Elegy for the Lost Woods
Oh, my poor, poor Lost Woods. My beautiful, emerald green forest. It's alright. You're only sleeping.
Look at you now, my beauty. What has that awful, evil man done to you that you stand withering and sapped under his shadow? What little I have left to cherish of you seems so frail, so helpless; your leaves and trees have become stale and brittle; your grand and beautiful oaks cast down into the dirt. Your dark, proud, shining wooden towers and verdant greens washed away to the grey rains in the dark of this longest night. Nothing left of you but shells of splintering and flaky grey bark, falling from you like you used to shed your leaves at the passing of the seasons, when our long yellow summers used to turn into warm, crisp amber and life would begin again; but where has your life gone? It has vanished where you stand, snatched, ruined.
It's ok, though. You're only asleep. Resting, for as long as you need to be before you wake again and the sun rises and parts our clouds. Please wake again. Please don't be gone. I love you so much.
What can I do alone? The other children are terrified and nothing I say or do can stem their tears and it makes me shake and weep like your oaks in the storm. Their poor hearts are sick with terror, with sleepless nights the order of countless days. They used to be so full of happiness and warmth, and the days of summer were long without a care in this little corner of the world; but now the night is as long as the old summers and nothing can break the clouds but rain and great, brilliant clashes of thunder; terrible...but brilliant...
The storms bring blazing white fire burning the skies to charred ebony black embers, so loud the noise could split apart the world and the children scream and shout, scattering like the hare that has caught a tall Hylian eye too aware of what may come after. Then the cloud embers settle like smog, smothering the land below in pitch darkness. Amongst it, between children, young children fearing death, of all the things for a child to shiver and shake about, my home is burning in the dark...
My friends, my family, the people I love, are spoken to in a cruel, lashing, fiery tongue, billowing black smoke; my trees are struck by white thunder, collapsing defeated, falling so helplessly on the forest floor that sonic booms are sent for miles; and all of it with such violence, such blue profanity; and to think of the poor children's screams of terror and their cold sweat wrapped in choking black fumes and fire brings a hot tear. Slowly, I feel more, coming like the relief of rain in summer heat. Oh, where are your greens and the sweet breath of your breezes now, my beautiful secret place? Why do you sleep so deeply? My face burns like the fire, and my body quivers like leaves adrift in autumn wind; but, suddenly, there is old wisdom in me, coming like harsh whispers on cold wind in the dark places.
You might be asleep forever; and I might be alive for the rest of time to watch, and wait, and have my hope just fade away. I never believed that kind of cruelty could exist; but then I remember why the children cried on that terrible day more than seven years ago when the news spread like the fires. They blamed that poor, lost little boy because that awful, evil man came and withered our eldest and wisest tree until his last leaves fell from his branches and he shrivelled up and died, when we all thought nothing ever could. Yes, now I remember, so clearly. We have no God now.
Oh, my poor, forsaken sanctuary. You sleep so quietly, your trees and your leaves and the wind sending the sounds of my own sorrow back on the breeze like the call of evensong, or the ringing and fading through the woods; so quiet and peaceful that I could think it asleep, not dead. Even as the trees wither away and smoulder in dying embers and the heat gives way to the cold and decayed leaves collapse to the ground as I hide here, under a once mighty fallen bark amidst the storms, fires and rain. I watched the world burn, and yet, I wonder to myself, my eyes giving away some glimmer of hope.
The forest is just sleeping. Is he sleeping now, too?
I remember, all those years ago, when I first saw him, he was sleeping. The little baby boy with grit in his blonde hair and dirt on his tiny face, who smelled of the outside. All those wonderful, exotic scents. The hot, smoky cordite of burning fire and the copper tang of blood that lingered in the mouth after, and mortar seared by flame. There was that other smell, too the one that always followed so close behind all the others. All the other children could smell it, all of them, and they never knew what it was. Not until now, when that whole miasma seems so familiar.
Death.
The forever boys and the eternal girls, something inside them recoiled when that little boy was pulled into their little pocket of verdant green, tucked away in a magical place at the very edge of the world, away from the stink of barbarity and treachery and slaughter and the noise of big people in a fight; and he and the big girl he was with, the one that had his eyes and his blonde hair, and that poor, strange face of hers, that pretty, damaged face all mixed up full of new colours. Dirty black soot through golden hair, brown dirt on white skin, dabbed with deep purple and blue and painted with big streams of dark, wet red like a running river, clear water from her eyes mixing with the red on her face and her hands; and her voice was deep and loud, and old, like the voice of our great guardian spirit, like nothing we had heard, and all that time, it was so shrill and wild and scary and new. Making the same sounds over and over again.
'Please. Someone. Anyone. Help me. Please. I have a son. Help him. Please.'
That must have been what being afraid sounded like; and that little blonde, sleeping boy, he had brought all of those new colours and smells and noises into their little spring green world, and they hated him for it. For reeking of all those weird, putrid stinks they were never meant to know existed. Ever since he left, even with the new fairy he was so proud to have to himself, he has not taken that stink with him. Now everything the big girl and her boy brought into the forest smells worse than ever before. The oak-smoke and cordite and the tangy copper of blood and ash have crept in here, in the darkness of the clouds and rooted themselves and the tendrils of that stink into the ground like weeds and the fumes have sent the forest crashing down into a deep, endless sleep of fire and smoke and ash and brought the nightmare of monsters out of the darkness to scare the children; but if my forest is only sleeping and that little boy is still lingering in the air, maybe it's a sign. Maybe he is sleeping, too.
I hope he is. Wherever he is, out there, in that big, wide world, where I can never follow him. Oh, the things he must have seen, going back out there, into the fire and the blood and the night, and all of that death that always followed him wherever he went. The poor boy. It has followed him here; but maybe, maybe our god has been taken from us, but maybe there are other gods. Ones that are merciful and just, and perhaps, just perhaps, they have a notion. Maybe the boy that death followed will follow the fire and the blood straight back to where he brought it into our little world, and maybe he will come back and part the clouds, and put out the fires and stop the rain and the lightening and the crash of thunder; and maybe he will bring a little part of those just gods with him, and let the light of our old ways shine through the forest again. I hope he will. Hope against hope, or else sit watching my world burn.
Sometimes, I wish I could be away from it. I catch myself almost wishing, my poor, dear forest, sometimes, when the rain pours over the last smouldering embers and the sky thunders white fire, I hide under the shelter of your trees and reach for my music and play the song we used to play together, he and I; and I listen so, so hard to the world for something, but you have fallen silent, and his voice never comes; but that's alright. Maybe he's only sleeping; and the only thing that carries on your breath are the tears and cries of the children and I know I can never abandon them to this, when I listen. Not even to be out there, away from this, with that little boy who grew up with the fire from the outside in his eyes. For even in here, I think the fires must burn brighter and hotter out there if looking into those eyes of his was anything to judge them by. You know, he never did once let that wild sparkle in those beautiful blue eyes slip away. Even when he turned and ran, even if we both knew in our hearts that he didn't truly belong here with us, all the same, he would never have just left. He would never run away. Those eyes made me believe that. Perhaps, even if they are closed in some long slumber out there now, perhaps they still dream of this place, or of me. Those eyes gave me hope; some faith that after that day, I would not lose my friend forever.
I remember when he was first here, in this little world, all that time ago, I watched the blonde big girl with those same blue eyes close her eyes and sleep, and I saw her son, so awake, and so loud, all of a sudden when he knew his mother had drifted away to dream. We, for all of our giggles and games and laughter, were all struck into silence; for something very new, and very strange and very frightening lay at the feet of our god that day. The silence and the stillness and the eyes that had closed that wouldn't open again, where young eyes were always supposed to open fresh after a good sleep; and the boy crying to have them open again, who was alone in the world with no one to call him son. How strange it was to us. We were never alone, our people .We always had a friend, because no one should ever be alone; and so I decided that that little blonde boy with the fiery blue eyes from the big, wide world wouldn't be on his own. He would have me, just like he had the big girl with the face made up of all of those strange colours, and this small corner of the world would be right.
Yet, here I am. The world is wrong, and my beautiful boy is alone and none of this should be. Oh, please let it end. My sleeping forest, my children, my beautiful, blue-eyed little boy, out there in the big, wide world, dreaming of home.
I dream of you, too.
I hope you'll wake up soon.