Searching for a needle in a haystack

Much to Valkyrie’s surprise (and appal), the blue urchin child shied from the emerging tree-creature, taking shelter swiftly by her hocks, and no doubt straddling the lovely length of her kept, creamy-white tail. Wings aloft the perfectly shaped skull startled from their rest, flaring fine feathers in an ostentatious exhibition of her discomfort and the neck wielded their perch until it was propped vertically upon sloping withers. Slipping a neat, rose-gold hoof from the carpet of forest litter, she curled it around the dense cascade of tethered tendrils and pulled them with a jerk, clear. As long as the girl didn’t touch, there seemed little need to drive better space between them. With her throat skewed around, sparkling blue eyes engaged the cowardly babe. “It’s a tree dear, there’s probably no brain inside it…” Though it didn’t occur to the foolish Sister at the moment, that that very advice could have been all the better reason to avoid its path altogether; that great, lumbering network of roots could easily swallow a comparatively insignificant horse. The tree did have some level of intelligence it seemed suddenly (perhaps a smidge of compassion too), for as Valkyrie turned back to view it, one gnarled, wooden limb was descending straight towards her. Naturally terrified, for the (few) pines of Sunnmōre only moved to the stroke of the wind, the pallid Shieldmaiden struggled and strained - sweeping the spear she carried across it’s grainy hands - as her proud, immaculate bodice was unceremoniously removed from its location before the ugly welp, and repositioned a fair distance away - near enough to still witness the peculiar situation unfolding, yet apparently at a distant distance, that better suited old-man-wood. Immediately she was concerned for her smaller, pitiful company, though she wasn’t near brazen enough to tempt those gouging fingers again to meet her flesh. So instead she watched where she’d been placed with baited interest, ears fixed forward, sinewy structure coiled and ready to leap forward (or backwards), should the need to protect arise.