the woods are lovely, dark and deep

[anthophilia]

[ What’s so special about this tree, huh?

For Wolfwood, the answer is simple. He’d done a job that pissed off the wrong people, was going to have to move again and dreading packing up all his shit, when a man pale as moonlight and broad in the shoulders as your average wagon had walked up to him like he was trying to put his feet through the earth instead of on top of it and told him he was now a guard. And Wolfwood had laughed – guarding is a shit job, too much sitting around, the payoff too brief when someone finally tries something – until the man produced a bag of more money than Wolfwood had ever seen in one place. He'd said yes, obviously. Before he’d asked what he was to guard.

He should have asked.

He’d roared with laughter when he saw the tree, which had gone… badly. The man who was paying him told him (in a voice that sounded very like he hadn’t used it in a long time) that he had already accepted the payment, and if he wasn’t going to take his job seriously there would be more serious repercussions than paying the money back. So Wolfwood thought… fine. It was out of town, there was a little cottage for him to stay in – not right next to the tree, but close enough to see it. Tough not to, really; it was big, must have been old as hell. And it was… nice, out there. Quiet and green with a well for fresh water, a river running to a lake that would be good for fishing, plenty of game to hunt, and a few wild fruit trees scattered around if he got a sweet tooth. He could use some peace and quiet after things had gone so badly. So he settled in, and became a guard for a tree.

It's still hard to imagine why a tree is worth enough money that Wolfwood will never need to obtain more of it, but he’s grown fond of it. He’s not sure what kind of tree it is; the bark is pale and smooth but knotted and burled in ways that mean Wolfwood almost sees pictures in it when he runs his hands over the trunk. The leaves change colour with the seasons; riotously green in spring and summer, bright and cheerful gold and red in autumn. But trees like that drop their leaves in winter, and this one… doesn’t. Those leaves turn dark but they stay on, providing shelter for all manner of woodland creatures while everything is cold and wet. And he starts to imagine he understands why the moonlight man is so fond of it, too. There’s… a feeling about this tree. Wolfwood find himself returning to it often, sitting under its branches to whittle (other wood, not this one – you don’t take risks like that when you’re paid this much), sometimes talking to it because there’s not another speaking being out here since the one time a dude approached it with an axe and Wolfwood had sent him off with a promise that if he came back the axe would be going through his skull. He gets attached. He rests under it as he makes things, eats his lunch under the shade of its branches. Gets drunk one day, tells a story about his escapades as a street urchin and thinks he hears the leaves rustling on this still and breezeless day, lets himself think that the tree is laughing along with him and pours a little of his wine at its roots like sharing a drink. When summer comes and the sun beats down hot he strips off under its branches, goes for a swim in the lake, and when he returns to the tree to doze while he dries off before dressing again he could swear the branches shift until the shadow of them keeps the sun off him, safe from burning. A woodpecker lands in the branches one day, starts hammering at the bark with its beak, and Wolfwood is nuts enough out here with no company but the tree by now that he swears he feels a wave of disapproval when he pegs a stone at the bird to move it away.

Sorry, tree, he says, but some lunatic paid me good money to make sure you’re not damaged. He runs a hand over its smoothly knotted bark, and tells himself next time he’ll just shout.

It’s a quiet life, but nice. He’s been there nearly a year. Complacent. Which is why it’s the thud of an axe that wakes him, not the sound of people. He rushes out, dressed in the pants he fell asleep in but sword in hand. There’s a brief yelling match – apparently this tree is magical and the men want the wood for – some shit, Wolfwood doesn’t listen. Swings his sword instead. He doesn’t actually want to kill them, because then he’d have to deal with disposing of bodies. That’s probably what gets him, in the end. They leave, injured but not imperilled, but one of them throws an axe at him as a parting shot. Not as bad as it would be if they’d swung it, but he knows from the sick, hot pain deep in his thigh that the bone is broken. It’s some kind of mania that keeps him on his feet until they’re far gone, and only then does he allow himself to go to the ground, drag himself back under the shelter of the tree and wonder how the fuck he’s going to get back to his cabin and tend this wound. He puts a hand over the shallow gash they’d made in the tree like the one he has pressed to his own leg, and counts himself lucky that these idiots apparently didn’t know how to use axes on men or trees. ]

This is a fine fuckin’ mess we’re in, huh?

Comments

[spiculatus]

[ it's not that vash is lonely.

not... exactly.

after all, the woods where he and his brother live have always been teeming with life! there are the birds that build their nests and raise their young in his branches, the small creatures that forage around his roots, and always the soft voices of his brother and sisters woven through the melody of all the living, growing things around them. so no, lonely never feels like the right word to use to describe the ache that stays nestled in his chest.

nai would say that it's vash's fascination with humans that's to blame, and... he's probably right. but how is vash supposed to help it! they're always teeming with creativity and curiosity, eager to explore and to expand and to build, and the pace at which they live their lives is so different from the rest of the forest that he can't help but be drawn in. he can't even begrudge them for what they take from them, the pain they cause -- sometimes it almost feels worth it, to know he'll be part of the dreams they're spinning, even if he doesn't get to see them for himself.

but this newest human is different.

he stays, for one, settling into the long-abandoned cabin and making a home for himself there. he even talks to vash as if he expects vash to answer back, and his hands are gentle when he strokes them up along his bark or rests one on the knotted burl of an old injury. and he's never taken anything from vash, not even a branch to light the fire in his hearth, only sits near him and talks to him and idles away the hours with him like they might be friends.

it's the first time in a long time that vash hasn't been lonely, not at all, and maybe that's why the idea of losing this human is so terrible that the sight of him wounded makes vash spoil his own secret. it happens before he has the chance to even think it over -- one moment he's willing his trunk to bend so that he can lean over his human with concern, and the next? he's kneeling beside him, panicked and flustering, reaching out towards the human's leg like he can will the bone mended. ]

Why did you do that?! [ which is a very ungrateful question to ask someone who just spared your bark from an axe, but. ]