The sapling is a curious thing, with broad silvery leaves the likes you had never seen. An internet search reveals nothing remotely similar. You shrug, put it under a grow light, and water it sparingly.

It burgeons, stretching upward not by the day but by the hour. Within weeks, its roots have cracked three increasingly larger pots, and its canopy has almost reached the ceiling. With some trepidation, you replant it in your backyard and meticulously cover its roots with mulch. Winters are tough around here, and you aren't sure the strange tree can survive.

It does, and even in the deepest winter it never loses its silvery leaves. And when snow melts and the ground thaws, it grows a single pale fruit, like a cross between an apple and a peach. The strangest thing is that you had never even seen the tree blossom.

You watch the fruit swell and darken into a rich golden color until one morning, when you come to check up on it, it falls from the branches. You put it on the kitchen counter, where it stays for weeks, never rotting, filling the house with a sweet scent.

Eventually you give in to your curiosity and have a taste. Just a nibble, in case it's poisonous. Its flesh is juicy and tangy and sweet, the most delicious thing you ever tasted, and before you know it, you devour it all. You wait anxiously, but nothing bad happens. If anything, you feel better than before—light on your feet and full of energy.

The tree continues to grow, and you fear what the neighbors will say, but when you wake up one day, instead of the boring suburban landscape you find your backyard connected to a grassy plain with a forest in the distance. When you walk around to the neighbor's house, you find it still there, with its owner oblivious. You wonder if you're going insane.

Then the first visitors come. Their clothes are linen, and their ears are pointy. "Keeper," they murmur, and bow respectfully. "We come to pay respect on behalf of the Autumn Queen."

You gape and sputter in confusion. The visitors don't seem offended. They sit in silence in the tree's shade for many hours, then lay baskets of fruit and honey and bread at your doorstep and leave. They are but first of the many. You become used to them and even exchange small talk. The Southern Tribes are gathering to select a new warchief, apparently, and undead have been spotted in the Barrows. Huh.

The tree's roots reach the house and begin twining around it with surprising gentleness. As months turn into years, the house becomes entirely incorporated within the roots. The darnedest thing is that water still flows from the faucets, tasting strangely sweet, and the shower has hot water. Electricity's gone, but among the tribute you find glass globes that light up when touched, and you trade another fruit for a group of stocky bearded crafstmen to build you a fireplace.

Years have passed since you picked up the sapling, but when you peer into the mirror, you find your face unchanged by age. The grassland is no longer the only place the tree connects to; there's a range of tall mountains, and a beach before a vast ocean, all open for you to enjoy the bounties of. And as the tree's silvery canopy rises toward the skies, you wonder what other marvelous worlds it will open.

"Hun look what I found!!!" I exclaimed proudly holding up my treasure.

"Ohhh a bonsai tree like you have always wanted!!" My wife said beaming with happiness.

"Yea but this one is extra special it's a Yggsdrasil!! I have a frigging world tree to take Care of and nurture!" I said almost bouncing in my happiness.

My wife laughed and asked "soooo what does that mean?"

"It means I am now responsible for an anchor of reality and as a bonus I get to see all the lives this tree will nurture and protect!" I responded.

"So you are gonna see the lives of humans?" She asked.

"No no no, this is just a baby tree it is meant to watch over the children and babies of existance. Taking care of everything else is something I only need to do in emergencies or to cover a vacation." Setting the tree down under the perfect grow lights of my aquaponics system.

"Soo how are you going to take care of it. No offense but your ADHD makes me worry the plant won't survive very long." My wife said, concern in her voice.

I chuckled and replied. "Why do you think I am putting it in my aquaponics system? It will have its own perfectly self contained environment and all I have to do it keep the power flowing. You always handled harvest times."

"Okay just make sure the dogs don't pee on it and the cats don't eat it." She said as she left the room to take care of her tasks for the day. "Love you!"

"Love you too" I replied "see you in a few hours!"

After nurturing this plant for a few years nothing seems to happen. You are starting to suspect that the shop owner had ripped you off and given you a plastic plant. Though finally you decide to test what happens when you pick off one of its little branches.

At first it seems fine, but then the tree starts to shake as if a hurricane was passing through. Where the branch was starts to glow, brightening the whole apartment far more than you are comfortable with. It goes on for hours and you eventually decide to just let it do its thing while you get on with your day.

After a while you check back on it and the branch seems to have grown anew. The one you broke off had been set next to the tree, and had a new leaf sprout from it, seemingly being granted new life. You decide to bury the little branch near the entrance of the building, for science of course.

Pretty soon you see a sapling of similar quality grow from the little plot that you had used. The landlord hadn't noticed yet but if it got any bigger you were sure it would be cut. So you decided to see if instead you could break the branch off of the original again and plant it somewhere else.

As you grab the branch it glows under your touch, and things start to warp around you. Might be a self defense mechanism? Almost ad quick as it started the warping stopped, but you were in a whole new area! Well not new, it was where the other sapling was, but still was quite a new turn of events.

Immediately after you contacted the shop owner to see if this was common with this plant, and they seemed to have never heard of it or sold you any of the sort. So being the scientist you were you tried a different branch, but nothing happened, so you broke it off. After some consideration you planted this new branch in a pot at your office, seeming to get the same results. So far none of the saplings seemed to have grown much, though they did start getting bigger after losing a branch. The second one warped just like the last, and you regretted not trying this sooner. Then the possibilities came to you all at once.

This could be faster than light travel, or even instantaneous entirely! You Immediately brought it up to the nearest laboratory you could, since you never were very good at research. They studied it and found it extremely revolutionary, though it had one caveat - it only had nine branches(and roots). So they took the ones already potted and dug up the one in front of your apartment for testing, and soon employed one of the plants in orbit to see if it could survive in low gravity.

It worked! And better yet, the measurements of the distance between confirmed it was FTL! So with your permission they named the new travel system after you and sent the first plant to Mars. It made transport so much easier, and given your request they named the new colony around it Vanaheim for its possibilities.

Sooner than anyone imagined the solar system was colonized all because your little shopping spree and a few dedicated years of nurture.

Sorry for everyone reading, this is basically my first attempt at second person, and it kinda got out of proportion quickly.

"Huh."

I stared at the little pot on the shelf, the tiny silver leaf peeking out of it shaking as if to say hello. I reached into it to grab the plastic tag sticking out, and read the name.

Yggdrasil...?

I looked back at the leaf again - is it just my imagination, or is that a second leaf growing? - and wrinkled my nose.

What's the possibility of this really being a bit of a mythological world tree? Is this a prank? I raised the plastic tag again.

"A prank worth ninety nine cents..."

Might as well.

°•°•°•°•

"Mom."

I stirred in my bed, sitting up to find my teenage son staring at me, his expression odd. After he confirmed I was awake, he walked back to where my light switch on, flicking it.

"You should probably repot that plant."

Silver branches spread along my wall, a beautiful trellis crumbling the drywall underneath them. Huge leaves sprouted along their lengths, creating dark shadows that looked like they were moving. And a single, sturdy but young trunk grew, right in the middle of the split dresser I had set the plastic pot on last night before going to sleep.

I was silent for a moment, gazing at the destructive tree growing in my room.

"Mom?"

Closing my eyes, I waved my son away. "Just... go bring me something to put it in. A bucket or something. It's going outside."

"We're KEEPING it?!"

I ignored his incredulous look as I got up, walking over to the roots that were still slowly creeping along my floor. "It was worth a dollar. I'm not wasting it. Besides, a world tree? In our home? You think it might be worth something?"

"Can we please stop thinking about money, mom?! It'll cost more to fix the house!" He inched closer to me, but to my surprise, a long branch suddenly moved, whipping the floor in front of him. A long gash appeared in the carpet, and we gaped at each other, stunned.

"Not... moving. Staying. Here. Will fix." The silver branch writhed like a snake, the tip moving back and forth between us in challenge, as if it were threatening to whip us like it did my now ruined carpet.

"It just fucking talked, Mom! And we're still keeping it?"

"You heard the tree. Get used to it. I'm not threatening the tree that just ripped my carpet. Besides, it said it would fix it."

"Will fix." The branch swayed in agreement. "Get used."

I thought at first my eyes were deceiving me, but no, it wasn’t bugs or some other tiny creatures: these were three tiny women. Sitting at the base of the small potted tree I had placed near my kitchen’s windowsill.

I moved closer to the pot and stared at them. The women sat side-by-side in a slightly curved line, with the one in the middle knitting something long out of iridescent yarn. The other two sat on either side of her, their legs crossed and their eyes closed, as if meditating. They wore blue dresses and had long white hair that hung in a single braid down each of their backs. None of them had any shoes and I marvelled at how tiny the toes were that peeked out from under their hems. Were they sisters? Triplets? They looked identical to me though it was hard to tell given how small they were. They were very old, though. That much I could tell.

What were these women doing at the bottom of this little tree? I’d bought it yesterday on a whim as I’d passed by a bodega on the Danforth, its woven trunk and knotty branches drawing me in like a crow to a bottle cap. That compulsion had been strange enough, given my complete lack of interest in plants, and now there were these tiny supernatural women, knitting and meditating like some kind of weird fairies.

I heard a faint chiming sound and, as if on cue, the woman to the left of the knitter opened her eyes. She turned and reached one hand down toward the end of the knitted fabric and the other up toward its beginning. She looked back and forth between her two hands and then lifted them up, as if trying to determine whether the fabric was long enough. But long enough for what? I heard her click her tongue, and then she quickly sliced open the palm of her right hand using a long fingernail on her left. I stifled a gasp and watched, horrified, and she dropped blood onto the upper part of the fabric—about six inches from where it connected to the needles.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, aghast.

The second the blood hit the fabric the third woman jerked awake and began moving like a poorly controlled marionette. She awkwardly drew a knife from a pocket in her dress and lurched toward the fabric, wrapping her gnarled fingers tightly around the fabric below the bloodstain. She then began to saw, shredding the threads at the spot where the blood had fallen. Back and forth she jerked the knife until the length of fabric was separated from its source. Then, she grabbed the piece of fabric and flung it into the air.

I watched as it fluttered briefly, faded, and then disappeared, like a sunbeam behind a cloud. I sat in silence for a moment, unsure of what I’d just seen. The two women returned to their meditative positions and the third one continued knitting, as she had been the whole time.

My phone rang, shocking me into action. I picked it up from the table and saw it was my mother calling. “Hello?” I answered shakily. “Oh Moira!” She said happily. “She’s here! Your sister had her baby! And she’s just the cutest thing too…”

(This was my take on the Norns sitting at the base of Yggsdrasil and deciding everyone’s life span)

(Edit to add brackets)

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

🆕 New Here? ✏ Writing Help? 📢 News 💬 Discord

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.