Work Text:
A person sat or layed on an old fold-out chair. They stared, or seemed to stare across an old forest. Their eyes drifting over aspens, history seemed to flood their brain as they stood or jumped up. A small camp was laid out behind them, no more than 5 tents dot the hilltop, each with a few denizens walking in and out, people seeming to prepare for the day ahead of them. Nobody was rested or tired, they moved as they did through the shade and light, packing and unpacking. The sun sat in the sky or the horizon, clouds danced and swirled and stood absolutely still over their head. The person glanced at a note from a parent, friend, perhaps a mentor, and eventually set out on their walk.
The note was written in a shaky or unclear hand. It was old, and its edges were damaged by decay, perhaps burns. An old symbol sat alone on the back of the note, it was a warm color. There were scratches on it, maybe from written and erased words, perhaps an errant knife. It was crinkled, no. Creased, through its center; it had been folded, tucked, or shoved into a pocket a number of times. The language of the note was old, older than old. Its words were in a language that had not and will not be spoken in a thousand years. The note was written by people who ought to know better than to try to write the note. The symbol’s name was that of a great fool.
As the person walked or ran, the aspens creaked and rattled. Their branches seemed like they were shifting. Loudly leaning back and forth, their noise seemed to be distracting the people from something. Perhaps they thought that it was hiding something that could lurk or crawl. Something that maybe whispered in the back of the woods, almost silently calling little beings lost in wilderness far too vast to comprehend into its waiting, open mouth. Even still, the party moved forward, in silence or out of it; their pace was consistent, as were their spirits. The aspens were ever present, their leaves a color that might be immortalized in the walker’s pictures or memories. The tree’s arms held still or moved, their old and young bark moved within and without wind.
When the group had walked for a time they may have deemed enough they began to set up a place to rest or eat. It was a clearing on the path, the aspens here might have been a bit more distant, perhaps enough for a person to fit through them. They could have eaten, slept, and talked. They seemed to be uneasy as they shifted back and forth, whispering to themselves about the things that must lurk beyond the aspens. The person looked at an old book for an amount of the break. They may have been hoping to or dreading arriving at the heart of the forest that day.When they departed, the moon or sun sat on the horizon. The group was crowded and alone in the forest.
Among the trees on that skinny and thick path there was the loudest silence. Each person walked or stumbled through the aspens with bated breath and flickering eyes, seeming to dread each echo of a twig’s snap. Perhaps, while they journeyed down the eternal short walk, they whispered of a beast. Something that acted and walked like a human. Perhaps this beast waited for idiots to wander into somewhere where they weren’t meant to be, acting an idiot isn’t very hard. They may have been unsure how many people were originally in their party. They could have left a human behind to rot or decay or bleed away on that aspen trail. A thing that styled itself a person or a friend was or was not still in their party.
The path had come to an end. A slow dread quickly filled each and every person as they realized where they were and were not. The aspens surrounded and freed them, they all felt, perhaps, that they could wander a thousand lives and deaths between the too-tight-to-see-through branches. For the last first time in a year of seconds they existed in a clearing. The path was no wider than thinner than 2 feet. But this clearing stretched for minutes. In its center sat a heart, glimmering and shining with the brilliance of mud. It seems that the person crossed the clearing. The speed and ferocity that they opened the letter was slow and delicate. Their eyes pointed in the direction of this object that they perceived to be a heart.
The person started chanting, no; screaming, no; reciting, no; praying, no; chanting. Their noise that can best be described as a voice roared like a kitten through the forest. The sound echoed and bounced and was absorbed. If there was life in the forest it would have called it. If the forest was not as empty as an eternal lifeless void beasts and monsters and things might converge upon the person. But the vibrations echoed over the forest, through the forest, into the forest. The great cry rent the slumber from the forest’s very wood. The aspens may have stood, perhaps they rose. Perhaps there, in the epicenter where the heart had begun to beat the great eternal forest stared down at the person. They seemed to have learned that
the forest breathes.
The Forest breathes.