For all my life I lived a placid existence, raised to enjoy the calm of
the forest. My parents raised me to become a druidic priestess, and follow
in the path of the forest and all it's sacred serenity it has to offer.
That's how I was raised, when I was still a sapling. I still remember the
morning dew back then.. Looking at it glisten off the carved initialled
heart on the back of my father treant. The etchings made by two love sick
youths. He didn't mind, he let them do it in admiration of their love.
That's how the dew felt, like a lightly refreshing, and invigorating love of
youths. Not like the heavy dampened moisture of life that seems to just
weigh one down, with a dank musky odor of reality's hopeless cruelty. If
only that pleasant dew of young love was more than just a cruel tease of
what life could be before being stripped away and revealed to be nothing
more than a stinking lie.
The stench of reality became apparent to me when I left my home forest on a
nature expansion expedition. I still remember my last look at my sproutling
love, Oakley. We were set to go in season once I returned, and planned to
have some saplings of our own. We were to reclaim a settlement said to be
abandoned by the dwarves that dwelled in the mountains to the North. All
seemed well as the seeds of the future were planted and prayers said to
bless the land. It was just nature's way for us to retake the land.
But that's not just how nature works. Nature can be cruel too, for when she
retakes an abandoned settlement in one place, the nature beyond the forest
moves in and reclaims the land too. That was what I realized when I
returned to my home forest. On my return I could see smoke rise on the
horizon. The closer I got, the stronger the ashen odor of death grew. As I
snuck closer, I saw where our sacred forest once stood now stands a new
dwarven settlement. It was an overcast dawn as I thought I approached home
and the devilish dwarves had clear cut my home. No treantkind to be found.
I approached the crew huddled around the fire cautiously behind a newly
built shack, and what I saw there revealed the true state of nature that I
had once thought was an existance of serenity to be nothing but a cruel lie
to be stolen from me. In that fire I saw the face of my beloved Oakley the
dank smell of the dew thickened. I grew sick at my core as the cooked
embers of my love burned, thinking it could not get any worse until I seen
what they were cooking. My love's pollen berries. They cooked and ate his
pollen berries that were meant to fertilize my seeds. I rolled back with
disgust, the stench worse, as I realized it was more than just the stench of
death. It was coming from the building I hid behind, the stench of foul
excrement came strong as a gust of wind blew, and I looked at the building
beside me and it was then that I noticed a heart etched on the log used to
build this outhouse.
Moments later I stood by the bellowing and untamed campfire that had somehow
spread wildly, but left a fiery walkway littered with burning, dwarven
bodies. As embers crumbled down from my fingertips, and the cloudy sky had
turned into a ferocious thunderstorm, I slowly slipped back into consciousness.
I wept for what seemed an eternity at the etching, until I began to notice
something looming in the darkness. It was a shadow, and I have been following
It ever since. It led me on this hellacious pilgrimage through the roughest
of terrains, and some of It's favorites were the swamps, where I lived and
studied the nature of the darker side of druidism. I still follow It..
Description:
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Shimmering across the face of this woodland dryad is a beautiful look showing
neither happiness nor sorrow, but one of doubt. As her eyes sort of met yours
they were the colour of lush moss, but had glanced away shyly with a nervous
tick. Her features are very akin to the Fey, but something seems wrong with
this girl. She seems to have given up hope. It is in her aura as well as her
soul, this shadow of a dryad.
There are subtle movements of the limbs and branches of this small tree that
seem deceiving, followed by the echoes of a young girl laughing. Occasionally
floating to the ground are plethoras of Fall leaves.
[reply to beia]
[reply to Vertas]
[reply to Valryn]