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The humans dance.
Their bodies – not composed of earth but of flesh, yet somehow earthen all the same – writhe and twist in ways incomprehensible to one without bones and sinew. Dried remnants of the previous springtide's blessings adorn the creatures: dried flowers woven into hair and around limbs or stitched onto the plant-dyed habits worn in protest of their natural state of nakedness.
The act of dance subsumes them. They grasp at each other as they spin, most in pairs but some in triads or quads and some contentedly alone. A late frost, cold and cruel, dominates the forest and yet the mortals dance on, feet and arms bare but bodies warmed by the movements of their own flesh. An eerie melody, crooked and hollow and unnaturally quick, accompanies their ritual – the makings of a flute of bone and a drum of wood and stretched leather.
While the dancers move with a steadfast eagerness, their fervor seems touched by desperation. Most of the dancers are cadaverous. Their skeletons press in awkward angles against the thinness of their skin. Yet even winter-starved as they are, the dancers seem the healthiest of their community. Others of their kin, those too young or too old or too frost-sick to dance, watch the ritual from a distance. They, too, are gaunt and featherweight.
Those watching sip on sap colored dark as cinders. The sticky fluid will fill their bellies but will give them no nourishment. Their bodies will waste away despite the repast, yet the sap seems a large comfort to them. Their thin, cracked lips smile tiredly.
The wintertide has ruled the valley for far too long. The time of springtide has been devoured by the cold: all animals are thin; all seeds unable to bud. And yet, the humans dance on. They dance for the earth, for the bygone spring, and for each other.
A thought appears despite the lack of a mind to think it: how might that feel? The ravage of desperation and hunger, the exaltation of hope that the freeze and decay may someday soon end.
Another thought arrives, though it manifests more as a feeling… as a desire to aid the emaciated creatures. A strange sensation – empathy blooming from a being that has yet to realize its own state of being – yet the feeling grows as the humans dance and dance and dance.
But what may such creatures need? Nourishment, for sure: an easy task for one who may hold some influence, if small, over such matters. Yet, is that all? What of the hope they dance for?
Perhaps, it will be best to let them decide.
The dancing quickens. Sweat drips from flesh, feet kick up whatever dirt that has not yet been frozen solid. A dancer breaks from the group: they are not the strongest, nor the most graceful, but they exude a hopeful kindness and a true belief in the existence of better days to come. Goodness radiates from them.
This kind dancer begins to sing. They sing a song of nature: first of springtide, then of midsummer, then of harvesttime. They weave a tapestry with their melody, one of the changing days and of the growth and reaping of crops.
Another thought from once was none: a form is needed to help. At the same time the idea springs to being the dancer begins to sing of the fruit of harvesttime, and in doing so seals the physical form of that which for so long had none.
A small creature, shaped as an apple, cheeks forever flushed with the heat of dance.
A thing of nature, of nourishment; a thing formed from shameless hope and joy in the face of despair.
A fitting form for the Junimo.
The little Keeper of the forest, the newly-fleshed Junimo, waddles unsteadily on unfamiliar vine-like feet. None of the humans notice the small creature except for the kind dancer, who stops their strange movements and turns to face the newly born being.
Time stills. The human does not frighten or panic, but instead stares at the little Keeper with eyes simultaneously glassy and sharp. They are transfixed.
The Junimo waves its simulacrum of hands vaguely into the frigid air, willing into being that which will allow the human to decide what is needed.
This is an act of great trust, though one who has only held consciousness for mere minutes cannot be aware of such things. This is also an act of great consequence, though the little Keeper similarly does not know of this.
The Junimo allows the human's mind to decide the shape of their own salvation, and thus into the little Keeper's vines comes a purple fruit: vibrant and star-like and perfectly fresh.
The kind dancer's mouth visibly waters.
The Junimo places the gift at the feet of the human, and allows them to make the choice. The kind dancer does not hesitate to devour the fruit, pouncing at the food with a desperation born from either an utmost surety in their path or from prolonged starvation.
Perhaps, both.
Juice pours from the human's fleshy lips. They take another bite and gag on the fruit, coughing violently and hitting their chest. Their body trembles though not from the cold, but from something else. From something new filling their mortal form, filling a form unused to such sensations. Inside them now buds the gift of the Junimo, the gift of the little Keepers…
Inside themself, the kind dancer now hold magic. Strong magic, wild magic, the magic of the forest itself…
The magic of the forest's Keepers, saturated even still with the essence of the earth and of nature themselves, all poured into this new human vessel of flesh and sinew.
The kind dancer – now, the forest given a fleshed form; now, the earth bodily; now, a Vessel – convulses. Time flows yet again. Their kin scramble towards their fallen companion, who stares glass-eyed at the barren trees around them.
Magic dances wildly across the skin of the Vessel, like flashes of violent electricity during a heavy storm. The Vessel's kin reach for them with worried and callused fingers. Most of the mortals, the magic ignores – bouncing off of flesh or passing through bone in ways neither helpful nor harmful.
Yet, when one human reaches towards the nature-blessed body, the wild and infantile magic jumps – arching in a way again not unlike electricity. This time the energy does not embed itself within creature yet the essence still somehow manages to change the mortal, to shift and to alter, in ways near-imperceptible to those unsure of what to look for.
In their scramble to aid, none of the humans see – or even bother to look for – the Junimo.
None of them see the little creature as it leaves, scurrying mouse-like around the legs and feet of the Vessel's kin.
The Junimo feels tired. Happy, gladdened – a wonderful feeling, the creature realizes – but tired nonetheless. The Junimo wanders into the forest, aimless besides its own enjoyment of the newfound feelings associated with helpfulness.
The Junimo are no longer the sole guardians of the Valley. Their role as the spirits of nature will continue, as the role always has. They will exist in trees, in rocks, in in the rain that falls in springtime and the snow that blankets the land come the first frosts. They will exist so long as the Valley exists…
And, now, the Valley will exist so long as a Vessel does.
The Junimo decides to rest. It pauses, then wills itself back into a state of non-physical existence.
The last thing the creature sees before fading away is a small flower bud, unfolding into a lovely bloom after a well-deserved wintertide's nap.