feng_shui_house

Rodney and Elizabeth, along with unnamed others, are alien rainforest plants, who can shape shift into animals. Earth people came through the Stargate and were pretty much bulldozing all the rainforest, at least the parts where the plant people lived.

A lot of them were killed, unable to shape-shift in time. And a lot of the ones who didn't die, chose to remain in animal shapes where they'd have a chance of running away, but in animal shapes they couldn't reproduce. They needed to be in at least a small colony patch with at least one male (the more rare sex) in order for the female plant people to produce seeds.

So they were dying out. Rodney and Elizabeth and their small group, Laura and Jennifer and Miko and Katie and Kate (they both wound up liking the name) are led by Elizabeth (their Alpha- the males aren't generally leaders) who persuades them to learn the human form as well as animal forms. They can't really speak- it takes time to learn language when you never had even the idea of it, but Elizabeth hopes to understand them by taking their shapes. She rather bullies Rodney into it. He falls in love with the shape of the domestic cats the people bring with them instead.

So they reach the season for seeding and find an untouched part of the forest with perfect soil and weather conditions and settle in as plants, with Rodney in the central position where he's safest and can fertilize all of them.

BUT. BUT. Laura remains an alert forest animal to watch over them. And when she hears the bulldozer approaching she tries to wake the others. Elizabeth wakes up and tries to order everyone to forms that can run, but Rodney just refuses. He's tired of being scared and he's fatalistic, and he figures it'll hurt less to die as a plant.

The women all turn human, and link arms around plant Rodney, determined to either protect him, or die with him.

The bulldozer (a hybrid helicopter thing) lands in the clearing. And John's the pilot and he's all Um Ladies, can you protest your touchy-feely save the rainforest stuff somewhere else? But his mechanic is Teyla, and she's Wait John, how did they get out here? Shouldn't we at least talk with them?

But they can't talk, and if John doesn't dig up this part of the rainforest, there's something that grows that kills people, like a plague, so it's not like he can fluff it off.

Teyla manages to figure out that it's just this one plant they care about. So she gets a shovel, and a big plant pot, and they dig up Rodney to take with them back to the base.