The difference between Adrian and herself, Pam reflected, was that she had done enough violence in her life that she didn't always and immediately feel the need to judge. (The difference, she supposed, was also that she was older, and he was young and quick to anger-- passionate in a way she recognized, perhaps, but as of yet unburdened by experience.)

So she listened to Nell before she said anything. Thought about it, too.

"If it was fully absorbed, I don't think you would've felt it as strongly," she noted. "Some part of you, of your forest's microbiome, however big or small, is still out there in the woods."

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she said. "What does matter is whether it would hurt you if anyone moved it again. And for how long."

She looked at Nell. "Is it still hurting? Or have you recovered?"

That little whisp of fungus crawled further along her skin, swooping down to curve neatly around her cheek.

She nodded. Reached up, and plucked that little fruiting fungus from her skin. "Good," Pam said. "There aren't enough of us who actually care about the earth. I'd rather we don't harm each other by tripping over things we don't understand."

Like Nell's soil, in this case.

"Well, we didn't plan it that way," Pam said wryly. "I didn't even realize Adrian hadn't been here that long."

... Pam wrinkled her nose.

"God, I hope not."

"I am absolutely not having kids," Pam said immediately. "Humans already overpopulate the planet and use up its resources. I'm not bringing another one into to the world."

"Most people think that they're the responsible people," Pam pointed out.

"That's up to you," Pam said, with a light shrug. "I'm not interested in burdening the Green."

Could she even have children, after everything Woodrue put in her system? She had no idea, and no interest in finding out.

Pam's shoulders relaxed a little bit. She scratched absent-mindedly at the lamia winding its way around her wrist. "It's science," she said. "When I was younger I studied under a man who wanted to create plant-animal hybrids. But he had bigger ambitions than that."

Her mouth curled. "I was his lab rat," she said.

She looked at Nell. "And what's your story?"

Moving on quickly from her own, yes.

"There's a test for being a witch?"

Pam had to ask. That was... funny, in a strange, messed-up way. (All of that sounded messed-up, to some extent. But who was she to judge? Just a few months ago, she'd eaten the man who made her.)

Pam snorted.

"They don't actually need an excuse," she pointed out. "They always find something if they really want to go through with it."

"Children," Pam echoed.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised a church would be willing to sacrifice their children," Pam said.

She wasn't as sentimental about kids as many people were - their deaths were as much a part of the cycle of life as any other. But paternalistic institutions? A pox on them.