Vernal Flight

Iron Age Media, August 2 Prompt

 

  Pretty fairy, pretty fairy, sit you on your mushroom throne. The forest's call is inviting, cool and blissful. Peace prevails between the ancient trunks and beautiful, verdant boughs, made bountiful by the glory of spring. The wind-whistle between the leaves sings a tune of life in its prime, a tune which the fairy feels resonant in her breast.

With a crown of Wintersbreak flowers seated gently upon her head, the fairy surveys nature's domain. It is in this short period between the seasons that the animals have yet to come forward from their dens and their southerly retreats. For the time being, there is but growth and stillness in the forest. The sun gives its radiance, the wind carries dew from the distant seas and the plants wrap their roots beneath the earth and extend their leaves to the skies.

All is good, all is well. The fairy flies between the branches, the trunks and the stalks. She surveys nature in its nascence and its maturity both. The tiny fairy sees old growth that she knew when it was young. Green flesh has become firm bark, tough and resilient, anchored firmly into the earth.

Yet, not all of nature can survive. The animals take their due, the elements take their toll and time, master of all, comes for all that take root here. Within the center of the vegetation, the very heart of forest itself, is an elder, the oldest of the ancients. A great tree stands tall, far taller than any other. A very long time ago, a special seed drifted from lands far beyond the reaches of the forest. The seed was an ugly thing, like a wilted, little leaf, more a stone than a seed.

But within the seed was great potential, a will not only to live, but greatness and patience. For hundreds of springs and summers, the seed and sprout and sapling and finally, the tree grew, taller and taller, wider and wider. At last, the tree, with its orange-brown bark and spindly, shaggy leaves, stood many heads above the forest, like a lone guardian standing watch for all time.

This great tree continued to grow, standing tall amidst its cousins. For many, many years, when many others had come and gone, the redwood stood strong and firm. But, as all things must eventually end, so too did the redwood. The fairy noticed the great one was different. At the end of a long winter, when the frost and the rime did not clear for a while, the fairy found the giant to be a little lopsided, a little more sullen than when she had seen it the year prior.

"Why so sorrowful, great one? Do you feel ill?"

Indeed it did. There was a rotten knot within the tree that had buried itself deep several decades prior. Only now did it bloom, rotten and festering as it plagued the tree. Though the fairy wished it well, the redwood did not recover. More and more, the rot took root and with it, the tree could not prosper. Anguished sighs passed between the branches whenever the wind kicked up. For years did the tree suffer, but this spring, this joyous herald of life, it would be the last for the redwood. A great life held on by diaphanous strings and not many of them at that.

The fairy knelt at the foot of the redwood, offering her condolences and a warm embrace from the tiny figure to the mighty giant that stood off-kilter before her. And yet, the fairy felt no sorrow from the loss of one so special and powerful. All things must end, even the great and the grand. In time, new life would grow from that which was lost. Death is the end for one, but the beginning of many. That is life, blessed and cruel in all its facets.