flower

I'm sorry, Father, Mother. I've been infected with Oripathy. Your line of work would never let an Infected take over, so now, I'm free to do what I want to do, aren't I?

I know I can't stay in our home any longer. I'll move out as soon as I can. Don't worry about me, I'm completely able to care for myself now, and I don't need to trouble my family for anything.

But if it's alright, could you leave my flower garden where it is? They're just plants. Oripathy won't mar their purity.

Please, let me say goodbye.

Winter.

The aroma of sawdust from the firewood 'pon the altar.

Relics.

The nose of clay and moss within the temple.

Nightfall.

The scent of the thickets' dew in Helia's Mountains.

Sunset.

The taste of honey.

Of honey?

During my time in the Hall of the Twelve Heroes, I always made it each evening's custom to watch the sun set as I imbibed a glass of mead. The dusk through the glass was golden as honey was.

Oh... the flavor of a scene such as that. How greatly I yearn, so greatly.

Very unique, but very, very understandable too.

That's why we've done this. Just describing a situation can easily let us make associations with scents that match the scene well.

And vice versa. When we smell a clear scent, we'll associate it with the relevant scene.

So, Miss Lena, you believe that the use of similar methods can rouse Miss Gloria's memories?

Scent has an emotionally evocative power. If the information within a scent is rich enough, then the brain will associate it with clearer direction too, and it's not out of the question it'll connect to what concrete memories it may.

This may well be a reliable treatment method for Miss Gloria, in response to her condition.

Ah, I shall not interrogate your professional judgment, nor complain of the weight of these plant specimens. I only hold some questions.

Why do we not bring Miss Gloria back here with us, directly?

Heheh. As a Medic Operator with no fighting ability, I need others to accompany me when I'm going a ways away. You're the one I'm pulling along this time, Lady Priestess.

As for why we can't bring Gloria back, it's a sad thing, but the state of her health doesn't let her travel long distances. Besides, bringing her into familiar surroundings may not do wholly positive things for her.

Just like in a play, a more unadulterated scenario resonates more easily with an audience's mood. Too great a mix of information may well make it hard for one to catch the important things.

Take right here, right now. I imagine you'd have a hard time giving an overall, unique impression for this city, in the midst of all these scents.

Quite true. Frigid air bites in my nose, mingled with dust and soot. It is selfsame as other modern cities I have visited.

But I notice, too, in the air a faintly scattered scent out of the ordinary, with the perfume of cream and wheat—is this the fragrance of bread?

Hah-hah, hello, Miss! Please, take two and have a taste. On me.

I thank you greatly—such warm and exquisite flavor. I extol your craft from the heart.

Thanks for the kind words! If you're fond, would you mind spreading the word for me, then?

Assuredly! Such fine flavor deserves to be experienced by more—Miss Lena, would you sample one?

I'll be fine for now... You really do harmonize with people just like that, Pallas.

To converse is a thing of pleasure. I may gain knowledge from it, and sharpen my thought.

But our task here is to gather the necessary materials as quickly as possible. If we accidentally expose our Infected identity through enough contact with others, it'll mean unnecessary hassle in turn.

If that girl knew we were Infected, would she have been as friendly as she was?

Darling Lena, assume no ill will in others before you meet them. As the great forebears said, 'even as you meet a century of wicked souls, ne'er conclude the century and first would then do evil.'

If that was the case, I can't see why our lives would be the way they are then.

Miss Lena...?

No, don't mind it. I'm just being oversensitive.

There're a lot of materials we need to get our mitts on. Let's seize the moment.

Judging by the thickness of the wayside bushes, this city's climate must lean on the drier side. Its average yearly rainfall is probably around the 500ml range.

The ecology of plantlife here oughtn't be too complex. It seems we're in for a bit less work than I imagined.

I seem to have seen this tree in your greenhouse before, Miss Lena. Is it of the same kind?

Not at all. This one is a Victorian cypress, and the tree in the greenhouse is a Minoan fir. People might often confuse the two thanks to their scale leaves, but they're actually completely separate.

I knew of the perfuming, but not that you were so well-versed in botanic studies too. My.

Nature itself is an endlessly giving store of scents and sources. If you want be a good perfumer, you can't do without a knowledge of plants.

I've seen many a rare plant from Minos in your Convalescent Garden. Many were, to me, only names I had read in books before.

I imagine you too must long deeply for all the green that grows in Minos.

Plants have their own charm, and that has nothing to do with where they are growing—

Strange, how do the tree ferns thrive even in such an environment here? Do they have tenders?

If I may be forthcoming, something you said has rather lingered on my mind.

Miss Lena, you left your home due to Oripathy too, didn't you?

Not a prominent scent, but has a base aroma much like air. I'll need to sample and take notes. Pallas, could you grab a #3 test tube for me—I'm sorry, what were you just saying?

A #3 test tube. Is this it?

No, the one to the right, a size larger. Yes. Thank you.

Hmm. Why did I leave my home...? It's complicated, I'll say that.

Too much time has passed to recall how I felt back then more than vaguely. I just remember a lot of regret and disappointment had piled up, and all that was left in the end was the idea of 'I have to leave home.'

Every traveler has what they cannot help. In that respect, you and I surely have melancholies abound to share, hard as it is to tell them to others.

You're overblowing it, Pallas. It's all bygones by now. I've found somewhere to belong and something of a career—there's not much regret to have, really.

My dear countrywoman. Though I pull this ailing body far from native soil, I still can sense to this day the call of Minos's every alpine rock, every breadth of field and forest.

There may be a day, I hope with all my heart, that we can return to our home—

Sorry... that was careless of me.

Lena—

Pallas, would you mind leaving the topic alone for now?

Lena?

You never did anything wrong, it was just one accident, and then they took away everything you were, everything you were worth. You can understand that, can't you, with what you've gone through?

Do you treat that all like it's... nothing? Just little gripes and grudges we don't need to resent or let get to us?

What I cannot deny is that these lands are especially ruthless to the Infected. I too once asked if this was unjust of fate, but in the end, faith and hope still triumphed over the resentment.

Lena, of course I have no right to tell you you should shed bad blood. I simply ask, of the soil that nurtured us, or perhaps of your friends and family—is there any attachment that still remains?

You're right, you're exactly right. But what drove me from home wasn't Oripathy. It was my family who abandoned me when they had no use for me. It was the people who saw me and didn't care, the friends who found it all so funny.

To this day, Minos is still about passing on all those romantic epics, the stories of heroes. What you and I have suffered, what all the Infected have suffered, could only ever be unsightly... errors in the tales.

Pallas, for you, Minos is a place worth cherishing. It's where your dreams and convictions lie. But to me, it's nothing but a name that I wish I could forget.

I'm sorry... I got flustered.

No, I should be sorry. I am profuse with apology, that I roused your worst recollections.

It's fine. Anyway, there's more important things to do now than get bogged down in unhappy memories.

Well spoken. We must find some meaning in the now, to dilute melancholies of days past...

A daeluswood?

An extinct tree, if I recall? Does it hold any special significance for you, Miss Lena?

What... is a daeluswood doing here?

On a hillside of bracken and weeds stands a lofty, ancient tree.

Its trunk is still arrow-straight, but not at all unyielding. Its rough bark appears weather-beaten. The sparse foliage resembles a tattered umbrella, only smatters of leaves left hanging on its branches.

The daeluswood. Grown in Minos, and only in Minos. Renowned for its timber sturdy beyond compare, a synonym for stalwart in poem and play.

When Sargon invaded, the invaders wrought unbridled destruction on our culture so as to crush our faith, and this tree was one among the sacrifices.

After our heroic soldiers repelled the invaders, not a soul in Minos ever saw such a tree again.

If not for its accounts in old texts, the people might have thought it a species from legend. How can you be so sure that this tree before us is a daeluswood, Miss Lena?

Pallas... could I borrow your weapon for a moment?

'E'en by sword and by ax, no trace could be left.' So the epics noted. But one light chop here severed a branch.

And the daeluswood's illustrations certainly didn't seem so thin and frail...

The same plants growing in different environments can present extremely different characters. But it's just like how we wouldn't mistake a Liberi for a Savra, even though people's looks can vary so greatly.

The leaves' sawtooth outline, the red veining around its edges, and their extremely short stalk. These features are all identical to the historic records.

Though the timber's looser and weaker thanks to the different surroundings, it's kept hold of its neat and detailed grain, and there's still oily resin left on the inside of the bark... There's no mistaking it.

What's most important: this tree has the scent of Minos.

A breeze blows past, the vegetation about them somber in the twilight season.

The frail old tree nods in the wind, as if greeting another fellow countryman who's come from afar.

Daeluswoods have been rumored long extinct, and this tree seems to be decades in age. But just how, I wonder, did it arrive in these foreign lands?

Maybe fowlbeasts carrying its fruit, maybe wind blowing its seeds. There's times when nature gives life wonderful opportunities, but it takes life with no mercy more frequently still.

Pallas, I'd like—to save this tree.

But now isn't the season for trees to flower, and moving it, roots and all, is more unaskable still. In the face of it...