[ Someone looking to Gray for direction involving critical thinking?? That would make her nervous on a normal day, so it's even worse when the person looking to her may or may not be an unholy cryptid.

For what it's worth, she doesn't feel that he has any actual expectations of her... or maybe she just can't imagine that he would, hooded mouse that she is. But the sad reality is that she really is the more equipped between them to make sense of the situation, so she forcibly reallocates her brain cell energy away from Douman-shaped anxiety and toward Tree-shaped anxiety. ]

I think you're right that it's dying a cruel death... so maybe there's something else we can do to make its passing easier.

[ She can feel that it's suffering, and of late she's acquired an amateur ability to mend objects, but she doesn't consider it worth attempting with the scale of the tree's damage. Absent the options of both healing and a mercy kill, she's reminded of how her mentor once cared for a dying cat. She thought him overly sentimental at the time, but it seems he doesn't have to be here to keep teaching her lessons. ]

It's reaching out to us, so I think it wants us to be there for it. To hold its hand... in a way. Maybe we can try Communion with it...