A Tribute to Beldre's sad shrub

[NeutroniumAlchemist he/him]

Just finished a reread of HoA and I want to share a part of the book that i found funny. In Urteau at the Citizen's house there is a garden that is described as torn up and plowed under. In this garden Beldre is described as sitting excluded, looking sad and alone only in the company of a lone little shrub that is also described as sad.

I just found it hilarious how much Brandon thought to write about this inconsequential little plant in a ruined garden, so here are some quotes I would like to share:

 

"There was a bench in the yard. It sat before a small shrub. It was the only plant left in the garden; the rest had been torn up and plowed under, leaving behind blackish brown earth."

 

"Beldre sat down on her bench, hands held motionless in her lap, looking down at the sad shrub."

 

 "A part of him wanted to ask - to be brash, as the Survivor would have been, and hop down to demand of this solemn, solitary girl why she stared at that plant with such melancholy."

 

"He took another step forward. The rough earth lay torn beneath his feet, covered by an inch of ash, the dreary remnants of what had once been fertile ground. To his right stood the lone shrub that Beldre often came to gaze at."

 

Fate unknown, this plant most likely passed away during the Catacendre due to low priority on Sazed to-save-list. A funny passage tough

 

Edit: Oops, just saw that I posted this in the Elantris forum instead of  Mistborn 

Edited March 14, 2016 by NeutroniumAlchemist

[DeadFencer]

The plant wants you to think it passes away. In actuality, it survived the Catacendre, because it was really a worldhopping agent of a Share. Which Shard, you ask? Obviously Cultivation. The implications are staggering. If Cultivation had agents on Scadrial, that means that the figure known as Trell is not Odium, as is commonly thought, but Cultivaton.

[natc]

All the plants in the Village secretly come from that shrub.

[hoidhunter he/him]

-Beldre stared at the lone shrub.  Her brother, "the Citizen", had tried to remove all vegatation from the garden...but the one sad shrub persisted in growing back.  Again...and again.  "It's like me really." she thought, "Trampled and abused...but still alive...just sad."

 

The shrub missed Beldre.  Days had passed, and the sad but lonley girl had not returned as she always did.  The shrub hoped that Beldre was safe...so many bad things were happening these days.  It reminded the shrub of what had happened long ago.  People didn't realize, but the shrub had been alive for a very long time.  That being said, the shrub was very bad as judging the passage of time.  Still, it knew that the times when it's friend Kwaan had first spoken with it were ages in the past.  Somehow, being spoken to...being awakened...had granted the shrub a perminance that it's cousins lacked.  

 

This time was worse than before.  Much worse.  That fateful day a thousand years past, when the world itself changed, had been very difficult for the shrub to survive...but survive it did.  This time, however, the world was not changing...it was dying.  The earth that held it's roots buckled and roiled.  The wind that whipped at it's ash strangled branches was hot and dry.  The shrub feared...for the first time in a long time, that it was going to die.  It thought...thought with all of it's being...of escape.  Of going somewhere...anywhere else.  Suddenly, without explanation, the shrub was...well...elsewhere.  

 

The shrub did not know where it was...only that it was drifting somehow.  Through time and space...like a piece of flotsam on a great cosmic tide.  Bit by bit...over time...the shrub could feel itself fading...losing pieces of itself.  Every leaf, every scrap of root, and every twig that disappeared...left it's remaining parts more...REAL.  

 

The after an eternity had passed and only a fraction of the shrub remained...something started to change.  The shrub could feel itself being pulled in a direction.  While once there was nothing...sensation begain to return.  Darkness and silence was slowly replaced by cold and fading light.  All at once, the shrub realized that it was adrift on a freezing ocean.  For a time it floated on the surface, rising and falling with the waves.  After days and days...it was finally dashed upon a sandy shore.  For the first time in an immeasurable expanse of hours, the shrub was still.  It lay on the beach with a deep satisfaction.  "Here I am.  And here I will stay." it thought.  As the time had passed, the shrub had been coming to terms with the changes it had gone through...with the pieces of self that it had lost.  While it was painful to realize, the realization was clear...the shrub was a shrub no longer...it was a stick.

 

Days passed, marked by the rising and falling of the sun, and nothing happened.  That was, until one day, the stick was lifted and carried. The sensation was abrupt and unexpected.  After the trauma of it's journey and the peace of coming to terms with it's new form, the stick did not like being moved...it did not like the change.  "Become fire." A voice said.  It was strange, the voice seemed to speak directly into the stick's mind.  The voice was compelling...something about it made the stick want to obey...but...after all that it had been through...it would NOT. With as much conviction as it could manage, it replied, "I am a stick."

 

I realize it's a little rough, I just kind of banged it out.  But...as my first officially piece of fan fiction, I give you "The cosmic voyage of a shrub...aka...the origin of the stick."

Edited March 14, 2016 by hoidhunter

[Uilos he/him]

We've met that shrub before. It has been to distant worlds. Watching and waiting. While others hide in shadows and pocket realms, it proud,y declares itself...

"I Am A Stick!"

[Uilos he/him]

-Beldre stared at the lone shrub.  Her brother, "the Citizen", had tried to remove all vegatation from the garden...but the one sad shrub persisted in growing back.  Again...and again.  "It's like me really." she thought, "Trampled and abused...but still alive...just sad."

 

The shrub missed Beldre.  Days had passed, and the sad but lonley girl had not returned as she always did.  The shrub hoped that Beldre was safe...so many bad things were happening these days.  It reminded the shrub of what had happened long ago.  People didn't realize, but the shrub had been alive for a very long time.  That being said, the shrub was very bad as judging the passage of time.  Still, it knew that the times when it's friend Kwaan had first spoken with it were ages in the past.  Somehow, being spoken to...being awakened...had granted the shrub a perminance that it's cousins lacked.  

 

This time was worse than before.  Much worse.  That fateful day a thousand years past, when the world itself changed, had been very difficult for the shrub to survive...but survive it did.  This time, however, the world was not changing...it was dying.  The earth that held it's roots buckled and roiled.  The wind that whipped at it's ash strangled branches was hot and dry.  The shrub feared...for the first time in a long time, that it was going to die.  It thought...thought with all of it's being...of escape.  Of going somewhere...anywhere else.  Suddenly, without explanation, the shrub was...well...elsewhere.  

 

The shrub did not know where it was...only that it was drifting somehow.  Through time and space...like a piece of flotsam on a great cosmic tide.  Bit by bit...over time...the shrub could feel itself fading...losing pieces of itself.  Every leaf, every scrap of root, and every twig that disappeared...left it's remaining parts more...REAL.  

 

The after an eternity had passed and only a fraction of the shrub remained...something started to change.  The shrub could feel itself being pulled in a direction.  While once there was nothing...sensation begain to return.  Darkness and silence was slowly replaced by cold and fading light.  All at once, the shrub realized that it was adrift on a freezing ocean.  For a time it floated on the surface, rising and falling with the waves.  After days and days...it was finally dashed upon a sandy shore.  For the first time in an immeasurable expanse of hours, the shrub was still.  It lay on the beach with a deep satisfaction.  "Here I am.  And here I will stay." it thought.  As the time had passed, the shrub had been coming to terms with the changes it had gone through...with the pieces of self that it had lost.  While it was painful to realize, the realization was clear...the shrub was a shrub no longer...it was a stick.

 

Days passed, marked by the rising and falling of the sun, and nothing happened.  That was, until one day, the stick was lifted and carried. The sensation was abrupt and unexpected.  After the trauma of it's journey and the peace of coming to terms with it's new form, the stick did not like being moved...it did not like the change.  "Become fire." A voice said.  It was strange, the voice seemed to speak directly into the stick's mind.  The voice was compelling...something about it made the stick want to obey...but...after all that it had been through...it would NOT. With as much conviction as it could manage, it replied, "I am a stick."

 

I realize it's a little rough, I just kind of banged it out.  But...as my first officially piece of fan fiction, I give you "The cosmic voyage of a shrub...aka...the origin of the stick."

You beat me to the punch. Up vote for you my friend!

[hoidhunter he/him]

Thanks.  Great minds think alike.

 

I'm very proud of myself for this, mediocre as it may be... 

Edited March 14, 2016 by hoidhunter