Drowning gets almost samey after long enough.
She floats limply under the lid of the tank, airless and aching and weak and everything but thirsty, and her wings are under too and can't breathe for her, and she drifts from minute to minute without bothering to open her eyes.
When they are all grown to the point of usefulness she harvests some and also some leaves off her tree and goes inside.
He lets his flying boat settle onto the ground, over where there aren't any useful plants growing, and he sits next to it and thinks about magic and strategy.
Promise comes out a couple hours later and embiggens her tree some more and sits in the sunshine and draws.
He is sort of curious about the drawing but he can't imagine that it's any of his business whatsoever.
She doesn't volunteer any information about it.
She goes back in her tree and comes out in a new dress made of leaves that she has apparently just now sewn and flies off and comes back with more seeds.
There's not much else to do, at least not that he can get anywhere with. He grows plants.
Over the next few days Promise decompresses and gets her tree to apartment-sized trunk status and eats and draws and explores and usually says hi to the prince when she comes out of her tree and asks him if he wants a candied dewdrop (it's safe if she makes them) and maps the harmonics and checks the gate.
The prince accepts candied dewdrops. He does not otherwise eat or drink, does not appear to sleep, and occasionally goes for a short walk around the immediate vicinity but never strays out of sight of his stone boat and usually spends all of his time sitting beside it thinking apparently-depressing thoughts.
"If you are certain you don't want to help me, I should go through immediately. If you haven't decided, or expect that you will want to help me after more time has passed, I should wait."
"That would depend on what you were willing to do and what you expected to be able to accomplish. In the simplest case, you could approach Nirue, order her not to do anything, and then leave, and I could do everything else."
"You should probably think of a nickname for her - I don't think there's anyone else around but if there were -"
"There are multiple Wood mages but only one that would be 'the Wood mage' in this context, I suppose."
"So we can call her that. What would be something more complicated -?"
"Much as I hate to entertain the thought, for the sake of the stability of the empire it might be a good idea to try to command my father to cooperate with some less violent transfer of power than showing up and immediately murdering him."
"...is this actually a more horrible thought than immediately murdering him?"
"It's not good. But it's not really good that mortals die, either."
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