A/N: Go check out The Ficship Competitions: www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/forum/The_Ficship_Competitions/54838/

It's a competition where you can nominate and vote on your favorite Tamora Pierce fanfiction. The top five from the vote will be judged by a group of TP fanfic writers to determine the winners. It's an excellent excuse to reread all your old favorite TP fanfic and discover new ones!

Disclaimer: I hadn't even heard of TP's "Elder Brother" in Half-Human until KrisEleven pointed it out to me after reading this fic. This is my take on that concept. All ideas belong to Tamora Pierce. The execution is my own.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­"I think it's fair rude to make him a tree and not know what kind he is."

"Daine—"

"Apple. Knowing him, prob'ly a sour apple tree. Will this hurt some other part of the world?"

Numair sighed. "As I recall, this word's use means somewhere there is a tree that is now a—a two-legger."

--Wolf Speaker, Tamora Pierce

That year, the monsoon season in eastern Carthak is much worse than usual. At times, it feels like there is more water than air to breathe. The sun can not be relied on. It will shine palely in the thick, hazy sky as if guarding against clouds, and yet inevitably the entire sky will split open like a rotten fruit and water will rain down as if the Great Deluge of the old myths is taking place.

The constant rains and the humidity in the air conspire to make clothes cling to skin uncomfortably even when they aren't wet, and a treacherous part of Zaimid Hetnim wishes he were back at the capital, that he had never left Carthak city and its luxuries for this miserable backwater that is nothing but water.

All the ideals about healing that seemed to sparkle in the great halls of the University melt under the force of all this rain and become part of the mud here. Zaimid looks around at the wretched cluster of two-story buildings that make up the town; they'd glistened with whitewash, some painted cool blues and greens or sweet pinks and yellows, early in the summer. But now, there is not a structure anywhere that is not streaked with mud and stained black from mildew because of the cursed weather. He wonders if decay has set in at the very core of the world.

Even when it rains but for an hour, the roads are several feet deep in water. It brings the construction of the hospital for the poor to a standstill. The funding has come mostly from the University but Zaimid knows that if they do not show signs of progress soon, Emperor Ozorne—may the gods always smile upon him he thinks with a grimace—will demand the money be invested in more worthwhile projects.

Zaimid surveys the sky with a gimlet eye, and does not like what he sees. He ducks under the precarious awning of a dilapidated garment store as the heavens open up. Rain pounds furiously for all of half an hour. And then, the sun is smiling again over the whole sodden mess. Zaimid looks down at his drenched trouser legs hopelessly. The water is half way up to his knees. The soft leather of his sandals, like the silk of his trousers, is no doubt ruined. Why is he in this godsforsaken wilderness?

All of a sudden, some beggar child, no older than three, or perhaps a malnutritioned five, rushes out from a hiding place and dives into the foot of muddy water that covers the ground, sending out a splash and creating ripples that rock the water higher against Zaimid's legs. But seeing the expression of pure unholy mischief on the girl's face, he can do nothing but grin in return.

Then, somehow, it seems that mud-colored children are spawned from that rain for soon the street swarms with the splashing of street urchins pretending to swim about. Arms dissolve into that murky water and smiles glisten like froth. A rickshaw driver's pedals sink with each push downward, the street churns.

"Healer, healer, come quick," a hand tugs at his sleeve and the fleeting peace Zaimid has found among all the squalor vanishes in an instant.

"I'm not a healer yet," he responds to the anxious old man. "Just a beginning student. Perhaps you should try to find Healer Faruq. I will help look for him too—"

"Don't you understand you arrogant boy!" the man is now clearly frantic. "There's no time for that!" and before he knows it, Zaimid is being dragged away and then jogging with the old man, picking up his sense of urgency.

"I found her, just a bit ago. Not breathing, not a stitch on her. Might be a runaway slave for all I know, but she's not breathing, and you got to help her. She can't wait for no fine healer of yours. Even a student is better than nothing around here, or didn't you notice? Isn't this what you noble city boys came here for? To help us poor stupid folks who don't even know we got to feed ourselves to live?"

Zaimid cannot tell when or why the old man's explanation has turned into a diatribe against the aristocracy and their abuses against the poor. He cannot believe the gall of this man. He has heard the same words being spoken in the University by learned scholars he respects who think the true aim of academia should be to give back to the community, but they sound different when hurled at him resentfully by a poor man who is part of the community he had naively set out to fix.

And then they are at the edge of the town, where the jungle begins to encroach on human habitation and the old man tugs Zaimid down into the mud and Zaimid sees to his horror a woman half buried in dirt and muddy water before him.

Kneeling, heedless of his clothes now, Zaimid gently lifts her head from the water; she is nearly drowned from lying unconscious in that foot of murky water. She has indeed stopped breathing. He has no time to stop and wait for Healer Faruq's supervision. He calls on his gift, burning out the mud and water in her lungs with his magic. And suddenly, she gasps, eyes shooting open, and begins coughing up the rest herself.

She does not have a stitch of clothing on her, as the old man had said. But she is fine and healthy and in much better condition than anyone he has seen since leaving the University. She does not look like she is an inch away from starvation, her body is not ravaged with disease or parasites, and her limbs bear none of the scars and wounds that litter the bodies of both slaves and freemen around here. Her skin is a deep rich brown, healthy and unblemished, her black hair long, thick, and coated in mud, and her eyes, an improbable, impossible green.

He does not know who she is, except a complete mystery but it does not matter. She is the first life he has ever saved and all the ideals he held so close in the University come rushing back to him.

But even when it seems that her lungs have cleared, all she can do is grunt. He asks her name, and "Aaaa aaaaa" is all she can manage in response. He wonders if she is deaf or mute. But his gift was not been mistaken the first time. She is in complete possession of her faculties.

He wonders if her mind has been permanently damaged from not having been able to breathe for too long, from having to wait too long because he thought to argue with the old man who is now squatting to the side and watching Zaimid proceed. He tries the gentlest of mindhealing techniques, simply a diagnostic one really, because he knows Healer Faruq will flay him alive if he tries anything bigger without supervision.

He peers into her mind with his gift to see if everything is as it should be, whole and undamaged. But all he sees in her thoughts are leaves. Decades, maybe even centuries of leaves. Endless green. Sky without end.

In the end, she proves to be even more of a complete mystery than Zaimid had first thought her. No one knows her in the town or surrounding villages. Even Healer Faruq can make no sense of her mind and gives her up as a hopeless case. They find a few, second-hand clothes to give her. And in their last gesture of charity, slowly, they are able to teach her to speak, and while she does learn, it seems as if she inhabits another world and the words do not mean the same thing anymore.

She becomes a beggar. And the next time it rains, Zaimid sees her wading knee-deep, the pink of her ragged clothes turning dusky, pulling against her emaciated legs as she strides forward. And as she lifts them up to clear the water, her ankles show the darkest brown—as if a tree has decided to walk.