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If you were to take a walk along the oldest forest in Japan, you may have come across a very peculiar, singular tree. It was the fig tree that the other trees liked to tell it's story, and you could hear it in the whispers of the wind against their rustling leaves if you listened closely. The fig tree grows alone on a small hill at the heart of the forest. One could spot it easily, as it's trunk was split in two, it's main branches grew bending in the shape of the horns of a goat. The trees would say that the reason its trunk was split had been because it had given birth to something living underneath its bark.
That is why the bark is split open like a wound, the forest whispers, This tree did give birth. It was once a woman who spent evenings dancing and singing beneath my canopy, picking my berries and braiding my flowers in her beautiful, green hair. She was a singular beauty, nearly as beautiful as the moon herself. But one day, she met a Faun. Yes, I can remember him clearly, since he would play beautiful, sweet melodies underneath my trees on a flute he had made from the finger bones of an ogre. I remembered his songs would sound all over, echoing even underneath the ground, the tunes he played telling of the underground kingdom he came from. He was, indeed, very different from the woman, from the light she carried within her.
All this was true. Inko was the woman's name, and she was the Faun's first love. She fell in love with him, despite of the warnings the trees would try whispering to her, and the Faun loved her back. He even gave her his true name, Toshinori. It wasn't long before he asked her to come with him to his underground world. Inko, however, declined, not able to accept that she would spend the rest of her days without being able to see the stars or feel the cool breeze on her skin. As much as it pained her to watch him leave, she chose that. But the love within her was filled with longing and heartbreak, and her feet grew roots to follow her love to the underground kingdom he spoke of, and her arms stretched up and turned into branches to reach the stars she had chosen over him.
He skin turned to bark, her breath to the soft rustling of leaves. And when Toshinori returned one night to play his flute for her, he arrived only to find the tree whispering his name over and over again. Toshinori, broken-hearted and pained to see what their love had done to her, sat at his beloved's roots. She showered him with flowers, but she could no longer hug him like she had been able to once. Couldn't kiss his forehead with reasurance anymore. Toshinori's heart was in such terrible pain that when he caressed the tree, his soft, silken fur turned wooden and rough as the bark of Inko's new form. He sat underneath her branches all night, tears never ceasing to fall, until the sun arrived to chase him back underneath the earth, away from his love.
Inko, heartbroken and lonely despite the reassurance the other trees offered, bent her branches deeper, sadness causing them to be pulled down, until the resembled Toshinori's horned head.
Many months later, the trunk suddenly split on a moonlit night. Out of it emerged a beautiful child, with hair and eyes as green as his mother's, small horns and this, slender legs like his father's. He danced and sang like Inko had once done, twirling and prancing underneath the trees. He fashioned himself a flute out of bird bones, the sound coming from it sweeter than honey.
His song could be heard everywhere the sound wafted through, reaching the ears of his father. He hurried to the Upper Kingdom as fast as his legs would allow him. But when he reached it, the music was far, far away, barely just a whisper, and all that was left were the marks of small hooves left upon the muddy ground, washed away by the rain that followed the next morning.