Prompt #15: "The woods have remembered you ever since the first time you got lost in them."
Use this quote as your inspiration

Disclaimer: none of this is mine, but that shouldn't surprise you by now, right?

There are no Dryads within our trunks. For when the door opens, another world's breeze brushes our branches, and the touch would cause a Dryad to shiver.

We dig our roots deep. They burrow into the soil that remembers, for the earth always remembers, the feet that once tread it, the way the first touch held the soil from another world. The breeze is the touch of memory.

We heard the whispers in our roots, and we did not fear that breeze. But we did not know what the soil did. Not till the day she walked past.

Her hands were out, her eyes blind, as she pushed past our branches. The snow on them slid to the ground, and her hands touched our pine needles.

The feel of her fingers. Fauns, Dryads, and Dwarfs can touch us with human-like fingers; a Centaur's hand is theirs but twice the size. But it is not just the long twigs and round stump; it is the knowledge that here is one meant to be steward and ruler of our world. A touch we could not forget.

She did not know where she was going. She walked out from our branches and into the glowing proof of other worlds, and there she met a Faun. We knew him too, his furtive steps and his grumbles. With no Dryads within us we had no way to warn her. So she left, and we remembered.

She brought him back with her. Both their steps were furtive now, but his fell firmer. He brought her to the light and let her go on alone. She walked among us. She walked through.

And she left.

We mourned, and we remembered.


She came again. Light and darkness had alternated several times, but that is little time to a tree. Many of us still remembered when ice had not been our permanent prison. She passed through us with swift feet. She was no longer lost. The breeze blew with her, and we trembled. Her love led her onward, her friendship, and we knew that she was no longer just of the other world.

But she was followed. Two other hands grabbed our branches, pushing us aside. Two other feet followed where that Queen walked. And another voice split the silence.

He was not met at the light.

We kept our silence, watching. His hands promised a cruel rule, and his feet walked with sullen steps. His voice was no better.

And she found him. We barred her as often as we could, and never did we let her near the door to the other world, for we had been charged to hide it. It was not a difficult charge, for she seemed to dread the place where her feet first landed in this world; where she met the Lion. But she came near enough she found the second one. He went and sat beside her, his feet leaving the ground, sitting out from the shelter of our branches. He stayed long by the measurement of mortals; short by the time of a tree. Then the first came back and found him (she was gone), and together they left again.

It did not matter. They would come back.

Till they did, we remembered.


Four came. Four, feet on the ground, hands outstretched.. They spoke, as men do, and walked, and wandered.

How light their feet. Not enough to break our prison of ice. Not enough to echo the feet of the King who once walked here with his horse. But enough the needles quivered, and each tree reached higher.

They walked beneath us. We would always remember.

They walked away. We were not their home. We were only their welcome, and keepers of memories.


Soon enough our prison melted. We knew what it meant; the ground on every part of the world remembered the heavy Paws of its Maker. And we waited, waited for news. Dryads woke and whispered to their trees. Their trees held the whispers, passing them to us. Three of the four had walked to meet Him. The fourth had been rescued.

The Lion had been killed. The Maker of the door, the forest, the needles and twigs and trunks, the One who made all life, died.

We trembled, groaned, and wept in the way of trees. We remembered the ones who passed beneath us, and wondered. How had that promise proved false?

More news came with the light. The Lion rose. The magic binding traitor to death had broken. And later, later, far faster than a tree's life, we heard that she was dead.

Time passed. The four, the ones we remembered, were crowned. We felt it—all the land feels it, when the rightful ones sit on the thrones.

We rejoiced. We grew.

And we, possibly only we, remembered.

We remembered the Four had walked into Narnia below our branches. And we remembered that all things, in the end, are called home.

So it was, years later, when our branches were far thicker, our trunks much higher, that a Stag dashed beneath us, and around the door. The door stayed shut. The door was not for him.

A breeze touched our branches once again.

Hoofbeats, beneath us. Our branches were too thick for horses. But then two feet—two more—four more—touched the ground.

And we remembered.

We bowed aside our branches, and the Kings and Queens came on. Their hands reached out, touching the branches as they walked through, and we felt their fingers shrink, the length diminishing back to a child's. Their voices grew higher. And the breeze blew on them and made them its own.

They walked through the door, and the door shut.


One would think the story ended there.

One would think we were simply to remember, remember next to a door that never opened again, not for them.

One would be wrong.

We remembered. We remembered, and we whispered our memory to every nut that fell to the ground. Every sapling that sprang up towards the sky grew from the memory in those whispers. Their steps, their hands on our branches, their breath and that breeze—the saplings knew them all.

And the saplings whispered the memories to others. Dryads had a knowledge of the Kings and Queens no storyteller could explain, the length of their feet, the weight of their steps. The gentleness in their hands.

The Dryads were forced back to sleep, when other feet came, when rude hands cut down many of the saplings. But a few survived. A few remembered.

And those few were given a new charge. We had blocked the door. They were to hide the home where the Four once ruled.

Thick and tall they grew, hiding from sight the land where the Four had walked. Our memory of the rulers whispered through that forest, a haunting knowledge every tree and twig knew. Soon the new Narnians avoided it. They could not hear our whispers, but they could feel the weight. The trees grew closer together, closer and closer, and with every rustle of leaves they whispered of our lost Kings and Queens.

So when another door opened up, another breeze blew through, and four sets of feet hit the ground in an apple forest—we knew.

We remembered.

They were home.

OOOOO

To the guest (or guests?) who reviewed yesterday: Thank you! I had a lot of fun with the fables, and the POV of the stars was a friend's brainchild, though I learned from writing it. Thank you for reviewing!