#manwyrk

[bookishamber]

Cyrene is headed to look for the guardian dragon

Another section from the fae story about Manwyrk and the Isle of Ruins.

Deep in thought, she continued to wander through the mossy floored forest. She wasn't quite sure what time it was, because the tree cover was so intense that the forest was dark and inviting. The kind of darkness that drew one’s soul in, if they were a person like her, who dwelled in melancholy. She knew darkness in her life, she thrived in it. When everything was bright and shiny and happy, she was gloomy and tired. But when the world around her was dreary, she was her best self. It's almost like her personality was in direct opposition to the world outside. She loved the wintertime. She loved these deep and lovely woods. They reminded her of Robert Frost's Poem, 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening'. It was an ancient poem that had been passed down throughout the years. Books that old were few and far between but they were so mass-produced during the last years of society before the fall that some physical copies still remained. As goes the poem, so too goes she, except she had miles to go through the woods before she was able to rest.

Her life path seemed to always take her through the mystical dark inviting shortcuts of the woods. It was like in the ancient moving stories called movies when the shortcut through the woods was always abysmal and gloomy, but the long path around the woods was glistening and enticing. She had learned long ago to always take the path through the woods, because though the path around looked inviting, inevitably more danger lurked in the sun, than the shadows. She applied this to her life as well. The darkness only made her stronger, and she would need all that strength for the coming months ahead. She didn't quite know what she would find when she finally exited the far side of the forest, but she did know it would be exciting.

Adventure awaited her, she could smell it in the cool dampness around her. Off in the distance she heard the scurrying of feet up a tree, an owl hooted, and she thought she heard the tiniest hint, the faintest bit of laughter. It was so small, she almost missed it, and if she hadn't stopped and closed her eyes, to just breath in the pale green wet scent of the forest, she might have. But she did stop, to soak in her surroundings. her usually tired rested mouth upturned slightly at the sound of it. The tiny giggles told her she was headed in the correct direction. The forest pixies were shy and sweet, but their curiosity was their Achilles heel. They loved to watch from the shadows, and when they had been sufficiently piqued they couldn’t contain their delight. They would only be interested in her if they knew she was headed for the Guardian. Because even their sweetness couldn't overpower their love for a fight. It's the same sort of curiosity and laughter that human babies had, when they saw someone get hurt, not too bad, but just enough to be funny, and they couldn't help but laugh at it.

As she continued through the bramble pulling branches and thorns out of her way, she noticed little twinkling lights popping in out of existence deep in the woods surrounding her. The longer she trekked the greater the amount of golden sparkles, shimmering in the distance. She was building an audience. Word was clearly getting around that she headed north. She wondered to herself how far the gossip of her journey had traveled. Had her sister heard yet, that she was making her way through the heavily wooded wildwood, as the pixies liked to call it. The trees in this part of the viridian woodlands were older, they stretched out into the sky, and it felt as if the very upper branches grew beyond the clouds. The trunks were wider too, some were big enough that if you hollowed them out, you could live within its protective shell, forever, if you needed to. She had heard that the trees weren’t like this before the fall, but the mechanism, whatever it was that closed all the portals to faery, must have also done something to the environment here on earth as well. Other plants had changed according to the tales of those who had been around since the fall. Even the sky had changed from a pale blue to almost a pinkish-orange color. Animals appeared to have been affected according to bones she had found exploring the lands during her youth. There were tales of creatures who used to be tiny now growing ten times their normal size. The dragons it was said used to be land dwellers, and didn’t even have wings. She couldn’t imagine that.

A large tree nearby offered shelter in the form of a giant cavernous hole, where there must have been tree rot at some point, or some other process that hollowed out in the trunk a large enough space for her to make herself comfortable for the evening. The tree had clearly shed the decaying bits after a time, and continued to thrive, still growing upwards towards the glow of the sky. As she neared closer to this particular tree she decided it would be a fine a place to rest. She leaned her forehead against the mammoth trunk of the tree and rested her eyes for a moment. She ran her hands up around the tree, caressing its rough-hewn edges. She decided some other traveler before her must have helped carve the tree rot out to help with the healing process. She said a silent thank you to both that weary traveler and the tree itself.

She had always thought that trees had souls. Most people laughed when she talked about it, but she had felt the kindness in the trees whenever she had moved within their homeland, that after all was what the forest was, a vast interconnected home for trees. They all grew together, their root systems intertwining with each other under the soil. She always felt like the forest itself was one giant being, undulating thoughts throughout its tendrils. What one tree felt, so too did the entire forest share in its revelry or distress. She felt their loving psychic embrace anytime she was in the wilds. She knew. She was certain. They were just as alive and aware as she was, they too were apart of this experience of life, growing, changing, evolving. She felt a sort of kinship with the trees, especially the ones, like this one, that had been through the worst of it, but still managed to continue to make their way, crawling and fighting for the truth, just as she had.