[=darkgreen]

Today, I ran into Sage. I had promised during the recent fit of rains that on the next time I should see her when the sun was bright, she and I would go feather-hunting. She wants a collection like the one her mother apparently had, and I felt it in my duty to help. Besides a fun way to while away the time.

So when we met, after the briefest moment of indecision (she and I are alike, I think, in that we both wait for the other to act), we set off. We circled around and around the trees, trying to spot a bird's nest or where one rested for a moment, perhaps dropping a feather here or there. We brushed against the bark time after time, circling. The sunlight and the airy nature of our quest had us bounding, my heart soaring, my steps bucking and skipping against the shimmering surface of the land. The path of light and the path of birdsong were one, and we wished to catch the place where both fell to earth.

I rather want to write a poem about it, once the words stop swirling around and become pinnable, collectable like a fallen feather, drifting down… And for the light that came on her face when I spotted one, a white dove feather cradled in the roots of the trees. It made the air sweet, her smile, our ectstatic gasps of surprise: we had both gone looking, but not expected to find. We hopped into the birch forest, hoping to see another, since the birds were thick in the air and darting around the ground, flashing their red or blue-tinted wings. As they flitted underfoot, at the foot of a birch, we found the feather of a red-winged blackbird, fallen from a nest in the high treetops. This was added to her collection, and as we scampered, giddy in our success, towards De Drinkplaats.

We found no feathers, but chased each other as squirrels and bathed in the fountain, darting in and out of the little hidden overlay in the back, hiding there with our whiskers touching.

The Forest For the Trees

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Seed didn’t really like idea of fighting something. A beetle made of fire eating the trees, his swarm swelling out behind him like a cape… He liked the idea of fighting that even less.
”So,” He cleared his throat and asked, ”Where is he?”

”On the outer edge of the world” “The outer edge” “The edge” The trees rustled between them. Seed sighed and deadpanned. Ultimately, that was pretty vague – he wasn’t even sure if the Forest had an edge: it always seemed, to him, to loop back in on all its little private worlds, its secret folded self… But there didn’t seem to be an edge.
”…More specificaaallly?”
”Follow. We will guide you.”

The branches in the canopy rustled, raining green leaves down onto the ground. They fell around Seed like snow as he walked forward, each tree carrying a signal for the next one on the path to shake. It seemed a very long way from his home to where the beast prowled, and he went further into -- or out of -- the forest, until he was not sure he knew his way back. Well, I suppose the way back is forward, he mused as he stared over the landscape, all newer growth here, all underbrush and gaps of bright light that was alien relative to the deeper woods where the deer dwelled.
Seed moved without worry through the underbrush, his legs and the brambles just passing through each-other, with the soft string sound of the forest’s magic.

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The creature’s joints creaked, and the fire surged through them, and filled them with the strength to hold up the armored being. The flame that ran along its mandibles reached its way around the trunk. He closed his jaws; the trunk shattered to the pressure and the heat. The air around the creature was alive with the pale trembling of the heat off his armored back, and the swarm of beetles that followed it around, floating in the air like bombers and clinging to its legs as it trampled through the wood.

It halted at the tree. This was not like the other trees. It was a pine tree, completely straight. In the dark woods, it pulsed with foreign magic, endless magic. Magic that, as the monster stripped the bark and burnt and ground the wood away, dripped from the tree like sap into its fiery mouth.

Its black eyes glittered in the fire-light, and the swarm around it buzzed. The drone rose higher and higher into the night.

That foreign tree…Was so delicious. The forest where it came from… The darkness behind the creature’s eyes urged it onward.

[=#006400]
She must have thought me very silly. I was working on the final poem for the scavenger hunt (Hooves crossed it goes well; it turns out I have one less poem than I thought I did. Oh dear.) when Sage arrived, to see me muttering and pacing. She didn’t laugh… But as I explained my woes to her, the idea formed and struck me like lightning, the words a pitter-patter of rain in my heart. When I write a poem, I admit it: I am not thinking. Not in the way that I think normally. All the parts of me that worry and fret move aside, and what moves in me is pure words. It’s editing when the thought comes back. Still, to spend so long pacing, and then be over in so little time…That’s odd to watch, isn’t it?

Still, when we were done, we went dancing again. The strange dancing, the slow-dancing that I showed her once; we’d both been thinking about it. We began to try and work out some signals – follow me, for example. In fact, that’s our only example. Just as the thoughts began to slide into the movement, into the cardinal-flush of her fur, into delightful play of language made of eye contact and a nod of the head, the first and truest language of the forest…
A little fawn came up. We happily danced with him, and until a second one came running, we even made a small attempt to show off our dancing to an audience – I wonder if the little fellow thought it strange?

But with two fawns, there’s no way we could focus long enough to do much more. We quickly fell to just goofing around, running and hopping in circles, gaining and shedding fawns like leaves. I think at most, we had 3 with us at a time, and total, we had 4; we’d occasionally stop to cast some antler magic, or take a break for me to sit and take a note or two for this entry.
I didn’t know their names, and for that, I’m sad.

Seed had been pondering this for months: do another scavenger hunt? Well, it was not so much if he should, but if he could; could he find enough places? Enough poems? Well, he felt he had, in the end. He had worked and pondered and, at last, he had found enough poems.

As before, he took a great strip of birchbark and a berry-ink on his antler-tips of his own design, and he wrote out a note in the language of the deer. He left it unsigned; anyone who didn't know that he wrote last time wouldn't know who wrote it.

He liked it better when people didn't know he wrote it.

And it said:


[=#006400]
[center]To All Dear Forest-Dwellers:

In the interest of letting poetry be as it was meant -- a surprise look at the world, a delight to reach and understand, and a part of the community -- I have gone forth once again and spread some of my poems throughout the forest, with each poem tied to its location. To each poem, I will release clues. Should you fail to find it, you may just find another clue to its location. I will release them gradually, so that I will be able to preserve them for my collection in case no one decides to hunt them out. Each wave of poetry will get, ideally, harder to find: you who can find the last poem will, without question, truly know the forest. You'll have truly gone and looked around, and been fully aware of this world. I applaude you, and applaude you all who love treasure hunts and pretty words.

I hope you find them as unexpected treasures.

[=#006400]
Yesterday morning, I did not plan to do much at the time; I planned to go and get some candles, as I heard that there was someone (alas, I cannot recall their romanized name, only their pictogram and their kindness) offering to summon up some new ones from the annals of history.
Time is never quite time here -- I blink, and the magic about me acts as if it were yesterday... Provided, as so often happens with candles, I remember to do so before yesterday becomes the day before yesterday. So, a stranger reaching even further back, with magic I lack... it is sometimes quite impressive indeed. I met the deer upon the rocks, and he cast them on me, where they sat, waiting for the shift in weather and in light to give them flame...
I'd have gone on my way, if I hadn't have noticed Sage awakening in the distance.

I rushed to meet her, and for a time we twirled about in the flowers where she meditates, light as butterflies, our laughter rising up like flower petals. There's a sort of meditation to motion; the mind lifts and empties in the delight of the body, and everything becomes a momentary snapshot, like an artist's reference of a walk-cycle, an artist's version of a cycle of feeling; frozen in a shutter-click portrait moment. And so it came that we were running over the hills, cycling around...
Until I called for a brief break to catch my breath. Once I'd regained it, I suggested that we do something I'd been putting off for a while: take a walk to see, in careful detail, the forest in the light...
Of planning another poetry scavanger hunt. So we walked, and I considered my options as the fall of the light through the canopy revealed this secret or that, this idea or another; was this odd bed of ferns too obscure? Was this structure or that too obvious? It is all appreciable, all-inspiring, or so it seemed as Sage and I picked our way through it.


We wandered to the ruins, where everything is special, singular, and distinct.

I'm planning on re-doing Seed's bio very soon...Or, at least, making some sort of improvements to it.
So, I figure one thing that will help with this is actually getting all my fan-art, character appearances in stories, and other stuff in one place. So, if anyone has ever written him into a story, or done some sort of fan-work (art, writing, whatever) for Seed, could you check if you're on the list in his bio, and if not, let me know and supply a link for me?

His Bio, for reference.

Thank you in advance!

I was visited by my daughter tonight in the rain... I may not be the most reliable father, but I at least wanted to share my love in a poem. I always treasure our time together.

Infinite Complexity


A little riddle to unravel
a little arrow flying through time
darting seemlessly in and out
of my field of vision,
like a white cloud of bird in the summer sky.

Or a sudden peal of sun
on a day I thought was rainy --
unexpected, pounding down
in the effervescence of air motes
and the sudden golden glow across my heart --
somehow never quite a shock, somehow
never less than a miracle:


The feeling, just when I
had abandoned that feeling --
of turning and seeing
that something still nests
in my branches; something's grown
up through the treefalls to stand
in the clearing at my side --



It's really,
very, quite
Complex.

((Warning: Today Seed is both angsty and a bit more sweary than normal. Also, man, it's been a while.))

So, there's a bit of a thing going around, huh? Well, I've given it some thought, and I'm tired of keeping quiet. It's time to say some things, and they may not be kind. A lot of people might be upset.


*deep breath*

...I think I need to hug everyone. I don't know why. I read all these posts, and I come away feeling like a lot of people -- maybe everyone -- needs a hug.
You know, you're all pretty much cool folks, and I don't think anyone has anything to want to hide or delete or be ashamed of. And you know what? It's OK to like what you like and don't like what you don't like, and it's OK to maybe ask that people think and moderate themselves every now and again (provided this, too, is done with thinking and moderation), too.
It's all OK, OK?
You're all OK, OK?
*hugs*

(* Warning: Thoughts may not be well-thought out at all)