Elder by A Garrison of Trees

Alone in the clearing stands an elder tree, watching o'er a forest with whom it used to bleed.

Long ago, the bipeds' insatiable hunger for tree flesh led them to fell every tree in the grove, one by one, until a faerie revolt drove them to brief fits of madness. The bipeds ran back to their village to tell of otherworldly voices that warned them against cutting and burning elder wood. They could hear the devil in the hisses and squeaks released by burning elder branches, and they could hear the tree itself wailing when their blades broke its bark.

The faeries and the villagers reached an unspoken truce, and the elder was spared, alone. It grew tall, and lone, its aerial roots and many branches giving shelter to the faerie folk in its former grove, which became the clearing. Over the years, the faeries left the lone elder for the community of the forest, until the elder was truly alone but for the weeds and the field creatures.

Now, a score of biped years has past, and mushroom circles have appeared in the fields, winged creatures dance in the wind, and the branches of the elder tree glow at sunrise and sunset. The faeries have returned. They bring mischief, merriment, and warnings of new dangers in the forest. The elder itself knows it cannot wholly trust fickle messages of the same faeries who fancy themselves masters of mischief and madness, but it its position, it has no other source. One unreliable messenger cannot be trusted to divine the fates, but scores of messages, collected over time, eventually reveal the truth.

The forest is shrinking. War is coming.

We stand together, a Garrison of Trees, even when we cannot

dad emo, drone & dungeon synth