Her tendrils were diligently probing beneath the surface, the limbs plunging deep, remaining silent, meticulously inspecting each fragment of soil. She yearned to discover even a minuscule fragment of gold, a tiny branch, or a piece of root. Uncovering a fragment would signify a faint flicker of hope remained.

Kaworu wasn’t just Kestrel’s gardener, but also a buddy, a mentor, and family. Kestrel was utilizing every method to locate him.

A baby groundhog, freshly born, peeked its small head from the hole, surveying the surroundings with confusion.

Witnessing the little groundhog and the silent yet busy Kestrel, Locky suddenly regained her awareness. Numerous legs protruded from beneath her dress, she hastened along the house’s outer wall, swiftly and cautiously retrieving a flower container.

"This, miss, were you looking for this?" She gasped, presenting the flower container she held to Kestrel.

The clay flower pot contained dark, moist soil. A thin young plant stuck out from it, barely growing two lonely delicate leaves at its top, seeming weak and lacking vitality.

However, the leaves weren’t the standard green; they exhibited a golden shade streaking across their veins.

"Where did you get this?" Kestrel’s eyes brightened as she grasped the flower pot.

"It is... it’s the gem on a necklace. Kaworu left his golden necklace here," Locky clarified, pointing towards her chest while talking. "The small creatures digging in the soil hole jogged my memory. I figured since Kaworu is a tree, and he always had this on, it might be feasible to plant it. So, I loaded it with some earth from here and buried it. I didn’t expect it to actually grow."

Locky talked carefully, scared that she might have said something not right, or maybe spoke too loud, perhaps hurting the delicate little tree that just came out. "I give it water every day and let it get some sun. I didn’t think it would actually grow from the ground. I’m not sure if I did the right thing."

Locky noticed Kestrel, who was quiet since she came in, suddenly loosen her shoulders now. Her thin arms reached out, holding the pot tightly. Some even went up and playfully messed up her hair.

"Good work, Locky," Kestrel said. "You did very well."

She breathed out big, stretching her hand to tap Locky’s shoulder and hugged her, patting her firmly on her small back.

This was the first time Kestrel hugged Locky this way.

It was also the first time Locky understood that Kestrel could feel upset and sad just like her, not always calm as she seemed.

"She... she needs my hugs too, and she even said I did well," Locky thought inside.

Locky hugged back with many arms and legs, pulling in the pointy parts of her limbs, and tried to pat Kestrel’s back the same way Kestrel did, even if it was a bit awkward.

"But can this really turn into Kaworu?" Locky asked, sounding unsure. Even though the leaves were golden and Kestrel looked really happy, Locky couldn’t sense any of the usual psychic energy waves from Kaworu.

The small little tree stood shakily in the black soil, seeming lifeless, with only a few new leaves that looked sad.

When the wind came, instead of making a melody, the leaves seemed like they might drop any second.

The tree was Kaworu’s real body, and now that the original body was this weak, his special spirit form might be gone to some place we don’t know.

"I will do my best to get him back," Kestrel said, getting her arms ready, leaving her bags, and sitting down outside.

The sun’s light peeked through the patches of tree shade at a slant, casting little bright spots on the earth. These tiny golden highlights settled on Kestrel’s tired body, twinkling like small gold dots.

The tendrils held the tiny flower pot while Kestrel sat with legs crossed on the floor, her eyes shut.

Kaworu’s psychic landscape was huge and limitless, stretching far and sinking deep, holding countless smaller worlds inside it.

Up until now, Kestrel had visited many psychic landscapes. Some people had smaller, very basic psychic landscapes that only took up a room or a hill, a simple place that she could understand with one look. Some had big, untamed, and magical places.

In those small psychic landscapes, it was easy to find anything, whether memories, feelings, or hidden psychic incarnations created by hurt. Everything was easy to locate in the small space.

Moving through the big psychic landscapes without help from their owner, however, could be very hard.

For example, Ren’s psychic landscape looked like a big ocean. If you didn’t know the place well, then finding a memory pearl or to look for the orca hiding in the deep waters would be like trying to find a tiny needle in a huge pile of straw, nearly an impossible job.

Now, not only was Kaworu’s psychic landscape huge, but it also had many, many worlds mixed and linked together, messy and mixed up, with places bending and strong, bad winds swirling all around. Doors of all sizes spun, one inside another.

With every step Kestrel made, a wrong one could pull her into a messy smaller world. Getting out of there would be hard, not to mention going further to find Kaworu’s lost psychic incarnation in this stormy world.

Kestrel moved one step. The sharp, cutting wind quickly hit her tendrils.

Kaworu’s memories held pictures from when he was a person and sights from when he was a mutant: darkness and muck, blood and tears, music and moonlight.

The changing, colorful worlds turned in front of Kestrel, making her feel dizzy and see unclearly. There, it looked like the sky and ground had flipped, with many, many doors opening for her, leading to one deep pit after another.

"Stay cool," Kestrel told herself, "Stay cool. How did I make it out when I went through so many psychic landscapes in the long passage at Mantidale?"

In the yard, Kestrel’s physical self sat with closed eyes under the tree cover, her face serious and her eyebrows a bit scrunched. The thick cover over her moved, like the tree songs were echoing, slowly joining into a steady sound.

The bunnies lifted their ears, and a line of groundhogs showed their heads.

"Keep going. I will watch over you and Kaworu," Locky said quietly.

It looked like everyone was waiting, hoping for Kestrel to bring Kaworu home.

Kestrel thought about old times. She had been here lots of times, sitting under the Erdtree’s shadow. Kaworu would be up in the tree, giving her many lessons.

Once, Kaworu spoke to her from the tree, sounding kind of lazy, "In all people’s psychic landscapes, they keep their scariest memories, and also the times of their biggest joy. If someone’s psychic incarnation is missing and can’t be found, you need to look in these two spots. When someone is lost, they are either stuck in moments of their worst hurt or they stay in a place that gives them calm and happiness."

Inside Kaworu’s psychic landscape, Kestrel, who didn’t know which way to go, stopped.

"Right, Kaworu showed me. The scariest memory or the prettiest place—find his psychic incarnation in these two areas," she remembered.

Kestrel thought of Brandon, who she had helped once. Back then, she looked for ages in the psychic landscape world. In the end, she found Brandon—nearly lost in his own mind—next to a lake where little lights flew around. This lake was where Brandon and his twin brother played when they were kids, a spot branded as the calmest and prettiest in his young mind.

Kestrel moved past floating, twisty doors.

In Kaworu’s psychic landscape, there were lots of scary memories. Hurtful memories changed into ugly and scary monsters holding sharp tools, coming out from the thick dark places in big groups, chasing after the visitor, Kestrel.

Kestrel ran fast in the flipped-over world, with a big group of scary monsters following her, not giving up. She went through one black gateway after another, but she couldn’t spot Kaworu, who she knew well.