The Forest
Shared Sorrow
From the shadows of the canopy, on the boughs of a great pine, she watched him, a lone figure working on the edge. He was of advanced age, wrapped in coarse fabric, his boots caked with dried mud. He sat on the fallen corpse of what had once been a vibrant oak, brushing his calloused fingers over its rough but youthful surface. He sighed a deep, weary breath.
She shifted as a breeze brushed the leaf cover. She had watched men like him before -- those who came with axes and saws, who did not hear the murmurs of the trees nor see the pain they inflicted when they swung their cruel blades with reckless abandon. Indeed, she had watched this one in particular for decades and seen how the years brought rapid change upon him. He had once been a mischievous boy, who turned into a boisterous youth, then a middle-aged cynic, and finally now, a broken old man. Today, there was something in the way he sat, shoulders hunched, fingernails gliding over the rings of the felled tree as if counting the years it had stood. There was sorrow, a quiet grief of the same sort she was feeling for the tree.
This was different from what she'd seen from others before, who showed only shallow or dark emotions. She crept closer, leaping to another tree, unseen in the dim light. Curiosity kept her grief and passion in check, for the moment, as she peeked down. The axe-man's wrinkled hands rested crossed on his knees, having let go of the implement of destruction. It was old with a dulled edge, doubtless having cut down many more of her friends before their appointed time.
A blast of wind whipped the fallen leaves into motion, carrying with it the last whispers of a departing spirit. She pressed a hand against the bark of the pine she was crouching on, feeling its lamentful pulse. She tried to soothe the tree-spirit, though it was beyond her ability.
The man sighed again, tilting his head back to look to the overcast sky. He said something in his tongue, one that she had never learnt. His voice was rough but quiet, laced with something that might have been regret.
He continued, voice now barely above a whisper, to speak as though to the gods themselves, as there was no one else around. He droned on in a bitter tone, followed by a humourless chuckle.
Her fingers curled into a fist. It galled her that he had the temerity to laugh, having done what he just did, and yet the emptiness of it gave her pause. Though he had come as a destroyer, he was but one in a multitude, and a particularly ineffectual one at that. Age would claim him soon enough, as it does with his kind, but the sadness he displayed resonated with her own. Whatever distressed him, bound by needs she could not understand, might give her insight into the workings of those like him.
Something like compassion twitched in her, unexpected and unwanted. She had spent so many of her years mourning, resenting the hands that again and again despoiled her home. And yet here was one who unknowingly mourned with her, though for what or whom, she did not know. Strange as it was, she did not feel alone at the moment.
Carefully, she reached into a pouch tied to her belt of vine, retrieving a smooth acorn. A legacy from what had been, and a promise of what could yet be.
Silent as an owl, she slipped down from the boughs and tiptoed forward. She placed the acorn on the fallen trunk beside the man. He did not see her, but when he stood a minute later to stretch his aching bones, his gaze fell upon it.
He frowned and lifted the acorn in his hand. It had not been there before. How did it get there? Did the gods answer his prayer with a message?
She watched as he held it to his chest in reverence. Then, slowly, he tucked the thing into a pocket and began to drag away the fallen oak. He'd forgotten the axe.
She remained behind amidst the trees. Though she wept for the loss, she felt something else, too, an unexpected connection with an enemy who ought to have been repelled. It was a tenuous thread, not enough to override a lifetime of knowing. Yet all the same, like the acorn she left for him, it could bloom into something massive and altogether different. In time, the land and its spirits would heal, and perhaps, so would he, before time took him.
After the Fire
The acrid air smelled wrong. The scent of damp earth had been overshadowed by a fetid air bereft of life. She knelt where an ancient white willow once stood, fingers caressing the burnt-out stump, a decapitated head torn from its body.
The silence hurt the most. There was no birdsong and no rustling of leaves, only the distant cry of younglings calling for parents that would never answer again.
She closed her eyes. Memories poured in, of the way the sun's gentle touch once filtered through the thick canopy, and how the breeze once filled the air with the fragrance of spring flowers in full bloom. The nearby stream once sang a gurgling melody, though it now pooled into a stagnant pond, its flow cut off by the charred carcass of a tree still in its youth. This place had once bustled with life. It had danced to the rhythm of the wind, murmurred amidst singing leaves, pulsed with the quiet song of nature. Now, it was naught but ash and ruin.
She pressed her shaking hand to the wounded earth, as though feeling for a heartbeat of what once lived. Her breath hitched, and a lump tightened her throat as she held the dark soil in her hands. There was lingering heat from the burn. Though she knew new life would sprout in the place of the old, this was more complete and more severe than the land could take. Though the fire burnt red hot, it was cold as a corpse where it counted.
An abrupt gust of wind stirred the ashes, scattering them into a fine mist that drifted across the clearing. She imagined she could still hear the spirits of the fallen, their voices fading, calling out their last lamentations. She had tried to stop this. She had pleaded. And yet here she knelt, surrounded by ghosts of her erstwhile friends, mutilated and defiled. Tears welled in her eyes, rolling down her cheeks as a sluice gate cracked open. She would remember this place as it had once been. Every branch, every flower, every living thing that had made this woodland home.
As she rose to leave, she heard a familiar tinkle. Turning towards it, she noted a pathetic little thing -- a sapling, near wilted and hiding in the shadow of one of its fallen older brethren. Her heart fluttered anew, as she rushed to rescue it.
That familiar tinkle sounded again for the last time.
On the Edge of the Forest
The visage of the Morninglord was dipping behind the trees, casting long shadows across the tranquil forest. She moved with foxlike grace, her boots making barely any sound against the soft earth. The scent of pine and lichen wafted through the air. She had walked this path more times than could be counted. Her heart was always drawn to the deeper parts of the forest, though this time, she was stepping in the other direction.
She carried with her a small thing, holding it gently to her chest as though it were fragile. A precious sapling -- the last of its kind -- it had been the last gift from a departed friend.
As she neared the edge of the forest, she paused to gaze up at the ancient pine she had come to visit. The old friend's roots twisted deep into the earth. She had watched it grow from a sapling a lifetime ago. Its branches stretched skyward, lending shade under it. Each season marked a new chapter in its unwritten tale. It was a stalwart silent witness to change itself, though it spoke words to those who knew how to listen.
A short distance away, she found an open space where the earth was soft and fertile. With care, she dug a small hole, and the soil parted under her touch. Her fingers brushed against an earthworm, and she patiently waited for it to burrow away. She had time.
She planted the sapling. Her eyes closed for a minute in silent communion with unseen guardians that oversaw the forest. In time, this one's roots would intertwine with those of the more ancient trees, and together they would grow into something greater than the sum of its parts.
The air stirred, ruffling her hair, sending a wave of motion through the boughs above. She sat back, looking at the freshly turned soil with the delicate young shoot. In that moment, she felt an unspoken connection, not just to the friend who bequeathed it, but to the world itself. The earth, the air, the water -- everything was alive, and she was a part of it.
She smiled knowingly, a soft curling of her lips, and rose. As she began her journey elsewhere, a small breeze danced around her, as though the very trees were bidding her farewell. She stole a single glance back. The young tree would prosper.
She was always here, part of these woodlands and the stories they told, though few ever saw her. That was fine. She didn't need to be seen. She had the forest, and in it, she was home.
Flesh and Blood
Though the forest retreated over the years, she remained within its ever shrinking boundaries. She had never set foot beyond it, even as her haunts one by one fell to encroaching feet. Even when men came with their axes, when the earth trembled under their trespass, she had stayed. Though the voices of the woodland grew sparse, she could not leave, for she was the forest. She was bound to the roots underneath and the rustling leaves above as surely as the stars were bound to the moon. But not all had remained. Most of the spirits, free as the wind, had long since drifted away. Though she missed their kindness and mischief alike, it was the absence of her own flesh and blood that tore at her the most.
She had watched him go, as his silhouette faded past the tree line, the wind tickling the dark strands of his long hair. He had been young then -- too young, she had thought, too fragile to face the world beyond. But what was a blink of an eye to her was a lifetime to him, as full-grown as any, and the quiet sanctuary of their home had grown too stifling for his wanderlust.
At first, he had sent word, in their customary way.
He spoke of the cities, of towering spires hewn from stone and fashioned from wood-corpses, of bridges that crossed rivers wider than the ancient oaks that had once dotted the forest. Of men and others who filled the streets day and night with their bustle, their schemes, and their need for ever more. He spoke of things he had never known before -- lumps of metal shaped into discs that could be exchanged for anything, hoarded jealously as squirrels hid nuts for the winter. It was power wielded seemingly for its own sake rather than as a tool to aid.
In time, the marvel that filled his earliest messages changed into something else.
He no longer spoke of wonder. He spoke instead of desperation and need. He saw men who took without remorse, of life snuffed out without a thought. Those with strength exercised it to dominate, lest they themselves be enthralled. He spoke of his own brush with danger and his own forays into darkened alleys. Of deals made with shadowy figures, of debts that had to be paid in blood. And with each message, she recognized him less.
Finally, there was silence, punctuated by whispers carried on the wind.
She heard murmurs from the lips of men passing the ruined woodland, who spoke in low, fearful tones. They spoke of a fey lord of shadows moving through the underworld. They said his gaze could shatter resolve of steel, that his blade never grew dull with rust, that its reddish sheen was only from the spilled blood of his victims. Darker yet were insinuations that they were sacrifices that went to appease a fell entity who granted unholy powers. That even these were not enough to sate his ambitions.
Alone under the boughs, she listened.
In her contemplations, she saw him as he once was -- a babe who lay peacefully against her side, lulled to sleep by the earth's beating heart. A child who had chased fireflies in the glades, until there were none left. But that child was no more. The vivid image of who he had been stood in sharp contrast to the uncertain fate now leading him.
She sat at the base of a young tree, the last one to have sprouted in a decade that still lived. The bark was yet unblemished by decay, and yet this was no natural blight that afflicted the woodland. She found even herself withering from its effects, so how could she keep the young protected? She could not with her own blood.
A gust of wind sent the leaves stirring, carrying the distant toll of a bell. Such disturbances have grown common when structures of stone were raised nearby, and each ringing presaged an ominous hum in the heartbeat of the earth. She lowered her gaze, the weight of a dying forest pressing down on her.
She did not know if she would ever see him again.
But she would wait.
Shared Sorrow
From the shadows of the canopy, on the boughs of a great pine, she watched him, a lone figure working on the edge. He was of advanced age, wrapped in coarse fabric, his boots caked with dried mud. He sat on the fallen corpse of what had once been a vibrant oak, brushing his calloused fingers over its rough but youthful surface. He sighed a deep, weary breath.
She shifted as a breeze brushed the leaf cover. She had watched men like him before -- those who came with axes and saws, who did not hear the murmurs of the trees nor see the pain they inflicted when they swung their cruel blades with reckless abandon. Indeed, she had watched this one in particular for decades and seen how the years brought rapid change upon him. He had once been a mischievous boy, who turned into a boisterous youth, then a middle-aged cynic, and finally now, a broken old man. Today, there was something in the way he sat, shoulders hunched, fingernails gliding over the rings of the felled tree as if counting the years it had stood. There was sorrow, a quiet grief of the same sort she was feeling for the tree.
This was different from what she'd seen from others before, who showed only shallow or dark emotions. She crept closer, leaping to another tree, unseen in the dim light. Curiosity kept her grief and passion in check, for the moment, as she peeked down. The axe-man's wrinkled hands rested crossed on his knees, having let go of the implement of destruction. It was old with a dulled edge, doubtless having cut down many more of her friends before their appointed time.
A blast of wind whipped the fallen leaves into motion, carrying with it the last whispers of a departing spirit. She pressed a hand against the bark of the pine she was crouching on, feeling its lamentful pulse. She tried to soothe the tree-spirit, though it was beyond her ability.
The man sighed again, tilting his head back to look to the overcast sky. He said something in his tongue, one that she had never learnt. His voice was rough but quiet, laced with something that might have been regret.
He continued, voice now barely above a whisper, to speak as though to the gods themselves, as there was no one else around. He droned on in a bitter tone, followed by a humourless chuckle.
Her fingers curled into a fist. It galled her that he had the temerity to laugh, having done what he just did, and yet the emptiness of it gave her pause. Though he had come as a destroyer, he was but one in a multitude, and a particularly ineffectual one at that. Age would claim him soon enough, as it does with his kind, but the sadness he displayed resonated with her own. Whatever distressed him, bound by needs she could not understand, might give her insight into the workings of those like him.
Something like compassion twitched in her, unexpected and unwanted. She had spent so many of her years mourning, resenting the hands that again and again despoiled her home. And yet here was one who unknowingly mourned with her, though for what or whom, she did not know. Strange as it was, she did not feel alone at the moment.
Carefully, she reached into a pouch tied to her belt of vine, retrieving a smooth acorn. A legacy from what had been, and a promise of what could yet be.
Silent as an owl, she slipped down from the boughs and tiptoed forward. She placed the acorn on the fallen trunk beside the man. He did not see her, but when he stood a minute later to stretch his aching bones, his gaze fell upon it.
He frowned and lifted the acorn in his hand. It had not been there before. How did it get there? Did the gods answer his prayer with a message?
She watched as he held it to his chest in reverence. Then, slowly, he tucked the thing into a pocket and began to drag away the fallen oak. He'd forgotten the axe.
She remained behind amidst the trees. Though she wept for the loss, she felt something else, too, an unexpected connection with an enemy who ought to have been repelled. It was a tenuous thread, not enough to override a lifetime of knowing. Yet all the same, like the acorn she left for him, it could bloom into something massive and altogether different. In time, the land and its spirits would heal, and perhaps, so would he, before time took him.
After the Fire
The acrid air smelled wrong. The scent of damp earth had been overshadowed by a fetid air bereft of life. She knelt where an ancient white willow once stood, fingers caressing the burnt-out stump, a decapitated head torn from its body.
The silence hurt the most. There was no birdsong and no rustling of leaves, only the distant cry of younglings calling for parents that would never answer again.
She closed her eyes. Memories poured in, of the way the sun's gentle touch once filtered through the thick canopy, and how the breeze once filled the air with the fragrance of spring flowers in full bloom. The nearby stream once sang a gurgling melody, though it now pooled into a stagnant pond, its flow cut off by the charred carcass of a tree still in its youth. This place had once bustled with life. It had danced to the rhythm of the wind, murmurred amidst singing leaves, pulsed with the quiet song of nature. Now, it was naught but ash and ruin.
She pressed her shaking hand to the wounded earth, as though feeling for a heartbeat of what once lived. Her breath hitched, and a lump tightened her throat as she held the dark soil in her hands. There was lingering heat from the burn. Though she knew new life would sprout in the place of the old, this was more complete and more severe than the land could take. Though the fire burnt red hot, it was cold as a corpse where it counted.
An abrupt gust of wind stirred the ashes, scattering them into a fine mist that drifted across the clearing. She imagined she could still hear the spirits of the fallen, their voices fading, calling out their last lamentations. She had tried to stop this. She had pleaded. And yet here she knelt, surrounded by ghosts of her erstwhile friends, mutilated and defiled. Tears welled in her eyes, rolling down her cheeks as a sluice gate cracked open. She would remember this place as it had once been. Every branch, every flower, every living thing that had made this woodland home.
As she rose to leave, she heard a familiar tinkle. Turning towards it, she noted a pathetic little thing -- a sapling, near wilted and hiding in the shadow of one of its fallen older brethren. Her heart fluttered anew, as she rushed to rescue it.
That familiar tinkle sounded again for the last time.
On the Edge of the Forest
The visage of the Morninglord was dipping behind the trees, casting long shadows across the tranquil forest. She moved with foxlike grace, her boots making barely any sound against the soft earth. The scent of pine and lichen wafted through the air. She had walked this path more times than could be counted. Her heart was always drawn to the deeper parts of the forest, though this time, she was stepping in the other direction.
She carried with her a small thing, holding it gently to her chest as though it were fragile. A precious sapling -- the last of its kind -- it had been the last gift from a departed friend.
As she neared the edge of the forest, she paused to gaze up at the ancient pine she had come to visit. The old friend's roots twisted deep into the earth. She had watched it grow from a sapling a lifetime ago. Its branches stretched skyward, lending shade under it. Each season marked a new chapter in its unwritten tale. It was a stalwart silent witness to change itself, though it spoke words to those who knew how to listen.
A short distance away, she found an open space where the earth was soft and fertile. With care, she dug a small hole, and the soil parted under her touch. Her fingers brushed against an earthworm, and she patiently waited for it to burrow away. She had time.
She planted the sapling. Her eyes closed for a minute in silent communion with unseen guardians that oversaw the forest. In time, this one's roots would intertwine with those of the more ancient trees, and together they would grow into something greater than the sum of its parts.
The air stirred, ruffling her hair, sending a wave of motion through the boughs above. She sat back, looking at the freshly turned soil with the delicate young shoot. In that moment, she felt an unspoken connection, not just to the friend who bequeathed it, but to the world itself. The earth, the air, the water -- everything was alive, and she was a part of it.
She smiled knowingly, a soft curling of her lips, and rose. As she began her journey elsewhere, a small breeze danced around her, as though the very trees were bidding her farewell. She stole a single glance back. The young tree would prosper.
She was always here, part of these woodlands and the stories they told, though few ever saw her. That was fine. She didn't need to be seen. She had the forest, and in it, she was home.
Flesh and Blood
Though the forest retreated over the years, she remained within its ever shrinking boundaries. She had never set foot beyond it, even as her haunts one by one fell to encroaching feet. Even when men came with their axes, when the earth trembled under their trespass, she had stayed. Though the voices of the woodland grew sparse, she could not leave, for she was the forest. She was bound to the roots underneath and the rustling leaves above as surely as the stars were bound to the moon. But not all had remained. Most of the spirits, free as the wind, had long since drifted away. Though she missed their kindness and mischief alike, it was the absence of her own flesh and blood that tore at her the most.
She had watched him go, as his silhouette faded past the tree line, the wind tickling the dark strands of his long hair. He had been young then -- too young, she had thought, too fragile to face the world beyond. But what was a blink of an eye to her was a lifetime to him, as full-grown as any, and the quiet sanctuary of their home had grown too stifling for his wanderlust.
At first, he had sent word, in their customary way.
He spoke of the cities, of towering spires hewn from stone and fashioned from wood-corpses, of bridges that crossed rivers wider than the ancient oaks that had once dotted the forest. Of men and others who filled the streets day and night with their bustle, their schemes, and their need for ever more. He spoke of things he had never known before -- lumps of metal shaped into discs that could be exchanged for anything, hoarded jealously as squirrels hid nuts for the winter. It was power wielded seemingly for its own sake rather than as a tool to aid.
In time, the marvel that filled his earliest messages changed into something else.
He no longer spoke of wonder. He spoke instead of desperation and need. He saw men who took without remorse, of life snuffed out without a thought. Those with strength exercised it to dominate, lest they themselves be enthralled. He spoke of his own brush with danger and his own forays into darkened alleys. Of deals made with shadowy figures, of debts that had to be paid in blood. And with each message, she recognized him less.
Finally, there was silence, punctuated by whispers carried on the wind.
She heard murmurs from the lips of men passing the ruined woodland, who spoke in low, fearful tones. They spoke of a fey lord of shadows moving through the underworld. They said his gaze could shatter resolve of steel, that his blade never grew dull with rust, that its reddish sheen was only from the spilled blood of his victims. Darker yet were insinuations that they were sacrifices that went to appease a fell entity who granted unholy powers. That even these were not enough to sate his ambitions.
Alone under the boughs, she listened.
In her contemplations, she saw him as he once was -- a babe who lay peacefully against her side, lulled to sleep by the earth's beating heart. A child who had chased fireflies in the glades, until there were none left. But that child was no more. The vivid image of who he had been stood in sharp contrast to the uncertain fate now leading him.
She sat at the base of a young tree, the last one to have sprouted in a decade that still lived. The bark was yet unblemished by decay, and yet this was no natural blight that afflicted the woodland. She found even herself withering from its effects, so how could she keep the young protected? She could not with her own blood.
A gust of wind sent the leaves stirring, carrying the distant toll of a bell. Such disturbances have grown common when structures of stone were raised nearby, and each ringing presaged an ominous hum in the heartbeat of the earth. She lowered her gaze, the weight of a dying forest pressing down on her.
She did not know if she would ever see him again.
But she would wait.
