She is as changed as the world around her. The flowers in her mane have all died, and the leaves have begun to wilt, turning dark with rot from the shadows that never seem to leave. When the sky changed she had not immediately understood what it meant - and even when no dawn woke her, no dusk carried her to sleep, she still had not understood.
It was dark, yes. But she didn’t mind the dark.
Except that it was more than just dark, more than a perpetual night. Without the sun, the plants were dying. She could feel them waste away, feel them yearning for sunlight that didn’t exist, searching a sky that had turned its back. There was no light, no warmth, no life. Petals turned brown at dimpled edges, turned darker as they caved in on themselves in death. Leaves wilted too, sickened with the same brown rot and it was all she could to not be sick with the stench of it.
It was worse, maybe, because she was the same. Reborn of a magic seed, a living monument that her magician mother had breathed life back into.
She is wood and bark, branch and twig. But she is no more made soft with leaf and flower and the odd ripe fruit hanging in her mane. She is like the winter trees stripped bare, a forest skeleton like the ones she sees before her in this dying place - and she cannot help but wonder how long it will take for the bark of her skin to begin to rot, how soon before the empty space inside her chest caves in and the skittering bugs fill her.
Soon, she thinks, from the way the sentient sorrow of the forest matches the ache inside her chest, the weary weight upon her shoulders.
Her strides slow and then stop, and her nose brushes the bark of the giant tree beside her. What will death feel like when it comes, will she even know when it finally takes her? She hopes it will be painless for all of them as she looks around at the trees crowding her, those petal pink eyes blinking slowly. Like sleep. “I’m so sorry you’re hurting.” She whispers, closing eyes incapable of tears as she presses her forehead to the silent bark.
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
@[savage]