it is not i that walks through the night like some falling, shining star
though one might hear the humming of starlight between the tree branches twined with each other
the missing sunshine taps down vertebrae . . . musical, lilting tones in the thick nighttime fog, a melody played by an old god using bones as drumsticks, a rhythmic tap-tap-tap-tap to overcome the rushing of blood in your ears
this is not a field for gods or magic. a land of dreams, an enchanted forest full of drowsy, whispering trees just now stirring from an age-old slumber
run, the whispers warn at the first crackle of magic. you are not welcome here. never mind that the trees are doused in charms and soaked in enchantment, never mind that most of them began as seedlings not unlike the once-mythical magic beans traded away for a cow
— “Voidhes Heillegennes” [“The Hallowed Woods”], Poeinas Fictermagin, Anthology of Old Linguame Poems: Volume Three. Put together and translated by Ferrius A’Croix
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The woods shiver. The woods shiver, and they move, and they look into your eyes and your heart and know what you want.
The woods are lonely, you see. They were ripped into this world from another and it has made them so sleepy, won’t you come and sing us to sleep for a bit? won’t you watch over us, protect us please? They are dangerous, and they keep all they see.
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But enough of the warnings. Let me tell you a little something about what it is like. The trees are all the same: warm wood and soft green leaves that never die and tall trunks. The birds that live there can go in and out of the woods as they please, but the foxes are trapped. Snakes cannot go up the trees and must travel on the ground, and the fish may swim as they please but it is easier to swim upstream. In the east there is a fragile waterfall frozen in a moment of a king’s rage; in the west is a dragon quite misunderstood, with scales of blue and yellow and green. He is probably starving now; the last fool to listen to his choked pleading is now calcifying at the bottom of the glassy lake he lives in.
(The dragon and I used to be friends. Not anymore. Now he cannot breathe above water, and breathes smoke in the few precious seconds he spends above the surface, and chokes on his own magic in the magic lake. The lake itself is slowly growing higher and consuming more ground than it ever should due to the layers of crushed bone that plate its bottom.)
The woods move around all the time; they should be untraceable but they seem to like clearings and mountains. They sulk because they cannot have both, and then wait with bated breath for someone to respond, to stroke a hand down a trunk and tell them they are being silly. (For what is more dangerous than a child that doesn’t know what it wants?)
The woods care so much for people that they will not let anyone leave unless their heart’s desire is realized. The woods are lonely and know everything there is to know about anyone, but who will listen? Only one of their number can speak, and it is forever dozing off, only starting awake and granting the odd request when the others push it. It grumps and it dozes, and the rest of the trees with their tall trunks and warm brown wood and soft green leaves despair, swaying and murmuring to each other.
They wait, and this is what happens:
The woods welcome those who stumble into their arms. They hold tight, and they let go, but those who stumble in once will return, whether by choice or by force.