This work was last updated January 26, 2016

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(Just a little thing I wrote a while back that I feel like sharing!)

The bark of the giant oak was rough and cool beneath my callused fingertips. I examined one of the many knots that lined and spiraled along the ridges, climbing the tree up and up until I couldn’t see them clearly anymore. It was umber in colour, with small hints of dark green moss within the deepest of ridges, and the leaves above were a harlequin green with the sunlight shining through. I couldn’t touch my hands around the trunk if I tried, so big it was with its thick roots that spread like flares from the bottom, digging into the rich dark brown earth beneath my feet.

I stood in between two of the most massive roots, the trunk rising high above me with the branches pooling to create a cloud of life above. A lone squirrel skittered across one of the branches, and if I concentrated I could just see the outline of a couple sparrows hidden in the highest of the branches. As I looked up, a butterfly with long white wings that extended with teardrops at the corners fluttered down to me, passing me by on its way to a flower some distance away.

I took in a deep breath and smelled the bitterness of the being before me and of the lingering sweetness of the flower buds and the fresh air that radiated from the forest around me. I was at home, here, beneath the cover of the branches. The comfort I felt from being in the shade of this being was intense, almost convincing me that there could be nothing in the world that may harm me again.

Even as I pressed my palm softly against the wood, I could feel the steady thump of the energy coursing through the veins within. I pressed my forehead against it and began murmuring quietly, so softly that the words didn’t even reach my ears. I spoke in the secret language, the one that was foretold to one day become so powerful to use that the Goddesses will finally ban the use of it. No one will speak a word of it until a lost little girl from Earth with hair of fire and strength that challenges even the toughest stone will come and change that in a fit of passion. I could see this foretold within the future rings of the wood, and it comforted me somehow that my world will continue on even after I had passed. However, for now, all there existed was this oak tree and the soul living within, waiting for the day where it will have to escape and leave this planet like it had once before.