Winterspring

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. For as long as her name had been Stillness, the Valley grew flush with assorted pine, cedar, and the occasional maple. Cherry blossoms sprinkled the deep greens in the spring, while deer, raccoons, bobcat, and coyote ran fleet and nimble over soft beds of rotting leaves and needles.

In those times, Stillness did not know how long she had been. Time stood still for her, as she slumbered in the very rock of the craggy mountain crests that ran in a long and jagged edge around the Valley. In her deepest dreams Stillness felt the relay of emotions through the root-mesh of the forest, in the shrill cries of the birds of prey, and in the unending chatter of insects and assorted rodents. Her breath formed the soft mists that wreathed the ring of peaks around the Valley. When Stillness had her slumber terrors those same mists turned into dark clouds that spat electric spears. When Stillness felt the tenderness of a doe toward her fawn, or the glee of rambunctious raccoon kits, her breath mists shimmered rose-gold. When the dreams of Stillness caused her to grieve, the mountains shuddered and the mists released their chill damp into the Valley forest below.

How long had it been this way? Stillness lived only in her dreams and did not know. She only responded to the forest in the Valley below. She had no thoughts. Stillness grew layer upon layer of moss and lichen and forgot who she was.

But the trees knew well who she was, for the memory of trees expands with their rings and is passed through generations of germinating seeds. Their root taps had threaded up and over the rock and absorbed the substance of centuries of her dreams: and they decided long ago to let Stillness lie in peace. They decided this for two reasons: first, injured creatures need rest and rest did not cost the trees; and second, they knew the heart of Stillness…and understood that when Stillness woke, as she was destined to do, there would be no end of activity, possibly of the furious sort too. Since trees are lazy and dislike unnecessary movement – especially on a grand scale – they decided that Stillness should sleep uninterrupted for as long as she needed, if not more. Their root-mesh systems all agreed: let the sleeping dragon lie.

For centuries Stillness slept in the jagged crests of the mountains ringing the Valley, while the Valley forest reigned below. She was an immense stretch of gray and mossy rock, exposed to the elements, unthinking, uncaring, and healing under the expanses of lichen and scrub that clung to her back. And so she lay for all that time, until one day in one late winter, when without warning she suddenly tore herself out from the rock itself, shaking her scales and mane free of massive clumps of snow, ripping away the tendrils of the Valley that had found their way into her slumber all those years, stretching her claws and gaping her maw…and ceased being Stillness.

When the creature formerly known as Stillness sprang forth without warning that late Winter the Valley froze in terror: they’d never witnessed such an enormous creature. They’d never imagined such a thing as Magic. They had never seen Rage. Deer shivered in the underbrush and bears trembled in their dens. Every creature of every size found someplace to hide.

The sight of Winterspring rising into the blizzard-sky, flashing her claws and shaking her mane set the entire Valley into panic. It locked itself down tight. Fish refused to spawn, birds did not start their nests, and the bears? They never left their dens. There were no rounded does looking forward to Spring fawns. The Valley was failing to thrive, and so the trees stepped in.

They knew Winterspring before she’d been Stillness. They knew her story, and they knew her pain. They even knew why she’d leaped so suddenly from the snow-covered mountain crests that contained their peaceful Valley. They repented their lack of forethought and regretted their laziness. With a great burst of energy and speed hitherto unseen in the world of flora they set about sending flashes of their insights through the root-mesh system…relaying their glimpses and understandings to the insects, to the birds, and to any living creature that came into contact with them.

What now follows is no more and no less than the urgent communications of those Valley trees. They tell the story of the beginning of a new world riding on the back of a long-lost world. They tell the story of the overcoming and becoming of a dragon. They foretell the future of a Valley that would be teaming with dragons.