A Beasthood · The Green
Gaia Grove
To be from here is to have your hands in something growing and your door open.
Their gift: The Grown. They grow things where nothing should, even at the Grey's edge. The cost: What grows there grows strange.
About 500 Beasts call Gaia Grove home.
The place
Green past reason: moss walls, garden roofs, trees older than anything built, channel water for music. Wet soil, sage, crushed basil. A grower sees forty greens; the Silicon Alley mapper beside them sees one, and damp.
Their gift, and what it costs
The Grown. Grove hands make things grow where nothing should: on bare rock, up to the edge of the Grey. The cost: what grows there grows strange, pale or too bright, leaning toward whoever watches. The limit: it thins off Grove ground, and only helps what wants to take. The Greenhouse Bloom's cuttings wouldn't grow, and by evening they were gone.
What they want, and what they fear
Want: everything shared: no locked store, no fenced bed, every Beast fed. Fear: Silicon Alley's cold, and the habit of treating a living thing as a diagram.
People you might meet
- Fennel (Panda, Tend It). Wants a stranger on every dark stretch of road. Every houseplant they own sulks. "Houseplants are needy."
- Tansy Brook (Cocker Spaniel, Pull It) waters the strangers on the way to pull them, and tells each not to get comfortable.
- Burdock (Original, Elm old-timer): "The Grove needs no leader. Office hours Thursdays, two till four."
- Oona Pruitt (Cocker Spaniel, seed-sharer). Has a seed from every Beasthood except Silicon Alley, which keeps sending a diagram. Walks to the Meadows weekly to ask for a Returner seed. Now brings a chair.
- Rhea Rain (Panda, healer) races runners to the Mending House door, and wins.
Neighbours and old business
- The Beastro: the Grove grows, the Beastro cooks, and both argue basil.
- Champions Court: sends stiff legs; gets back broth and stretching homework.
- The Meadows: cousins who bicker. The Grove has asked for one of the Returner's seeds and been told to wait.
- L33T Labs: grows the Labs' cuttings and sends back reports full of feelings, which the Labs reads twice.
Books from Gaia Grove
A Beast's Book is written from their holder's choices.
No Book from Gaia Grove is open yet. A holder of a Beast from here can begin theirs in the game.
More about Gaia Grove
Their scarEight months ago, at the Root Network, a grower laid both hands on the Old Elm's roots and every tree in the Grove hummed for an hour.
Eight months ago, at the Root Network, a grower laid both hands on the Old Elm's roots and every tree in the Grove hummed for an hour. So the Grove learned the Elm stands on the Bones. Silicon Alley crews came to map it and ran cold wire through the Terraces. The wire's gone; its frost line isn't.
What they argue aboutTend It vs Pull It: whatever comes up uninvited.
Tend It vs Pull It: whatever comes up uninvited. Tend It call every volunteer a guest. Pull It say a garden is a promise to the old rows first. Tend It has the newcomers; Pull It has the old-timers, and most of the soup.
This seasonFennel's strangers came up last week along the Alley's frost line, and through the old rows.
Fennel's strangers came up last week along the Alley's frost line, and through the old rows. Pull It want them out by harvest; Tend It call them guests. Both sides eat supper on the Terraces, and neither will leave first.
A customThe Elm Rota.
The Elm Rota. Since the Root Network someone has sat at the Old Elm every night, in case the trees hum again. Each sitter leaves a note in the rota book for the next. It's on its third volume, mostly owls: "Owl again. Elm quiet. Took the blanket home to wash, sorry."
PlacesThe Terraces: a row each; the argument is had trowel to trowel.
- The Terraces: a row each; the argument is had trowel to trowel.
- Stranger Beds: leaning toward wherever the Edge is.
- The Mending House: where athletes are made to sit down.
What they think is going on"The Beastside is alive."
"The Beastside is alive." The Hum is its pulse.