Another

Another

There was another.

I've heard of her.

She walks with a careful limp. Stray eyes slip and forget her at first glance.

But I see straight through her.

She's an unknown.

She's an angel.

Not in the strictest sense of the word.

But an angel of The Wood.

I've watched her mend a burnt gash in bark, breathe life into a drooping toadstool.

Call on the earth and grow a dozen black roses in the dead of December.

Just because she could.

I've seen her smile the way people do when they think they're alone.

Except I was watching and she could only assume paranoia at my presence.

Tick tick tick went her intuition but she tamped it with a shaky smile.

She'll tack it as waylaid anxiety.

And why shouldn't she? 

She is young and will forget the unsettling moment.

And I'll be a distant call of a crow.

Echoed and forgotten. 

Every morning before the sun warms my back she's here.

Talking to the brush and young flower buds. 

With every rise and fall the air simmers and the ground stills.

Dust lays down and trees lean in to listen.

She murmurs to the roses now,

smiling as they wave to and fro with her words. 

They love her because she holds magic.

Old magic not seen for centuries and certainly not in this wood. 

Her kind is what makes places like this breathe. 

Angels look after woodlands and stand to mitigate when man and nature merge. 

But she doesn't know.

She doesn't yet understand her purpose. 

I see her pick up a branch from the ground with a frown.

Shaking it with eyes alight she calls for it to return.

I see it wobble and hover to a tree. 

Bright yellow shimmers where branch meets bark. 

It has done what was asked of the angel. 

But why does she ignore a dying tree?

Her age is what sews her ignorance. 

No one soul can hold her accountable for that.

Only time will teach her to grow learned.

Still I cannot help but cast blame on this green caretaker.

All I asked was for her to turn around.

But she is too young to see. 

Kicking the wet needles she ponders her power.

Furrowing her brow in thought. 

She's timid now, not one in twenty, but that is now.

Given time she will grow and so will her abilities.

But I can barely see her anymore, my bark is crusted.

Even my hearing is muffled now.

All I can make out is my crackled breathing with each wind stroke.

Caressing my dying branches. 

I've tried to call to her.

Many nights I allowed the small owl to speak for me.

Other nights the wind itself to no avail. 

My case was settled and I was to meet the earth for one final time.

At last one dim day in Spring I see her eyes.

Speckled green blue droplets burning with intensity.

She puts her face so close to mine.

"How had I not seen you Old One?"

Her voice is strong and steady but those eyes are wet.

Her eyes give everything away. 

And they tell a sad story.

For years she played with it.

Her gift.

Never stopping to ask why.

Never thinking.

Never looking about her.

And now she would reap penance. 

I can see her regret glazed in her eyes.

She is now six and twenty. 

And I see she is no longer timid.

I said that wouldn't last didn't I?

Even so it is too late.

And we both know it.

Yet she whispers to me, almost song like.

Hair as brown as my bark furls and unfurls with the wind.

This gentle wind called upon by her power.

And I can feel my eyes grow soft.

I can taste the smoothness of my bark.

One last harvest before the long winter.

Stained glass leaves lying to transfixed eyes of their death.

She opens her palm to me. I am taken by the green pine cone 

wrapped ever so tightly; looking as shy and she once was.

"I ask that you forgive me and allow me to sustain your legacy." 

Placing a soft kiss she buries the cone a couple yards from me.

She hits a root but I say nothing.

I was not forgotten.

I won't be forgotten.

With a soft intake of breath and decent of her eyelids she murmurs:

"Rest Old One. I release you."

And what else is an old tree like me to do?

I obey the angel.