Ranuk remembered. When he had been small, his father had taken him to see a special tree. It did not look like this one, its trunk had been black and straight and its flowers were moon white, blooming in the darkness of night. Even the scent was different, but there was an otherness to that tree, a secret, ancient magic that matched the one that stood before him.<br/><br/><i>"Come see, son," Unak had urged. Ranuk had been afraid and hid behind his father's massive leg, cowering in a ball of fluffy tails. <br/>
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"Dont be shy, little kit, it is only your grandfather," Unak said with an amused smile, and plucked his son up and sat the boy upon his crowned head so he couldnt run away. <br/>
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"Grandfather! My grandfather is a tree!?" Ranuk had gasped in disbelief as he gripped Unak's horns for balance. <br/>
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"Well, he is now," Unak said, laughing.<br/>
</i><br/>Unak had shown him the bones tangled in the roots, and they had been so much bigger than Unak himself. That was where Ranuk first learned about the dilution of demon kind, learned about their loss of majesty and power and purity.<br/><br/><i>"When true demons die, our bodies return to the earth," Unak had explained as he stroked the curved horns of his father's skull, "from our bodies sprout our life tree, they grow from the magic that lies inherent in our blood. When I die I will become a tree such as this."<br/>
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"Will I become a tree one day?" Ranuk had asked, still too young to truly grasp the significance of death. <br/>
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"I cannot say..." Unak had said. <br/>
</i><br/>Ranuk remembered how incredibly sad his father looked in the silence after. He didnt understand then but he understood now how death had weighed so heavily on Unak's mind. His kind were already gone, demon hybrids did not sprout trees when they perished as Ranuk intimately knew. There wasnt enough magic left in their veins.<br/><br/>Unak knew of many more trees but he couldnt show Ranuk. They were beyond their reach, lost in territories the demon's no longer possessed. This too had been lost to Ranuk. He hadnt been present at his father's final battle and no one knew of his resting place or had seen his life tree. They had thought the elves had chopped it down or had burned it, but it had been hidden here, growing alone for decades.<br/><br/>He had been alone.<br/><br/>"<b>Father," </b>Ranuk gasped as tears poured from his eyes, cascading down his long snout as he reached for the skull.<br/><br/>His hand traced over the horns just as Unak had done to his father's, following the lines in the bone as it came to the crown. He remembered grasping them as a child and dangling from them gleefully. He remembered gazing at them in envy as his own horns came in, stunted and crooked. He remembered the thudding ache as they butted heads, horns locked together as Unak taught him how to battle as goats do. Ranuk had never come close to besting his father, and Unak had laughed forever about it.<br/><br/>Ranuk remembered so much that he was overhwelmed with it, so filled by the love and the joy and the lessons of the past that his heart burst, too small and weak to contain the aching centuries of missing him. Ranuk pressed his hands to bone, and remembered the flesh and fur that used to lay there, the lines of Unak's gentle face, his laughing smile, his furious scowl, his bitter resolve as he bade Ranuk to run.<br/><br/>The white demon pressed his brow to his father's, beneath the sword that had killed him, and wept.<br/><br/>"<b>Forgive me father," </b>he whispered, "<b>I did not know you were here."</b>