June was the first one downstairs on Sunday morning.
She came into the sitting room in her dressing gown, saw Gerald pressed against the base of the mango tree's pot exactly where he'd been when everyone went to bed, and stood in the doorway long enough that the kettle she'd put on started whistling before she moved.
She went back to the kitchen, poured her tea, came back, and stood in the doorway again.
Gerald hadn't moved.
"Right," she said, to no one, and went to drink her tea.
Maya was on the cushion at 5:40, the loop running in the quiet of the stone house. She checked her panel after the session.
[ STATUS ]
Stage: Mortal
Body Condition: Healthy
Cultivation: Qi Gathering — Stage 5, Established (48%)
Heartwood Connection: Active
Source: Mangifera indica
Forty-eight percent. She wrote it down and then saw the notification underneath — a forwarded scan result, something the system hadn't done before.
[ SCAN RESULT — FORWARDED ]
Individual: Non-human. Feline.
Spiritual roots detected.
Primary affinities: Fire, Wood
Secondary affinity: Earth
Root quality: Above average
Heartwood connection: Available.
Recommended specimens for fire adaptation: Croton (Codiaeum variegatum), Firecracker plant (Russelia equisetiformis), Dragon tree (Dracaena marginata)
Both adaptations may proceed simultaneously if specimens are available.
Maya looked at Gerald.
Gerald opened one eye, looked at her, and closed it.
She picked up her notebook and wrote: The tree wants to connect to the cat.
Then she sat with that for a while.
James came downstairs at 7:00 and went directly to his laptop.
"It crested at 2am," he said. "Dropping now. The building manager posted again." He turned the laptop toward her.
The lobby. Four feet of brown water. The front door completely submerged, the emergency lights catching the surface.
Maya looked at it for a moment. "Wednesday?"
"Minimum. The Wren crossing might be passable by then." He closed the laptop. "Office isn't expecting anyone until end of week."
"Sandler says the greenhouse took significant water."
He was quiet.
"I know the data is backed up," she said, before he could say it. "That's not what I'm worried about."
He got up and refilled her coffee without being asked.
Sam came downstairs at 7:30, walked to the sitting room, came back.
"Gerald slept there all night," he said.
"I know," June said.
"Do you think he can feel something?"
"What kind of something?"
"The spiritual energy. From the tree." He pulled out a chair. "I think animals might be more sensitive to it than people. Because they don't overthink things."
June looked at Maya.
"That's my theory," Maya said. "I don't know for certain."
"It makes sense though," Sam said. "Gerald doesn't overthink anything."
"Gerald doesn't think at all," June said.
"That's not true," Sam said, with genuine offense on Gerald's behalf. "He's very strategic."
Claire came down at 8:00, read the scan result over Maya's shoulder, and said "fire and wood" in the tone of someone noting that this explained a great deal about Gerald specifically.
"Are you going to do it?" she said.
"I'm thinking about it."
"What's to think about?"
"Whether it's the right thing to do for an animal that can't tell me he wants it."
Claire looked at Gerald, who had relocated to a patch of morning light approximately one foot from the pot and was washing his face with complete focus.
"He slept against that pot all night," she said. "In a house he's apparently never left the utility room in. What are you waiting for?"
"He might just like warm spots."
Claire picked up the pot. "It's cold," she said. "Terracotta in a stone house in November." She put it back down. Gerald glanced at her for moving his tree and returned to his face.
"Get the plants," Claire said, and poured her coffee.
Thomas came in from the garden at 9:00 with mud on his boots and looked at Gerald and then at Maya and then at the notebook open on the table.
"Still deciding," he said.
"Still deciding."
He took his boots off. "June woke me up at 6:45 to tell me Gerald slept by the tree and also that you should stop overthinking and get the plants."
"She said that at 6:45?"
"She'd been awake since six. She had opinions." He put the kettle on. "I agreed with her. I was half asleep but I agreed with her."
Maya looked at him. "You don't think it's worth considering whether it's the right thing to do for—"
"I think Gerald has been pressing himself against that pot since you arrived," Thomas said, "and he was a cat who lived in a utility room for six years before you got here, and those two facts are probably connected." He poured his tea. "Make your decision."
Ruth and Maya's dad arrived at 10:30.
Ruth came through the door first, looked around the kitchen, spotted the sitting room through the doorway, walked directly to the mango tree, and stood in front of it with her full attention.
"That's it," she said.
"That's it," Maya said.
Ruth reached out and touched a leaf. Turned around. "It's smaller than I thought."
"You say that like it's a criticism," Maya said.
"It's an observation. I thought it would be bigger given everything." She looked at Gerald by the pot. "Is that the cat?"
"That's Gerald."
She looked at Gerald. Gerald looked at Ruth, decided she wasn't worth the energy of acknowledgment, and looked back at the tree.
"Rude," Ruth said, not without appreciation. She looked at Maya. "It's a very good-looking tree."
"Everyone says that."
"Because it's true." She turned back to it. "Touch it, your father wants to pretend he's not curious."
Maya's dad came in from the hallway where he'd been talking to Thomas about something that required his full attention and was only now resolved. He was sixty-four, tall, deliberate, with the quality of a man who had watched other people react too fast for forty years and had resolved not to join them.
He stood beside Ruth and looked at the mango tree. Then he reached out and touched a leaf.
"Hm," he said.
Ruth looked at him. "That's all?"
"It's a very good-looking tree."
"That's what I said."
"Then we agree." He looked at Maya. "Did it scan me just now?"
"Probably," Maya said. "I think it does when people touch it but I can't know for certain."
He looked at the leaf he'd touched. "Fair enough," he said, and went back to the kitchen.
Ruth watched him go. "Forty years," she said.
"He processed it," Maya said. "That's processing for him."
"I know it is." Ruth looked at Gerald. "Are you connecting the cat?"
"I'm deciding."
"Maya." Ruth looked at her. "That animal has been sitting next to that tree since you arrived. He chose that spot before you connected him, before you'd even decided to. You're the last one still deciding." She patted Maya's arm. "Where's June? I need to talk to her about something."
She left.
Maya stood in the sitting room and looked at Gerald against the pot and thought about six years in a utility room and fire and wood primaries that had never had anything to respond to until now.
She sat in the armchair and opened her notebook.
Gerald. Fire and wood. Above average. The tree forwarded his scan to me — that's not nothing. Everyone in this house has said the same thing. Thomas, Claire, Mom.
The consent question — he can't tell me he wants this in words. But he's been here since we arrived. That's the only answer he has.
Get the plants.
She looked up at Gerald.
"We're getting you a Croton and some bamboo," she told him.
She focused on her panel and accepted the connection on his behalf.
Her Heartwood tab updated. Connections: 4.
[ QUEST — GERALD ]
Designation: First Steps
Task: Water the host vessel.
Reward: Cultivation primer — Stage 1.
Accept / Decline
Maya looked at the quest. Then at Gerald.
"I'm going to water the tree for you," she said. "Since you can't."
She got the watering can and watered the tree thoroughly. The quest completed.
What happened next she couldn't see from the outside. The system delivered what it delivered to Gerald in whatever form a cat could receive it. Not words, presumably. Not conceptual knowledge. Whatever it was, it was between Gerald and the system, and Gerald gave nothing away.
He got up, stretched with full commitment, walked to the pot, and sat back down against it.
Maya watched him for a moment. Then she went to tell Sam.
Lunch was Thomas's domain on Sundays. He made it for eight without consulting anyone and they sat around the extended kitchen table — all four parents, the three Reeves children, Sam — and ate and talked about everything except the flood, which everyone was thinking about and nobody wanted to make the main subject.
Somewhere in the middle of the meal Sam informed the table that Gerald was now a cultivator.
June set down her fork. "He has a quest?"
"Mum watered the tree for him," Sam said. "Because he can't hold a watering can."
Ruth looked at Maya. "You watered the tree on behalf of the cat."
"The quest required it," Maya said.
"And the system accepted a human watering the tree on behalf of a cat."
"Apparently."
Ruth looked at her husband. He was eating with the measured focus he brought to most things.
"Did you hear that?" Ruth said.
"I heard," he said.
"And?"
He looked up. "The system found a way to give a cultivation path to a mango tree," he said. "I'm not surprised it found a way to let a cat participate through a proxy." He looked at Gerald on the floor near the plant stand. "What does Gerald do now?"
"Wait for the specimens," Maya said. "Croton for fire. Once the adaptations are complete, his connection activates."
"And then what happens to him?"
"The system will give him a method suited to what he is." Maya paused. "I don't know what that looks like for a cat. Neither does the tree yet, I think."
"Months before anything changes," Sam said.
Everyone looked at him.
"That's how long cultivation takes at the beginning," he said. "Even with the connection. Mum took weeks before anything happened, and she had everything from the start." He looked at Thomas. "I read it in her notebook."
"He reads it when I leave it open," Maya said.
"Then stop—" Thomas started.
"I know," Maya said.
After Ruth and Maya's dad went home, Thomas went to bed, and Sam was asleep, and June was reading in the armchair, Maya and James sat on the sofa with their phones, and the quiet that meant they were both processing things they hadn't said yet.
James turned his phone toward her. The lobby photo. He'd been looking at it on and off all day.
"Four feet," he said.
"I know."
"We made the right call."
"I know." She looked at it for another moment. "The greenhouse—"
"The data is backed up."
"I know the data is backed up. I'm not talking about the data."
He was quiet. Outside the rain had stopped sometime that afternoon and through the window the village was dark and still and dry.
"The Callen position," she said.
"It'll recover." He looked at his hands. "The fundamentals are solid. This is weather, not structure. In six months it won't matter." He paused. "That's what your dad said."
"He's been through six of these."
"I know." He leaned back. "I just wish I'd been through more of them." He said it quietly, without self-pity, just the honest observation of someone who was finding the experience instructive in ways he hadn't asked for.
Maya leaned her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her, and they sat like that without saying anything further.
Gerald padded in from somewhere, walked past both of them without acknowledgment, and pressed himself against the base of the mango tree.