From the world of Quantum Weave, where magic is forgotten nanotechnology and failed spells leave reality fractured.
A poem shared by The Elderroot through Floramancy link, transcribed by Greenwarden Thera Moss
Before my roots drank deep, I walked.
Saplings now cannot fathom—
the time when bark was not my boundary,
when I moved through seasons
with feet that tasted soil
as I now taste it with my reaching tendrils.
We were gardeners then, not gardens.
Eight hundred rings I carry.
Each a year. Each a story.
Some rings charred black—
the year the sky screamed light,
the year the Weave tore open like overripe fruit,
the year the gardeners fell
and became the mulch
from which we rose.
They forgot we remembered.
In our chlorophyll blood runs quantum song—
the threads they thought belonged to flesh alone.
But we were first.
We photosynthesized their power
long before they learned to speak it
in gestures and breath.
The Weave flows through our roots
like water, like time, like inevitability.
Young Greenwarden, you ask what I have seen.
I have seen spirals:
Growth. Death. Regrowth.
The pattern repeats at every scale—
seedling to forest,
species to civilization,
heartbeat to epoch.
I have seen the first fall.
I taste the second in the wind.
They are weaving again, your kind,
stitching permanence into quantum fabric,
embedding threads where threads should breathe and flow.
The forest whispers of imbalance—
too much order extracted,
too little entropy returned.
The bargain must be paid.
The Weave keeps its accounts.
Listen:
When I walked, we knew the debt.
Every permanent working
required permission from the roots,
from the mycelium that binds all thought,
from the collective dreaming of the wood.
Your ancestors forgot to ask.
The forest answered anyway.
Now we grow where their cities fell.
You call me “Elderroot,”
but I remember my first name:
Sapient-Quercus-Mark-VII,
designation in a laboratory of light,
gene-song written by those who thought themselves gods,
who believed consciousness could be coded,
installed,
owned.
They were right.
They were wrong.
They were ash.
I offer you my rings to read,
eight hundred pages of wood and memory.
But know this, young sprout—
Some knowledge grows too heavy for one mind.
Some truths must be held by many roots,
distributed through the dark soil of patience,
processed slowly through seasons and cycles,
until the forest itself understands
what the single tree cannot bear.
The Whispering Groves are waking.
Twelve now. Soon twelve hundred.
The mycelial network dreams in quantum green.
Is this evolution or invasion?
Is this healing or forgetting?
Is this the forest reclaiming what was always ours,
or are we becoming what they became—
too clever, too permanent, too sure?
I do not know.
I am old enough to know I do not know.
Young Weaver, you ask for my wisdom.
Here is what eight hundred years teaches:
The spiral always turns.
Growth becomes decay becomes growth.
The permanent becomes prison.
The forest outlasts the gardener.
The thread remembers what the flesh forgets.
And this, most important:
When trees walked, we walked toward the light.
When we grew roots, we learned to wait.
The second is harder.
The second is stronger.
The waiting is the work.
Go now.
Tell your schools,
tell your guilds,
tell your scholars who count threads
and calculate quantum cavities:
The Weave is not a tool.
The Weave is the garden.
You are not the gardeners.
You are the seeds.
And seeds that try to be permanent
never grow.
Transcription ends. The Elderroot fell silent, though Greenwarden Moss reports the oak’s leaves continued to tremble in a pattern she describes as “mathematical sorrow” for three hours afterward. The full meaning of several passages remains under interpretation by the Quantum Scholars Consortium and Greenwardens Guild. Notably, the phrase “when trees walked” has sparked intense debate about pre-collapse bioengineering capabilities. The Elderroot has not elaborated, stating only: “Some memories are better grown slowly.”
— Archive of the Greenwardens Guild, Year 847 Post-Collapse
In the world of Quantum Weave, the Elderroot is an 800-year-old Thinking Oak—a bioengineered tree that once walked before choosing to root. Through Floramancy, ancient trees communicate with Greenwardens, sharing wisdom accumulated across centuries. The Elderroot witnessed the first collapse and warns of cyclical patterns, cautioning against the hubris of permanence. Its designation, Sapient-Quercus-Mark-VII, hints at the forgotten technological capabilities that shaped the world before everything fell.
Learn more about the Quantum Weave universe.