"Whoa," was all Liya managed to say.

"But to answer your question," Helly continued, "I was a tree before, I was a healer. And as you can see--" here ne gestured at the chalkboard, at the drawings of a rectangular plant cell and a circular animal cell, "your cells and mine differ, somewhat."

"But you can heal bones," Liya pointed out, absentmindedly chewing on the end of her ink pencil. "An' those're animal cells. How come?"

"Consider the structure of bone," Helly replied, and turned to the board, wiping away the cell diagrams with the rag that had been sitting in the chalkboard's tray. Ne replaced the diagrams with a rough sketch of a bone, with its marrow shaded in. Underneath that ne drew a cross-section of wood, with its heartwood shaded in similarly. "It is 'like' wood enough that I can manage," ne explained. "A 'language' enough like mine that I can read it. Soft tissues are still a bit beyond me, I'm afraid, but bones are an analog I understand well."

Liya stopped chewing her ink pencil long enough to say, "So--I could learn to fix plants?"

"Conceivably," Helly agreed. "You'd be surprised what you can adapt to. Shall we stop for today?" ne added. Liya mumbled in agreement, swinging her legs off her stool and stepping down. She wore a simple olive-green sort of dress today, with layers of lighter green and then pale orange underneath its skirt, and a pair of clunky brown boots. She closed her notebook and started to move the stool back to its space, which was next to a low bookshelf that ran full of books and potted plants beneath the window.

Helly cleaned the chalkboard again, and then paused, casting a sort of wide look over nir shoulder. "Liya?" ne said.

"Yeah?" Liya answered, setting the stool down with a clunk.

"How are you doing?"