Some people might call Woodie insane.
Sometimes, he thought he was insane. Like when he saw those twisted, nightmarish shadows in his peripheral vision, or when the rabbits were cloaked in shadows and their screams seemed more distorted than usual.
Or... straight after his transformation. He always felt very disorientated whenever that happened.
"Nice day for a walk!"
That voice, however, was anything but an auditory hallucination.
Even if Woodie truely was insane, he wasn't imagining her voice. She really did exist, even if she was no longer human. Even if he cound't wrap his head around it, she had somehow come back as an telepathic object. An axe, of all things.
It made sense, in a strange kind of way. He was a lumberjack, and she shared his love for timber. If she had to be an object, Woodie couldn't imagine her as anything but an axe.
"Let's chop some trees!"
He really wasn't imagining her.
His beloved Lucy really had come back to him.
Granted, when that man in the smart suit said he would bring Lucy back, Woodie hadn't been expecting her to come back as an axe...
But, at least he could speak to her again. At least she was alive.
"Woodie?"
"Okay then," he replied, clutching Lucy in one hand as he headed towards a group of trees. "Let's cut down some trees!"
They were going to get married, him and Lucy.
When she was taken from him, Woodie had been devastated.
For a long time, he only knew grief, anger, and above all else, desperation. He would have given anything to bring her back. In the end, it only cost him his freedom to once again have Lucy in his arms.
He didn't care that he was now trapped inside a hostile, logic-defying world. He didn't care that every day was a constant struggle for survival. He didn't care about the bloodthirsty hounds, or those territorial tallbirds, or even the living trees that he sometimes incurred the wrath of.
So long as he had Lucy, it was all worth it.
"Woooooo!" Lucy said happily as he felled a tree. "Again! Let's chop another!"
Anything for her.
It helped that he enjoyed chopping down trees as well.
It reminded him of happier times, as well. When things were much simpler. When Lucy was a human, and they both lived in the real world.
They would go into the forest and chop down trees all day. Sometimes for firewood to drive away the biting cold, and sometimes for the neighbours who lived nearby.
It was his life, really. Chopping down trees was his passion, and Lucy shared that love as well.
Woodie fell in love with her at first sight.
He asked her to marry him only a few months later.
She, of course, happily accepted, and they couldn't of been happier.
Then disaster struck, only a few weeks after his proposal. His precious Lucy was struck down by the very thing they both loved. Not only that, but it was a tree felled by his own hands.
It had been a stupid, amateur mistake. The tree hadn't fallen the way he expected it to. He thought it would fall forward, because of the slope, but instead it fell sideways due to its lopsided appearance.
Right on top of Lucy.
"You look distracted, Woodie."
He still remembered that horrible crunch of splintered bones.
He still remembered ringing for an ambulance, yelling into the mouthpiece as he shakily held her pale, still-warm hand.
He still remembered the blood on the snow, pooling around her battered form.
"Woodie? Can you hear me?
He still remember her broken, unmoving body as she was removed from under the tree and carefully put on a stretcher.
He still remembered when the doctor told him that she hadn't made it. That she had died on the way to the hospital.
He still remembered attending her funeral...
"Woodie!"
His thoughts scrambled and he came back to himself, panting and clutching Lucy much-too-tightly. He was surrounded by trees, all cut down by his own hands. Too many trees... he had gone too far.
Slowly, he loosened his hold on Lucy.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he replied, trying to ignore the familiar itch under his skin and the unusual sharpness of his teeth.
"That was a close one."
"It was," he agreed. "Thank you."
"You're welcome!"
"We should get home before it becomes night." Woodie said, looking up at the darkening sky. "At least we have enough firewood for a few days, eh?"
"We could always chop down some more trees tomorrow, just in case," she replied.
"Okay," he said, smiling fondly. "We'll cut more trees tomorrow."
Anything for his beloved Lucy.