Anna found Goodwood much the same as it had been the last time she had been there. Blackened and burnt the ground here had not yet managed to heal itself, not even a stray blade of green broke the black circle of char. Further from the former town Anna saw healthy verdant green and heard the sounds of wild birds and other life. At the edge of the burned town lay the body of the man that KB had killed, his body badly decomposed, and scattered by animals.

Anna walked the ruins for a while before finding the right spot. She didn't know, couldn't know, that it was the very epicenter of what the others called the Taint Bomb. She settled her feet and began to root and grow. As in the city she stopped herself short. Towering now well over the ruins of the town Anna looked more like a tree than a woman. Branches had spread from her upraised arms, others from her chest, head, and back. Green leaves, broad oaken foliage, covered these branches and shaded the ground. Along the ground roots snaked, diving into the ground and rising up feet or yards later. Spreading outward like a wave a verdant green carpet erupted around Anna as grass began to grow.

There was a short moment of panic as a tiny voice in the back of her mind screamed at her. Anna didn't understand it but she knew it was a part of her that was dying - a part she didn't need anymore. Still she gasped for a moment as she realized that she had reached the point of no return. The shape of her human body was but a faint memory and she embraced her destiny to its full content.

Her awareness had changed, she could feel the power of the earthmother who had chosen her as her warden, her protector... and healer. Anna closed her 'eyes' or whatever had replaced those senses and focused on the stream of live and energy. She felt the tainted soil - the parts the burn had destroyed but not annihilated. There was still hope, still time to mend and she didn't wait. As she continued to grow she felt the energy and power Gaia granted her and the strength to cleanse the earth of the Taint. It would take long but as long as she continued to grow she would swallowed it all and contain it cleansing the earth forever...

Deeper and further Anna's roots extended. Hundreds, thousands, of leaves drank in not only sunlight and carbon dioxide, but tiny amounts of radiation and other background energy. Even these little bits, mere fractions of a percent of the scum of tainted quantum quickly added up. Anna was at the epicenter of the blast, the damage here was worse, perhaps marginally, perhaps not, it would take forms of perception different from what she now possessed to determine.

Were it not for the photosynthetic process, for the osmotic and respiration effects of her changing body Anna would have exhausted herself in mere minutes. Instead she slowly, steadily, and irreversibly continued her change. Quantum suffused her form more completely than most novas would ever appreciate, it wrought upon her its price, the changes known as aberrations. Anna become something more, but also less human. No longer did the concept of humanity apply to her; life exists in many forms and consciousness in many of those forms, Anna's was no longer a human form of life.

Her rate of growth slowed in proportion to her size, within an hour it was barely perceptible. Once a woman, fair of hair, light of limb, and radiant of beauty, then a nova who's form bridged that of woman and tree. Now the woman was gone, replaced but the towering form that rose five hundred feet into the cool sea breeze caressed sky. Her limbs spread hundreds of feet in every direction and below a blanket of new growth spread ever outward. Bare ground sprouted weeds and grass, trees and bushes grew green and healthy. Toxins leeched from the environment drawn toward the great tree of life where they were collected and consumed. Transformed but quantum photosynthesis into something harmless.

Anna, or the being that was once Anna, could feel the plants, the animals, the insects and touch their minds, no matter how rudimentary. The great tree of life reached out and touched each and every of her adopted children, and poured her strength into the fragile life around her.

All the sensations she knew changed. Her perception changed and expanded. She listened to the song that inspired all life even down to the tiniest of microbes to the largest of animals walking the earth. They were all connected and part of it adding their own melody to the song of life.

A warmth spread across her body which had become the tree of life - the chosen form of Gaia's Warden. She was both a symbol of strength and hope and she wouldn't stop until everyone could see her, until everyone who was left saw that life hasn't abandoned this place. No, on the contrary, she was giving it all back transforming charred and eroded earth into fertile soil. Wherever her roots extended she transformed death to life.

The Tree of Life had found its ability to expand slowed. This was normal, life was not meant to grow in seconds what should take days, weeks, or years. Still the pace did continue, the once charred circle that had been Goodwood was now blanketed in green. Mushrooms grew from the cinders of the buildings, breaking down the wood into something that other plants would be able to use.

Still present was the strange portal to the other side of the planet, and on the other side, a city of man. The Tree reached through the gateway and touched stone and mortar, a lichen began to spread outward from the portal followed by moss that expanded outward behind it. Distantly in the slow thinking mind of the Tree it knew that there would be another of those strange holes nearby, its previous form remembered it, and focused the might of its power into the lichen and moss halfway around the world.

It grew quickly, spurred on by the focus of the great slow mind of the Tree and quickly found the second portal. The other side was dirt, and though dry it was healthy and fertile. The radiation was minimal and the lichen quickly conveyed that back to the Tree where it was sequestered, changed, and utilized. If the Tree had still had emotion it would have been happy, the Good Work was progressing and through the gateways it was able to cover longer distances and more ground in a shorter time. Not that the Tree of Life heeded time, or even understood it, but dimly, the spirit of Anna did, and was pleased.