The Index
Chapter 5: In Which Seed Meets His Shadow



Seed could feel his body changing, the knots of his muscles become the grain or green wood. He didn’t care. All he could think as he listened to his own voice writing his faults into the clear night air, pounding him with all the things he had always worried were true, was
Please…Payton, Twin Gods, Anyone… Help me. He opened his eyes into the darkness.

A poppy fell very slowly from the heaven, light as a feather. The wind caught it and cradled it in its arm. Even in the dark night, it was blindingly red – the sweet red of a rising sun, or clouds at sunset. It was the red of a tongue, or lips ready to kiss. The petals were soft and thin, lit by a light from within so each thing vein glowed. Seed didn’t know how to interpret it – poppies had always been flowers of hope to him, hope and first love, new life, sweet kisses. But poppies, as he always said, were funeral flowers – the death of hope, the end of life – for funerals and ghosts. Poppies were the flowers of dreams, the younger brother of death. As it fell, teetering this way and that, he couldn’t decide what it meant that it was.

As it reached the ground, it exploded into a bomb of poppy stalks, into a circle of red light that banished all the shadows and made the forest lit by day once more. Standing there were two great deer, one delicate and red, one masculine and gold, but somehow also exactly one deer larger than either.

“You have called,” said The Red. “We have answered,” said The Gold.

“What is this?” “what?” “what?” The trees chorused in surprise.

((Yeah, I know. Two parts in one day. But I wrote this story almost just to write this.))

The Index
Chapter 4: In Which We See That While Squirrels May Be Evil, Butterflies Are Usually Lawful Good.



As Seed climbed the Twin God’s Hill, the sun set behind him. His shadow walked ahead of him as if it were checking the hill for pitfalls. The light bathed the world in changing colors – it had been red a little while ago, but had since shifted to mauve, making everything it touched a little darker. The Hill seemed much bigger, climbing it in this place, this land-before-lands. It felt like a mountain, disguised as a hill and covered in tall plants with big leaves. As he walked, those plants broke up his shadow into a thousand little fragments.

The trees around him rustled, “You’re getting slower. You cannot make it.” “Cannot.” “Cannot.”

He picked up his hooves in defiance, moving into a quicker trot. “I. am going. Home. Whether you like it, or not.”

“Home? Where’s that?” A voice came out of the earth – a rustling voice, but also a real one. It had a somewhat sad air to it – an older deer’s voice, though not an old one’s yet. It had the gentle sounds of a whistling mask mixed in – and it dawned on Seed that the voice he was hearing was his own, coming from his shadows and the trees.

“It’s where my friends are,” Seed answered, looking down. He had always been a little obsessed with light and shadow, the same way as he was obsessed with greenery.

The Index
Chapter 3: In Which Seed Forgets His Greek Mythology, With Unfortunate Results



“Why are you doing this?” In her stillness, The Oak knew many things. Her branches were as wide as the sky, and through them, she saw the world. So she turned to her fellow trees, who had once, every last one of them, been acorns on her branches, and asked. “What on earth do you hope to gain from the little thing?”

“We want to gain nothing.” “We want to gain.” “To Gain.” “To Gain.”

“Cut the bull.” The Oak stared them all down. “What do you want him for?”

“Want him? What makes you think,” said the trees with an innocent tone, “that we want him?” “Want him.” “Want him.” “Want!”

“Your back-up singers are singing a different tune,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Tell me. Is it to start sapping all the deer from the forest? Or is he some sort of funky tree messiah? Stop me if I’m getting close.”

In the distance, the Oak could hear the trickling river and the croaking of frogs. There wasn’t even the sound of real rustling, the wind moving through the trees. They were silent and still as stone. No leaves fell in the forest, for a second; no flowers, either.

“We want…to know,” they whispered, in truly perfect unison. “We want to know his life. To know doing. To know running, and soft touches of friends. What we are missing.”

The oak struggled for something to say to that. She knew those longings – how could she not, watching deer move in and out of her, cuddling close in the rain, dancing around her? They were so pretty and bright, like little stars.

This is an official index of my ongoing story, Seed's story. I am not very good at thinking up titles. This will eventually include all chapters and other required reading, and if there's any illustrations or other related stuff, I'll put it here, too:
Oh, and Commentary, now that the story's over. Skip over the italics if this is your first read-through, I'd advise.

[center]Before You Get Started: Required Reading

A Forest Fairytale
Seed's backstory, in fairytale format. Since this story is all about the consequences of his backstory, and working through the issues of identity and home that this creates, it is essential that you have a rough idea of the story.

Prologues

The Near Prologue
Note that this prologue was written over a year before the rest of the story; as a result, it's only vaguely connected. The only skippable part.
Despite being skippable, I don't cringe...much... when I read this. It sets up the basic conflict of the story pretty well. I only went and called it "the near prologue" after writing the "distant" one. I abandoned it for over year because I didn't know where to go. The basic steps were the same -- I knew I wanted Seed to go outside the ordinary bounds of the Forest, but from there...eh?

The Distant Prologue
[i]This is one of the three chapters for which I wrote this entire story: I nearly did it as a comic, but decided against it a while back. This is much cooler anyway, right? ...yeah, right. Still, I like the idea of deer having to pick their names out from the void. I deliberately withheld the answer here so the answer to the question in the penultimate chapter would still be a little surprise -- but not too much of one.

Chapter 2: In Which Resistance Is Futile




He had been walking for what felt like forever; the trees hadn’t tried talking to him again. The Oldest Forest was as lovely as he remembered it. Like the forests where deer wandered, it always seemed to be Spring here. Only someone making careful observation, only someone dreaming slowly, could see the difference. So here, the trees were always soaked in white blooms that drifted in front of his face as he walked like snowflakes falling around him. In the places where the light shone red and the flowers stopped falling, it felt like autumn; in the places where the blooms were too high up to see, it was summer. But Spring was everywhere, tangible as air.

If he weren’t trapped against his will and lost, Seed would have been awestruck by it, even after the near eternity he had spent there, once. His neck hurt, his head felt heavy. He walked with blocks of ice for legs, not bending so much as folding to let him fall, and then catching him before he hit the ground. Somehow, this moved him along. His golden eyes vanished behind his heavy lids, as he struggled to stay on a side of conciousness. He had to stay awake, awake until he reached home. He kept repeating that idea in his head. Then he heard a rustling – not the trees speaking, but something moving in the bushes. His ears perked up as he turned his head.

“Why, hello there, Mister. I haven’t seen the like of you before,” a little voice said. Out of the bushes emerged a little brown squirrel with bright green eyes the color of spring leaves. “What are you supposed to be?”

“I’m a deer…I’m lost, actually. I don’t live in this…place,” he finished, lamely.

Chapter 1: In Which A Question is Asked Repeatedly and Our Hero Arrives in the Setting



“We have brought you home,” the trees said. “Homethey repeated – it wasn’t just one tree speaking, but almost all of them – all the ones that weren’t quite individuals, all the ones whose roots were wrapped around each other in tangles. “Home.” “Home.”

“No, you took me away from home,” Seed said. He looked around for a path out of this forest, which existed above and below the time of deer. It stretched as endlessly as the forest he had left.

“Home is where you belong. Come back to us,” the trees chorused. “Back to us.” “Us, us.” “Belong to us.” The rustled it along his spine, dropping the words like rocks in his brain, where they hit the walls of his skull and rebounded. It almost felt like they were ringing bells in his head. “Belong.”

“…I’ve chosen a different path,” Seed answered, looking down at the ground. They were there, too, but at least he didn’t have to look at them. The knots in the bark of the trees that surrounded him resembled great eyes, like the eyes of an owl. They were eyes, without giving the trees eyes, without ceasing to be bark. Trees without full wills of their own were simple – they could withstand being contradictions like that.

“A bad path,” the trees replied. “A lonely path,” they added. “Lonely?” “Lonely?” They rustled a bit, whispering too low for him to make out. They seemed to be gathering up for strength, for unity. “A bad path can be walked backwards on. Try again.” “Again.” “Again.”

“No,” Seed said.

A Duel Amongst Flowers

They dance in a cyclone of violet;
the petals rip off their antlers
and slide from the swift motion.
The dancers move as if on a breeze
that carries the clatter of hooves and antlers.
It is silent, hot as the sirocco
and cool as the wind that carries the aurora
in the flash of the startled butterflies.
The flowers fall around them, but are lifted up
as they rear, swayed by the motion of their bodies.
Their antlers rise, their heads lower --
Somehow, they scratch the heavens and the earth
and bring to them the scent of falling flowers.

((This has been an oddly intro-less visit to Seed's Poetry Corner. Collect them all!))

[=#006400]
"My wife." That was the phrase I thought. It repeats quietly weighing its expectations up against my own mind. It feels pressing like a lead weight. Like love, it halts my breath. And I thought it.

I had met up with Nevilly -- she was miniaturized today. It suited her. She looked so delicate, like a butterfly made of glass with wings as thin as the horizon. She greeted me, and she and (I assume) a friend of hers and I sat down. He sadly took the best place by her side, and I went to sit next to her in the tree she was under. As the third party got up and said his goodbyes, I thought, "Well, at least now I can sit by my wife without being in a tree to do it." And then it occured to me what words had just run through my head. I didn't say "my lover," or "my sweetheart," "my little snowblossom," or "my dear leman." I went through all the words I could have said in my head: paramour, mate, girlfriend...No, I had thought wife.

Should I be thinking 'wife'? It's not an institution not common in the forest...but I think it does still have meaning. I love Nevilly, I always will now... but this is...scary. It's huge. It means things I'm not sure I know how define -- and this, more than love, may change the basic shape of my life.

And if I'm wrong...Would I even know it? I could destroy what we have by putting too much pressure on it, or her feelings could die (I sometimes don't know why she loves someone like me in the first place) -- and there would be no honorable way out that wouldn't be so exposed, so clean, so ragged like a great red wound. I'd never have the courage for it again. It may be better to keep things simple. The list goes on forever...

The scales teeter uneasily, even as we talk about old nightmares and deep memories. Even as we lie together and fall asleep wrapped around one another...On one side, all these objections, my uncertainty, the weakness of my heart, the abuses of time. On the other...is her smile.

[=#006400]
Last night started out...oddly. I was sitting alone for a while when Saosin showed up. He bowed, and I bowed back. Then he sniffed me and gave me a nuzzle, and offered to sit next to me by the riverbank. I have never much cared for Saosin -- he and I have, in the past, had less-than-pleasant encounters before. But, given that he is close to Nevilly, and that I have no serious grudge against him, I've always made it a point to be civil, and I've always felt he probably felt the same way. Other than a brief greeting the other day, this is really the first not group-motivated gesture of friendship he's offered me, or I him. As odd as it was, it also felt very nice. I've been feeling rather lonely since I got back; I haven't really seen anyone. I had been hoping Scape would arrive, or someone, but was actively planning on just sitting there, and was probably just going to end up feeling sorry for myself. If I had sat there on my own, I likely would have starting thinking very foolish, self-indulgent things. Things I know enough of the shape of to take a stab, but I'd feel awful saying and knowing that anyone, even people who would have no understanding of what I was saying, would read it. It was very nice, having him sit beside me. I think I see a bit more of what many of my friends see in him, which is nice on its own. I think that if things continue this way, we can be friends.

Then Scape arrived, waking up a little quicker than he usually does. I asked Saosin to excuse me as I went to greet my friend. While he had gotten up quickly, we were both feeling very calm today. Rather than our usual ruckus, we elected to have a slow walk through the forest, moving slow enough that the forest seemed full of the minutest things – where each tree or sunbeam had several faces to show us as we moved by.

The Distant Prologue



Seed sat beneath the willow at the place where the river widened out into the pond, looking along the edge of the shore. He wasn’t composing a diary or a poem in his head – but he was hoping, a little. The water stretched out glistening blue, sleek as rain dripping off the soaking body of a deer. Seed’s eyes focused, scanning for a body that could appear. He focused on a group of rocks by the lakeshore, a depression in the mud. A collection of dragonflies circled over it casually. He sighed. Things were so much happier, once. But he had always said that, except maybe when he was a fawn. And if he had remembered then what he remembered now, would he have said it just the same?

“Were things so much happier then? Are you happy now?” A voice formed out of the rustling of leaves in the breeze. It wasn’t exactly a voice – it was just a pattern in the rustling, a feeling shaking its way down through his mind.

“I’ve been sitting here too long.” He stood up and began to walk his way through the forest.

“Are you…afraid of your answer?” The trees stood like enclosing walls around him as they asked that. It seemed to echo strangely, so he was asked again and again, “Are you afraid?” “Are you?” “ Afraid?”

He paused his trot and looked up at them. His eyebrows, hidden beneath the soft near-velvet of his mask, lowered. He tossed his head, shaking loose a few purple flowers. Then he picked up his hooves and dashed ahead in a flying leap. At once, energy flowed into his body as he became, to the green landscape, an equally green flash.