Talking about her farm was easy, “I don’t hunt, but most farms have chickens and ducks and things. We had a pig, but then he got fat enough to eat. So, I killed him.” She shrugged, “You learn to use every part of an animal.”

That was true enough. That was one of the reasons why Darin didn’t feel guilty about killing the animals on her farm. Another reason was that she made sure they had a good life before she ended it. Darin knew that her animals didn’t want to die; probably, but she refused to kill for sport. Then again, she didn’t know anyone who killed for sport. She knew that people did. That brought her to Ridahne’s next question.

The truth was she didn’t know anything about what her Tree would be like. She thought it might be an apple tree. Or at least something like an apple tree. It made sense. The Seed resembled an apple seed after all. Darin looked at the core of the apple she had just finished. She pulled out one of the seeds to look at. She had dropped the reins completely, but that didn’t seem to bother Talbot.

She held the seed up to the sky, “Do you know, that if you eat enough apple seeds you go mad?” She dropped her hand to look at the Elf, “I think that it’s the same way with anything. You try to do just one thing over and over it’s bound to drive you crazy.” She furrowed her brow, “I had a point.”

What was her point? Maybe she had started and hoped she would find the finish before she arrived at the finish. She didn’t do that a lot, but it did happen from time to time. She bit her lip as she thought about the question again. She supposed that she couldn’t actually answer it. Ridahne wanted to know if the Tree that grew from The Seed would be different from the current Tree. Darin wasn’t even sure what The Tree did. She had a feeling that what it did was far too vague to be defined properly. That made it difficult to figure out what the differences, if there would be any, would be.

Darin tried again, “The stories say that The Tree prevents evil, and I know it does stop somethings; like war.” She shrugged as she went back to looking at the seeds, she had absently pulled out of the core, “But other than that I don’t know. Evil is such a vague term. We think of evil as something we want to get rid of, but I’m not sure that’s something we actually want to do. At least I don’t want to get rid of something I don’t truly understand. It would be like getting rid of your people just because I don’t fully know everything about them.” She wasn’t entirely comfortable with this conversation, but she wanted to give the best answer she could, “I know Mark meant me harm. I don’t know why, but I do know that I didn’t provoke him. He felt evil, but he was perfectly polite until he started to try and kill us, so I had no fair reason to hate him or be as afraid of him as I was right from the beginning. So, I don’t know why I thought he was evil.” She was trying to be earnest, “I don’t know what evil really is, so I don’t know what The Tree is supposed to stop. So, I don’t know what the new Tree will do; besides protect Astra.” She gave her head a shake, “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Just forgot I said anything.” She tossed the seeds over her shoulder, “I don’t know where I was going with that bit about the apple seeds either.” She let out a laugh, “You can just ignore me when I start talking about philosophy. I never make any sense.”

Except for the fact that Darin thought, that while she didn’t have an answer, she had a point about the apple seeds. Too much of anything was a bad thing. Even good things could consume a person. If you gave away everything you had in an attempt to be charitable soon you were left with nothing. If you did nothing but play you would soon starve. Though if you gave nothing away soon your heart became cold. If you did nothing but work, you became so stressed out you made yourself sick. A small part of Darin wondered if she should even plant The Seed. Maybe it was time to let the so-called evil run free for just a little bit. Darin would, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, her entire life say that out loud. The Seed needed to be planted and war would come. She didn’t truly want that. She just wanted her Mama to be safe.