“You are yourself, of course,” said the trees, disregarding Seed’s growing alarm. He turned around and around, trying to grasp at himself. He rubbed the wood of his legs together, and found they scraped together, sending a vivid splash of feeling up and down there. It didn’t feel like flesh, but it felt. His ears pinned back and his lips pursed, trying to work out the puzzle behind the sensation he had in the wooden parts of him.
“Perhaps more so…” “More so.” “More so.” “To see the base of your being so… Pleased us.” “Pleased.” “Please!”

Seed took a wary step back. The last time he’d gone half-tree – well, it’d been different, for one – it had been the tree’s intent to turn him back. It took him a moment to realize that in a forest, there was really no way to step back from the trees – even in the pond in front of him, a tree merrily poked its long, slender trunk out through the water’s surface. He supposed it thought itself a cypress.
“…Don’t get any ideas…I…I like being a deer.” Yes. To thank the people who had helped him…To live his life as he had been living it for years now. That was what he wanted. “I won’t let you.”

“We know.” “We know.” The trees mumbled, sadly. “…We considered.” One little voice admitted, a lone tree in a forest where the wind had gone dead through the leaves.

“…I may have been too harsh, there. I suppose… If you really wanted me to not return to being a deer, you’d have taken advantage of me.“ He did not remember what it had been like, very well, now.

Language/light mature warning.
*thatch