Trees Across the Tapestry

Vyredel no longer knew the age of the world.

There had been a time when she and her kind had all but ruled the earth and sky. But now, she wandered the reaches of the Sacred Forest, slow and calm, aimless to her purpose. The only kindred she had left had each found their own ways to wander, burrowing deep into the realms of the forest to hide themselves away. The great rises and falls of the land and trees stretched far overhead, offering shelter from the outside world even for Vyredel’s colossal form. There was a pulse to it all like her own lifeblood. It was her home and haven. For somewhere beyond its borders, her enemies lay still in waiting or in plotting. For that had been the very reason behind its creation so long ago.

She could not remember how long it had been since she’d seen one of her kind, and her days of wandering were full of the comings and goings of a host of other life-spirits beneath her watch, all of them being and living carelessly to the knowledge of what lay beyond the forest. She had begun to wonder how far the forest realms stretched across the world, how far its depths carried into existence. She wondered whether her kin who’d burrowed themselves away would ever return, and felt that the haven which had been theirs now was hers alone.

Far behind her now was the only life which was most sacred to her of all. At the center of all the Sacred Forest there stood a single mighty tree, dwarfing all the great green towers. It was this tree which was the first to explode with blossom into the sky at the Dawning of the forest. Vyredel had spent the turning of her later cycles in the company of this tree, as close to its spirit as a mate’s love. Its roots ran far and wide like a web beneath the earth so deeply that it was intertwined and inseparable from the earth itself, all like one continuously branching life.

Silly, Vyredel thought, that one so ancient as she concerned with the powers that be would keep a favorite tree in all the world.

Now, there were worlds upon worlds between them, hidden within the expanse of the forest she’d traversed in all that time. The grief she carried with her was like a poison stone buried in her heart. The task she took upon herself forever tinged with profound solitude. Except for all the comings and goings of smaller things, she knew there was no one – nothing in the world – which could bring her comfort now. Nothing to keep her company, save for the life which fed the forest itself – the life given so that the forest may be – and her long-buried memories, and the ever-turning cycles of the world.

Vyredel made to seek the very ends of the forest walls which protected her. It was a life like secrecy, the gleam of her armor-like exterior never to shine under the sun again, the rippling layers of deep purple plates displayed over her body forever hidden by the great green towers. Her massive wings had once stretched like a curtain over the sky, and now they were tucked neatly over her spine like a cloak.

How long, she wondered, would she travel across the layers upon layers of hidden realms before she reached the end? Or before she would have to face her enemies again?

Her thoughts began to grow bleak. What if her enemies were already long gone? What if they’d all hidden themselves away to deep realms like the remaining strands of her old company? Or what if they’d been met with some even greater threat, delivering them to their own end of life, and all the world of life as Vyredel had known it was already long passed?

Then there was no need to worry, she thought. Not about anything at all. No need to dwell on the purpose for which she lingered still upon this earth. If these things were so, Vyredel was merely a walking relic. She would have no concerns for the world as it was now. It wouldn’t matter if she lived, nor died, nor vanished.

Yet something in her was willed on still. Whether driven by faith or desperation, she didn’t know. She decided it didn’t matter what was or wasn’t left in the world, or what had become anew in the wake of the great fall. It didn’t matter what purpose what given for her, in this realm or any realm. The only thing that mattered in the whole world was what she chose to do.

And so Vyredel wandered on, never quite knowing where she went or what she sought, nor whether there was anything or anywhere left to be sought at all.

And then one day, Vyredel sensed life.

It was not simply the kind of life that surrounded her – that pulse which flowed through all the Sacred Forest, filling its tree trunks thick as her own body. Not just that which sprouted a host of smaller beings or caused an endless web of foliage to grow within itself. These were the little lives which filled her home and cradled her spirit. What she sensed was something else. A presence which came into her awareness and the sense of her spirit like a stranger. Something distant and foreign. And yet, it pulsed with a life all too similar to the flow of energy Vyredel knew intimately.

What could it have been, so far from the heart of her sanctuary from which all new life bloomed? Had she discovered the hiding place of her enemies so suddenly? What if the world beyond had morphed as into something else entirely, and from its hatred formed some new strange spawn? Or perhaps she’d happened upon a secret dwelling of her kindred, and they would be reunited again?

She knew in her spirit that none of these things were so. The presence of this thing as she sensed it was too distant and alien for any of that.

She began to follow the pulse in her spirit-sense like ripples across a sea. The feeling brushed against her awareness too steadily, as though the source was nearby somehow, closer than she would have imagined. How could she not have sensed it before? Had she been so lost in her own mourning and the aimlessness of her wandering that it had gone unnoticed? She thought it unlikely. Perhaps she’d grown too accustomed to the sacred life which filled the towers, walls, and floors of her green haven, causing her senses to dull with the ages and masking this form of life within itself.

The thought spurned her on. Vyredel chased the source with a renewed sense of strength and will which she’d not felt in a long time. She’d forgotten the feeling of a spark inside her chest which ignited itself now, and neither knew nor cared whether it was hope or fear. All her resolve was channeled forward, nearer and nearer the sensation of new life, washing against her awareness wave after invigorating wave, thrumming like a gathering storm.

The forest went on, growing dense before her. All its overarching limbs pressed close on top of one another and the brush grew over upon itself, as if nothing (that is, nothing near the prominence Vyredel held over the earth) had lived within leagues of this place for a long time, if ever at all.

Suddenly, she saw it.

It couldn’t have been. But she saw it.

Still some ways in the distance before her, a cluster of climbing earth formed a wild cocoon of growth within itself. Standing there, rising high through the center of it, was Vyredel’s sacred tree.

It simply couldn’t be. Her sacred tree was many realms behind her. She’d put that distance there step by heavy step. This was another part of the earth entirely. And yet there it was. Except for the layer of dense earth and foliage which nested around the base of its trunk, it was the very same as she remembered it. It made no sense, even to her.

She summoned the will of her mind together until it was as solid as stone. She waited, feeling the soft waves of the other presence brushing against her spirit’s senses, a steady rhythm like breath on the air.

It was coming from the tree.

She began to approach cautiously. It was like an apparition rising from a dream. Each step rumbled into the earth, and when the sound deadened, she would pause, waiting to detect a change on the air. The pulse of foreign life stayed steady against her, unbothered and unwavering. The closer she drew, the more she was reminded of the tree’s sheer size. The breadth of its trunk spanned wider than the spread of her wings, were she to open them. Its outstretched limbs formed a second canopy far above the first. As her pace grew more eager, she brushed aside whole trees in her path, hopeful not to break them down but unbothered if she did. She delved deeper into the dense growth wound about the base of the trunk, seeing a thousand, thousand little things that reassured her she was, in fact, in another part of the world, all the while certain of the essence held in the tree before her.

The layers of growth began to peel away before her, exposing a small area where the rolling earth met the massive winding roots. The base of the trunk uncovered itself, revealing a cavernous opening within like the maw of a magnificent creature. It gave off a dim glow, like an aura swelling gently across Vyredel’s vision, the smooth flowing rhythm creating a soft thrum on the air like music.

Vyredel wondered if the tree itself was alive, just as her home tree far away, with the same spirit of life which flowed through her own body. With the Dawning of the Sacred Forest, there had come a terrible rip through the fabric of all the world as she knew it, spawning not only the life of the woods, but also the many smaller things that scurried and flew within them. As she pondered, she was struck with the notion that the Dawning had torn through deeper fibers of the world than she’d realized; that somehow the primal force of life which had created it had ripped into another place upon earth, manifesting like a mirror of its other self and disguising its appearance within layers of new growth.

As clear and sudden as a bolt of lightning, her wonderings became knowings. And still, she knew there was something even deeper at work than this.

She wound herself around and beneath the layers of the tree’s hiding, snaking her great form within the bounds so that she could reach the place where the trunk met the earth. The muscles of her long neck bent to her will, bringing her head nearly full inside the trunk’s cavern. The thrumming tone which emanated from inside was a reverent sound. The inner walls were suited with a manner of strange assemblies wrought with products of the earth, as though something had taken up residence inside some time ago, equipped with all it might need to survive. The steady stirring air gave Vyredel the impression of some sort of home dwelling.

And then she saw it.

It was nothing like Vyredel had ever seen before. Vyredel’s head was nearly level to the floor, and it stood perhaps only to the height of her brow. It had four long limbs and a head, like she did, though it bore no wings nor tail, nor did it even have claws. Unlike Vyredel’s long form which ran parallel with the ground, its figure was upright, as though only two of its limbs were meant for walking.

They stared at one another, both of them still as stone. The feeling against Vyredel’s spirit-sense – instead of ripples against a rock – was now like a steady hum of bright light, shaking the air around them softly as one body. The creature had a distinct otherness to it, a nature comprised of threads pulled from some other realm that Vyredel didn’t know. As though all the smaller things of the earth had conspired together, using all that was already from the threads of their own being to weave a new shape among themselves, bestowed with the highness of spirit Vyredel had only ever seen in her own kind.

Vyredel had been witness to all forms of life under the sun and moon since her own Dawning. Yet here was this thing of life she’d never known, solid and defiant to her reasoning, its energy definitive to its own self, and still bound to the spirit which fed all the life of the world, and which flowed now in Vyredel’s own breath.

It should have fled, by all rights, or hidden or begged peace, as so many other creatures had upon Vyredel’s appearance before, all of them fearing her size, her power, her wisdom. But instead, the otherling seemed almost reverent, as if it had been aware of Vyredel’s coming and her power and was prepared to bear witness. Its fright was no more (and no less) than Vyredel's own. The great watcher was flooded with certainty, knowing that this was no creature which merely scurried over the land without ever a mind to question the reason or purpose. There was much more at work behind the gaze of its small eyes.

A feeling struck Vyredel like a split in stone – that despite her power and her sight over the ages of the earth, perhaps she knew less than she thought. It unsettled her deeply. She was sharply aware that the sense of her spirit was mirrored in that of the otherling; their minds stood across from one another in a sea of drifting meanings, each perceiving the other as nothing else possibly could. They were two creatures, lost and alone out in the wild of the world. Neither one of them yet brought hostile desire, but instead amazement, curiosity, and deep wonder. Both of them were moved to their core, to their very sense of being within a forever-greater world outside. The feeling seemed to encapsulate everything that they were, from the moments of their birth and all the circumstances which had allowed them to everything they ever could’ve been in all their interactions without, extending far beyond the bindings of their physical forms.

But despite this commonality, and despite the feeling of fear crawling through her body, she recognized that the otherling was vastly more terrified than she. Wherever it had come from, it seemed to have expected Vyredel’s arrival in some way or another, and now that she was here, the otherling’s senses were overflowing as it tried to comprehend her. How or why it could’ve expected her, Vyredel couldn’t divine. But she knew whatever it was, it felt infinitely more lost in the world than she did.

She brushed through her fear and doubt as a protective desire came over her. She let the outer walls of her spirit-sense drift, so that they grazed reassuringly against the otherling’s, like extending a touch to a wild animal to show she bared it no harm.

The otherling’s senses extended back to her. Even the great Vyredel was taken aback by such a powerful gesture of one so small. It trusted her guidance. She unfolded the hand of her spirit-sense, inviting the other’s gently in. For if either of them were to know the purpose of their meeting, they must open the depths of their beings to one another. Everything contained in all the existence of the other would be revealed. There was no other choice.

Slowly, the otherling’s own spirit sense unfurled itself, accepting Vyredel’s invitation. Instead of standing like stone amidst a sea, the outer walls of each other’s awareness peeled back like mist. All the truth of one another’s essence was unveiled. A spectacle of sensation swept over the pair of them like a storm, so strong that it laid bare the innermost spaces of their beings and sent them to the outermost reaches of all the realms of the world.

Vyredel reached her spirit-sense out and took hold of the other, as though to pull it underneath the protection of her wings beneath the storm. The enormity of the experience was enough to cause her own spirit to quake with revelation. Huddled in their awareness together, the pair gazed out upon a flurry of their minds as it swirled through them and around them, like watching the stories of a thousand different worlds passing before them.

It was as if Vyredel saw plainly all the truth that ever was or would be. She saw that the otherling truly had come from a distant world, too far away for Vyredel to ever touch or gaze upon with her eyes. She saw that this being was as significant to that world as Vyredel was to her own. She saw that this distant world was to hers like some kind of descendant, as though the fabric woven through Vyredel’s world was a tapestry over all things, and from that tapestry rose patterns from the weavings like star patterns in the sky. New patterns were formed from the weavings of those patterns, and so on and so on. Vyredel saw all the intricate and complicated truths of them all. There was a pulse which fed through all the tapestry – the same force which had woven her life and all she knew, and which had woven countless other depths of life hidden within and without.

The otherling had come to be – somehow – through just one such pattern, its own nature both separate from the tapestry and yet impossible without it. It stood at the crux of its entire weaving; the fate of its design hinged upon the fate of itself. The beginning and the end fed one another in beautiful and strange twists, tied directly to the life and death of this creature.

Together, Vyredel and the otherling were the creations of two wholly other existences, come together to reveal the connection between. Like fruits spawned at vastly separate ends of some far-reaching roots from a tree which stood at the center of all things.

The notion gripped Vyredel. Clarity swept over her like the eye of the storm.

A tree at the center of all things.

The tree standing shelter over them now. The tree which Vyredel had called home, which had marked the birth of the Sacred Forest, long left behind. Even Vyredel couldn’t see how it was possible, simply that it was so. One was inherently tied to the other. Two separate monuments of two separate worlds, somehow one and the same, standing like a gateway at either end of its being.

Vyredel and the otherling; it was the very same between them. Two cruxes of separate existences, each inexplicably tied to the other.

It was the only way Vyredel could make sense of their meeting. If the Dawning of the Sacred Forest had ripped so deeply through all the depths of the world, something of that force which had twisted patterns from the fabric had brought them here together. What she could see clearly was that all the energy she had ever put forth and all the energy which ever would be may have been as mere ripples on the sea, but if only enough to affect the creation or change of design across the world’s tapestry. Indeed, a ripple may be enough to change the nature of the tapestry itself. The when of it all had no consequence. The where of it all was only circumstance. The tapestry of the world was an endless swirling sky of the light of intersecting stars.

Breath flowed through Vyredel’s body like surging water. The hand of her spirit-sense furled softly around the otherling’s, cradling it inside from the flurry as though into the safety of sleep’s darkness.

Vyredel was at a loss. What was she to do knowing all this truth? Knowing the depths of reality, and the appearance of perception within those depths? What could the world expect this otherling to do, so small and afraid and alone? For in the enormous scale of what she had witnessed, Vyredel saw that this creature was little more than a child.

One so young and so powerless, she thought, who holds all the world’s power.

The bright sensation subsided. The feeling of all the moving pieces settling back into place, ready to flow in their proper directions. Indeed, now Vyredel saw that she cradled the otherling against her, its entire form rested within the nest of her claw, and it slept there full of peace.

She felt the warmth of her sacred home tree within her heart. For as long as she had been the world, for all the ages passed under her wing, it was clear there was still much that Vyredel herself did not understand. What direction their patterns would wind from here, she did not know. Whether a new Dawning was yet to come, or what wondrous designs may be wrought from it, she did not know. What she did know is that the two of them now walked the same ground, that they had only each other with which to discover the answers, and that she would not abandon the otherling to that great void like an open sea. It would be her duty – to all the world and to all the worlds that might be, even if it would be hers alone – to protect and guide it.

Knowing these things, for the first time since she could remember, Vyredel set aside her deep wisdom, and she closed her eyes to prepare for a long sleep.