Mother of The Woods

When Lilia listened to the woods, truly listened, the woods spoke back.

It communicated, of course, not through mere words as humans did, but through ways of a more natural sort, a godlike sort, whispering sweet nothings to her through wisps of wind licking between her fingers. Its curling, giggling, lilting breeze tickled the hairs on her neck, making them stand at attention like a pack of hungry, primal beasts. The woods never pushed or pulled her this way or that; rather, the woods probed at her playfully, lovingly, as she walked past the beauty of it, immersing herself body and soul into its depths, letting the shrubs and ferns speak to her through those long, scratching traces they left along her exposed arms and legs, letting them tell her their meaning, their history. She closed her eyes and listened to them speak.

Her feet, cool and bare and wet, spoke the language of the trees, the rocks, the water. Her feet spoke the darting, scurrying language of the foxes and the squirrels and the snakes; her wiggling toes danced to the songs the birds sang above her in the trees, curling and furling and unfurling to show her support, her love. Her feet did not walk in the woods; her feet swam like fish or flew like owls or ran like wolves. Her feet were tame and still and slow and polite and controlled outside of the woods; within it, her feet were wild and fast and feral, twisting this way and that, moving faster than light across the dirt as she ripped through the trees. Outside of the woods, her feet guided her to wherever her destination would be, but within the woods, it was the woods that instead guided them, and she was helpless to control where it would take her.

The woods spoke to her, and she always listened. She had to listen, she had to hear. So many people refused the word of the woods; even more people paid for it. So many people hated its whispers; they wanted to listen to the contradictory whispers of their own human minds and hearts. Often, they wanted to listen to the whispers of a different type of green, of a green that would fade, as they would all fade. Not Lilia; never Lilia. The word of the woods was the word of the land, of the sea, of the sky, of the air, of the wildlife, of the spring and the summer and the winter and the fall. The word of the woods was god; the word of the woods was holy, anointed, ancient prayer. The word of the woods was judgment; the word of the woods was the beginning and the end.

Even in its stillness, the woods whispered. Even in its stillness, the woods screamed. Even in its stillness, the woods breathed in heaving breaths, up and down, back and forth, all throughout the land. It was alive and brilliantly bright and it was everything, everything supernatural and preternatural and all that laid in between, and it could open up like a hole in the earth and swallow her whole if it so wanted to—but it did not. The woods loved her, and she loved it in return. If it ever did not love her, so be it. She would be powerless to stop this woods from sinking its claws into her flesh and skin, singing to her in chimes and chirps and breezes and in sloshes of water over her feet as she took her last breath; instead, the woods allowed her to walk, to breathe, to live. And so she did. And so she would.

When Lilia listened to the woods, the woods spoke back—always and forever.