Snippet #2307480

Jacob looked at Alice with wide eyes as she walked beside him. She looked as if for the first time since Jacob had met her she was connected to reality and truly admiring the scenes and images of the garden around her. Her expression was clear for once and she showed a subtle happiness in her general demeanor. The fact that this had come to light pleased Jacob greatly, knowing that she was she was actually "there", truly connected to the reality around her and happy to do so, it was nice that Jacob had brought her somewhere to experience that and he felt a small sense of pride in the knowledge that he had done something right. Jacob had certainly taken a liking to Alice, her methods and means of everything she did were unusual and strange for certain and the average person he knew would surely have been driven away entirely. Jacob, however, was not an average person. In these ways of hers he found interest and intelligence, seeing that Alice, although d=slightly dreamy and distant, knew more about the world and seemed to have a more solid idea of it than most people, wether the idea was right or not was irrelevant to him, simply meeting someone who had a view on things and wasn't afraid to express it... It was nice, refreshing even, never mind her strangeness, after all almost everybody at Phobos was surely strange in one way or another, it was why they were there in the first place.

"They say fairies live in places where there is a great deal of life," Alice said, her face not altering in the slightest from a straight visage. Jacob thought momentarily about that. "Perhaps they are, after all people rarely pay attention to such places nowadays, so it would be an appropriate place to live in peace." He responded, deciding that rather than think too deeply into her words he would simply respond to them. "If I stayed in a place like this long enough, would I become a fairy? Or maybe I'd just grow roots and become a tree... What do you think it's like? Being a tree, I mean." Alice continued. Jacob frowned briefly, *Stayed like this?* He thought, he couldn't grasp exactly what she was referring to, however she had asked him a question and as such he would answer.

As if by perfect chance they passed a grotto of trees then, in the center stood a tall oak tree long gone and long dead, it sat in the grotto clearing alone with other living and green trees surrounding it, just in sight yet still too far away. Jacob approached the tree and looked up at it. "You know Alice..." He said thoughtfully. "I think in a way humans are very like trees anyway... yet totally different aswell... We can't decide where we start our lives, how we grow, who we're with..." He paused slightly as he looked up at the gnarled branches atop the tree. "Or what we become... sometimes we don't grow right and we're left alone in the world, surrounded by other trees who want nothing to do with us..." He paused again and turned to face her. "But unlike trees we can move, we're people, we can go other places meet others like ourselves others who'll accept and help us, others who we can accept and help, trees can't do that." He walked back over to her. "To answer your question I think being a tree would be like being a person... with no real choice on how your life begins, only more depressing as unlike people, as life goes on, you can't do anything to change it. At least that's what I think..." He sighed slightly and grinned awkwardly. "But here I go on another over dramatic over explanatory rant eh?" He put a hand onto the back of his head and laughed lightly.

His eyes turned inquisitive then however and he looked up at Alice with a question of his own. "But what about you Alice? What do you think it would be like, being a tree, or maybe even being a fairy?" He stopped walking for a moment to hear her answer, interested in the girls view on the matter.