Chapter Text
Ash.
I rise.
An island of green against the endless, encroaching sea of ash.
Relentless. My canopy yields only to solitary mountain peak or mist-shrouded lake. Upheld by soaring trunk. Sustained by writhing root. The floor below, an undulating tangle. Alive.
I inhale with every creature, feel every lung. Cool air, heavy with the scent of loam. Undergrowth is scattered, competing for fleeting rays of light. Here, a pelt of moss lays claim, drinking all sound.
Stillness. Yet spirits dance. I, the silent rhythm. They, my fickle stewards, whispering the song from flower, branch and pond.
A hoof steps softly. Limping yet dignified, the stag follows a sulfurous scent towards the promise of soothing water. Rising steam from the spring mingles with the morning fog to create a ghostly veil around the visitor. Reprieve from hungry eyes as he soaks.
I exhale with him. Primordial warmth seeps into marrow. This relief, a gift from the earth’s fiery birth, when the moon, young and frenetic, kneaded its very core. Remnant heat bleeds upward still, a celestial thread in my intricate web of being.
Mist lifts. Strewn across valleys, lakes start to glimmer in the dawn light. Birdsong echoes softly across tranquil water. From this shore, a rare view of the heavens. There she lingers now, the silver giant at her zenith, pulling softly on the great sea beneath the earth. Gazing down, the modest surface belies a crystal-clear descent, hinting at the abyss beyond reach of all but my deepest roots.
Ripples obscure sight as a paw slaps at flashing scales. Elsewhere, a mouse locks eyes with an adder, breath held, muscles tense. A few paces from the hot spring, the stag draws his last sleeping breath, drained by a patch of leechmoss slowly yellowing with stolen life.
Through their eyes, I see all. A silent witness to every tiny war. But do I care? And does my silence ever break? Pondered so, by those who carry spirits of their own.
Peoples.
Those who carve their own transient paths, cling to precarious homes, or wander vigilantly through my gloom. Those who harness fire still. That first folly.
All but untethered, yet their struggles, hopes, and sorrows thread into me all the same. Pain etched into scars, both seen and unseen. Tales whispered on the wind, echoing beyond the reclamation of flesh and blood.
Diverse, tenacious, mostly desperate.
Life feeds.