanks to the magic that Meletria had inherited from her father.
His side of the family was kind of famous in Lien due to their impressive magic skills. They weren't particularly powerful, even if every single descendant would have the gift. It was mostly a matter of knowledge and practice. Their family had been exploring the possibilities of magic ever since the messengers of nature had revealed the acceptable use of those abilities. They had gathered a lot of knowledge and, to this day, parents would teach their children how to use their skills responsibly from a very early age.
They knew that magic made them special, but it was also an ordinary part of their lives because it has always been with them. Both sides of the coin constituted the reason why every single one of them always decided to continue that legacy instead of the one on their other side of the family, no matter what that could be.
That was why Meletria's siblings had chosen to take the wish instead of the apple tree that represented belonging to their mother’s family and everyone knew for sure that she would do the same.
As usual, she would disappoint.
Meletria couldn't imagine a life without magic, or to miss the long debates she had when her father's sister, but abandoning the magic wielders’ legacy didn't mean that she would lose that. It simply meant that she wouldn't be responsible for passing their knowledge to the next generation, nor would she be demanded to take part in their gatherings and ceremonies. From now own, whenever people ask about her family, she would identify herself as "a Wayfarer's", and it would be her right and duty to pass on their embroidering and weaving techniques; a somehow discontinued art, due to the technological advances of Lien and the variety of beautiful clothes that came from other worlds.
Yes, the wayfarer's legacy was sort of useless skill and it took Meletria a lot of effort, but she enjoyed the process and thought that the results were one of a kind. Magic was the opposite, and Meretria hadn't even entertained the thought of choosing it as her legacy. Not that she had thought much about the ceremony, anyway. She was busy learning to use magic as a tool, trying to figure out weaving techniques, exploring the world and having fun with her friends.
Grandma hadn't been so far from the truth when she asked if Meretria was thinking about avoiding the ceremony. She hasn’t been thinking about showing up, which would have had the same effect.
But it was easier to say a few words while she showed a tree to her mother—or something on those lines—than it would be to spend the rest of her life explaining why she hadn’t done it. Not that anyone had bothered to explain to her why she was supposed to do it in the first place.
She wanted to take part in the wayfarers’ legacy, and it wasn’t really that hard to do the ceremony. Crafting a wood box hasn’t been related to that, she just wanted to learn how to make one, and adding the magic has been fairly easy, even if it had taken almost half an hour.
Now, she went for simplicity and held the miniature apple tree by its trunk and pulled the basket in the opposite direction. There was more resistance than she expected, and part of the soil and small roots remained in the basket as the rest of the plant broke free with an deaf noise.
The plant was a bit bigger than the pot, which made it look funny, but it wasn’t as if she was planning to win a contest with it.
She went to bed content that night, knowing that the plant was waiting on her desk, ready for the ceremony with a whole day of anticipation. Why had her grandma thought that she would ruin something that was so ridiculously easy?
Probably because she would.
The tree was dead by morning, after all.
Why had it died so fast?! Well, it was better that having it turn into ashes in the middle of the ceremony, which would have probably occurred with a wish, but this wasn’t a magical tree, was it? Shouldn't it die quiet and slowly in… any kind of longer period?
She didn’t know enough about plants to answer that. Even worse, she didn’t know enough to fix the issue. Her magic slipped over the brownish leaves with no effect, yet she tried every spell she could remember as if it wasn’t common knowledge that death can be healed and reparation spells are not for living—or recently deceased—beings.
Magic wouldn’t help her with this. But she had another option that, come to think about it, made way more sense: Miq. She sneaked out of the house with the small tree hidden in her bag, and practically ran to the farm where her friend worked.
He was busy already, of course, and seemed quite surprised to see her there. It made sense that he was confused about her visit: their group of friends would usually meet later in the day, when all of them were free or, at least, avoiding their chores. She has never visited him at the farm. Besides, Miq had spent several full days preparing for his own Returning ceremony, and he probably thought that Meletria should have been doing the same.
“I killed the Wayfarer's plant!” she confessed in a whisper filled with horror.
“What!!!” He yelled, in that screeching voice he always had when he was either angry or scared.
“I know, I know. It’s bad luck or irresponsible or who knows what else, but…”
“Impossible! I was going to say impossible. Listen, maybe you just panicked without checking…”
“I checked!”
“Through magic? Because it could look bad without really…”
“Yes, I did,” she said, annoyed. Why did everybody treated her as if she was stupid?! “And I tried to fix it with magic, so…”
“Why would you use magic to heal a tree?” He asked, somehow confused. “You know nothing about trees! That’s probably how you killed it, doing whatever comes to mind, as you always do!”
“You weren’t complaining when I planned a trip to the altar of the big river,” she smiled.
“Because that was fun, nobody died. Breaking a rule once in a while is one thing, we didn’t destroy the Biosphere or something. This… I mean, How? How does one kill a Wayfarer's Apple tree! You can let them fall for The Tower, kick them until the trunk breaks… As long as you don’t mess with the roots, those… Oh. I see. You transplanted it wrong, didn’t you?”
Well, she didn’t know that there was a wrong way to take a tree out of a pot and put it in another, but she could have messed with the roots while she was doing that, right?. She simply shrugged.
“Can you help me?”
“Do I look like the recipient of the Death’s gift? Plants are strong in all the ways we aren’t, but what is dead, remains…”
She gave him an annoyed look and snorted slightly.
“What?” He said.
“Let me rephrase this in a way that even you can understand: Can you get me another tree?”
“Well, if you ask so nicely, of course not.”
“Miiiiiiq!” she whined. “I’m not joking here.”
He sighed. “Everyone would know it isn’t your tree.”
“No, they won’t. Nobody even remembers about it anymore. It was a table centerpiece last afternoon. They all think I’ll use the wish. And no, I’m not changing trees to…”
“Obviously.”
Of course it was obvious for him. Her friends knew just fine how much embroidering meant to her, and she had mentioned more than once how much it troubled her to be the last one on the line, because that meant that passing out the skills depended on her own ability to learn them.
“So…” she awkwardly said. “Any tree will do. I mean, any Wayfarer's.”
“Uh… okay… I guess we can try to find one… not here at the farm, of course… let me think…”
She waited. Then she went with him to a nearby store. And to another that was way further. And back to one closer to the temple. And to the forest.
They were lovely sprouts in some places, and beautiful grown trees in others. Nothing like a miniature tree.
“How!?”
“Well, miniature trees are not natural, so you can only find those that were planted as Gifts for descendants and… well, the Wayfarer's are not precisely common. Maybe your family has saved the others they planted for you as a baby?”
“They didn’t plant any others. There weren't a lot of seeds or something like that. I ruined it, Miq, I ruined it!”
She was crying in rage. Why did people have to care so much about a ceremony? Why wasn't it enough that she learnt the family stuff and lived by their legacy? She wasn’t a treekeeper!
Miq held her hands, and that annoyed her too.
“Cut that nonsense,” she shook her hands free.
“I know you cherish your anger, but this time it won't do you any good…”
“Nothing will do me any good!” she said, pacing around.
He shrugged. “A lie would.”
That picked her interest, so she stopped to look at him.
“We can make it look alive,” he explained. “I wouldn’t know how, but you do.”
That wasn’t a terrible idea. Anyone who inspected the tree with the right kind of magic would feel there was no life on it, or would recognize the illusion spell, but why would they do that? If it looked alive, they would think it was alive, end of the story.
With the aid of magic and his careful advice on trees and their shape, Meletria managed to copy the looks of another tree into the one that she had killed the previous night. Once, he would have seen her work, eyes huge with astonishment. By now, he understood that magic was just something she could do, and instead of appraising, he shared his concerns. Too much magic wasn’t good for the trees, it wouldn’t hurt a healthy apple tree and nothing else could go wrong with her own, but there were other plants around them. She mostly ignored his complaints, of course.
Once they agreed that the illusion was good, they went straight to the temple. Meletria followed his friend with her gaze as he occupied his place with her other friends: under the worried look of her family. She wasn’t still sure which side of her family disliked her friends the most.
Finally, she walked towards the area that her family had decorated for the ceremony, relieved to see the happiness in her grandparents' eyes and the pride in his father’s smile as they noticed the tree she was carrying.
She didn’t bother to say anything as she offered the magic sculpture of a tree to her mother.
“Are you…? Are you sure? Honey, this is a bigger decision than you may think.”
“Maybe I like weaving more than you think,” Meletria retorted, rolling her eyes.
Immediately she wondered if grandma had heard her say that. She would probably lecture her for ruining the ceremony. Just to think about it she felt a bit bored.
At least the ceremony was out of the way. Again: what was the big deal? All that drama for a second. Sure, it lasted longer with moving speeches, but she was not into that. To put the dead sculpture of a living plant in her mother’s hand was the best she could do. She didn’t even have the patience to go back home with her family. She went to party with her friends instead.
Next morning, as she sewed with her mom and grandfather in the courtyard, they asked her to embroider an image of the tree she had used as a model.
“What?” she exclaimed, suddenly out of breath.
“Well, I don’t think you had been trying to imitate the original one, even your memory is not that bad,” her grandfather said. “Didn’t you use a model? Well, it’s not a problem if you imagined, it still has the same shape. Should I bring it?”
“No… I remember, I… How did you notice?”
“Because it looked different,” her mom said. “I was curious about what had happened, and I noticed it was an illusion. You didn’t transplant it right, did you? It’s always sad when a tree dies young… You should have ask for your dad’s help… But nobody expected you to transplant that one, so we thought that even if you hurt the tree, your magic would heal it, that’s what happened with the others.”
She was actually sorry about the death of the tree. Meretria herself was too, now that she wasn’t terrified to be caught Yet…
“Aren’t you mad? I mean, I ruined the Returning,” she admitted.
“With your lack of skills to conduct yourself in public? It doesn’t matter, we are all used to that. It was you, being you.”
“No, I mean the tree!”
“Oh, the Returning is not about the tree, is it? Is about the choice,” her grandfather commented. “And our legacy is not exactly the green thumb either. That’s why our ancestors picked a plant that was impossible to kill… until you, that is. I guess you can’t see a rule and not break it.”
Meletria laughed. Her grandfather had always managed to say that kind of thing with a fond smile, and every time it made her want to jump into a hug, but sometimes, like this one, she remembered that there were needles in the way and stopped on time.
“I can’t wait to see what impossible things you will do with our traditions,” the old man said.

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Story written by an unknown lienita writer. It's believed to be a true story or a tale about the meaning of the family legacies in a time when those were at risk of being forgotten. There is no record of any alternative versions or retellings.

— Sally, an Historian