I came from the woods for the first time as a child. I use that word because it is mine to use, not because you will find it at all accurate. I saw nothing of the world, knew nothing of the world, and understood everything I saw immediately. Fallibility was for other creatures. I was a child in your eyes, therefore, though I could stalk a sambar for hours with exceeding patience, though I could skin and clean a urial in the hour before the day-cats woke, though I could pick a single bharal from the herd and have her, guaranteed. Therefore, I was a child, yet something more: a self-sufficient child. The female Satyr live alone, value their privacy, and turn their children out as soon as they can. I had never relied on my mother's guidance, so I saw no need to rely on any other's now.
The aurous-eyed man followed me to the edge of the woods. I gestured widely to the field beyond and stood waiting. He gave me a knowing look and settled back on his heels. I waited for him to leave, and he waited for me to lead. Disgusted, I peered back out into the field. I had never been under such an open sky. It felt to me the same as standing at the edge of the sea, readying myself to walk out into the depths of the loneliness to drown. I did not want to leave my woods. I did not want to go with this man with his terrifying eye. I glanced back at him, and he stared steadily at me, willing me to go. I steeled myself and stepped out into the waving wheat, eyes closed and breath held.
I walked a thousand steps with my eyes held tight shut, hearing the old man crunch through the grass behind me. I opened my eyes a crack and saw the crest of the hill yet in front of me. Still I thrashed through the foreign land, falling forward, up the hill. I slid to my knees, sobbing, choking on my thudding breath. He walked up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder like a gentle father. I recoiled.
"It is not such a bad thing, leaving the past behind. The woods will always be with you, child, and nothing can cut it from you."
I screamed, a long low sob. I remember the agony of it tearing at my throat. I remember the tree my mother made up as a home. I remember the game paths she taught me to stalk. I remember the solemn way she used to wind vines through low branches. I remember the sound of her talking to the stream. I remember the hours I watched her staring deeply into the spring at the heart of our woods. Now, I had left all that behind, and for what? This blinding desert, a void space that ached for trees? I was still a child, and I did not understand the true nature of the world. I did not understand the compulsion I felt to pick myself up again and hurl my slackening strength against the wind flying to my face over the hilltop.
"Smell, small one. Do you sense it? The wind is bringing us Her messages. The sun is giving us Her warmth. The whole earth is telling us that we belong."
I opened my eyes and shakily stood. The sobbing stilled, and I drew in the newness of what I saw. The land sloped down seemingly forever from where I stood, crisscrossed with hedges and pocked with villages. The color of the crops, the wheat and oat and barley, seemed luminant gold to my eyes. In the distance, the greens of the trees faded slowly into soft blues and the gold seemed to dull its luster. The land to the right melted away into an endless sea. The land to the left, almost impossibly far away, lifted sharply up and away into the clouds. I was utterly enchanted by this: the roots of the very tree of life, many times larger than the world, and feeding itself on the fury and work of all of us. I knew it was a tree, though it wasn't, and that reassurance of comfort and familiarity is what saved me.
"Do you feel Her light? I haven't felt her like this for years." He looked at the scene without seeing it, seeing something, I could tell, in his memory. "She is with us, pulling us to Herself. She wants us to go and give everyone a glimpse." He stooped to gather his staff and bag again, arranged himself, and walked on without me. I owed him nothing. I was not not Her tool. I belonged in the woods. But he knew as well as I that I could follow immediately or wait a thousand years, but life would never be acceptable in the woods again, not now that I had seen something more. I was going to be forever changed, and it was up to me if I should change for the better or the worse.
Once Sarenrae picks your course, be attentive to her voice. Your choices matter little in the face of her brilliant light.
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