Interlude: Pomeline
Nothing at all lives forever.
Every tree know that, deep in their roots, from the time they sprout from a seed. But no one thinks of death in the spring as new branches grow strong and buds turn to fruit, and new life forms in the heart of a tree. Summer brings the sun that beats down on mature branches, and the moon which entices a young dryad to dance with her sisters. Autumn is the harvest, sharing a fruitful year with the creatures that come for the festival. They celebrate and dance with the young girls from the trees, while the older dryads watch and enjoyed the last rays of sun.
And then winter comes.
Winter brings the cold winds that can freeze limbs, and ice that can snap them. Parts of a tree lived, and parts died. A tree could survive many winters, but someday an injury would reach their core and injure the dryad living there. Many dryads die in the winter. Without the dryad, the tree would not survive the cold. In the spring there would be a gap in the orchard that a new tree would fill. Trees, and the dryads who loved them, knew that winter could mean death.
But it wasn't the only way a tree could die.
Fire and axe could kill a tree, the dryad fighting until the end to save it, both perishing at the same time. Humans were never fully trusted because of the axes. And these weren't the cruelest deaths. The worst death was when the tree died, but the dryad was young and healthy, and somehow survived. The sky could do that. When cyclones and wind played with the thunderheads death could come from the sky, striking the tallest and healthiest of trees, charring young top branches before traveling down the sap to the roots, and exploding the tree from inside. It didn't happen often, but when it did, death came so quickly that the dryad might be a step away, and survive her tree's demise.
This was how Pomeline met death. A bright flash separated her life before as a mature dryad with many seasons left to her, and in the next heartbeat having no tree to share her life with. The dryads called it the half-death, and felt it was the cruelest death of all. Winter was coming, and without a tree to shelter her, half-death would become true death, and Pomeline would take her last apple down to Hades and present it to his wife, Persephone, before finding a spot to sit in the shadows. Without the bond of a tree, she could not return to the cycle as a dryad.
Her sisters visited, but they had little to say, and visits were brief. Pomeline's fate scared the young ones. Only the old crone's understood.
Pomeline stayed with the remains of her tree, shattered and flash-burnt by the lightning, sleeping next to it and suffering the weather as autumn came and winter not far behind. And then one day, men came. Not the young men who could be charmed by a dryad and made to dance with them. No, these were older men, proud and dark from their travels in the Smoke. Both knew wood, but one was a novice, and the other a Master.
The Master ran his hands down her trees broken wood, following the grain and seeing what it had been. "This wood is too fine to leave to rot on the forest floor. We should make something wonderful from it to show the beauty of the wood." Pomeline said nothing, and hid. The master approached the old crones, and asked for the wood of her tree, telling them what he would do. They looked to her, and she nodded her permission. It didn't matter to her anymore. She would cry as her tree was cut to thin strips and use to make something else.
The apprentice was a man with the blood of giants. He pulled her tree's roots from the ground, and lifted it free in one piece. He took it from the orchard and carried it to a new Hamlet of the humans. Silently, she followed. The Master molded the wood of the tree, calling the wood to become new shapes. No blade or saw did he use. Only his will and his love for the wood. Slowly, the tree became something else; a small building, made all in one piece from the wood of her tree. The burnt heart of the tree was mended with smoke and magic, the darkness of the grain telling the story of how the tree had died. The rest of the tree was polished until it glowed.
For seven days the Master and his apprentice labored. Such was his skill, that the Master of wood tied the remains of her tree to the Hamlet, and life entered it again. What had once been a broken tree was now a small building in the little village. Pomeline sat in a corner, unseen by those around her.
That was Pomeline's home, the quiet corner of her tree, where she watched as the little village grow around her. A crone of the humans came each day to her tree, and brewed herbal infusions with fresh spring water and herbs from around the world. The smell of the herbs reminded her of the forest after a rain. She was warm in her tree again. Her old life was gone, replaced by the life of the village around her. The quaint little tea house was her home, and slowly she allowed others to see her. The crone became a friend, and they enjoyed each other's company at the end of their lives. She helped the crone to make the herbal infusions, and served the guests, but spoke little.
The Master of wood would visit the little tea house some times. When she was ready, she appeared before him. He wasn't surprised, he had always known she was there. She brought him tea made from the flowers of the ghost pepper mixed with apple blossoms, knowing it was his favorite. Each time he came, they would talk, and then he would go back to the sky.
When the crone died one winter, she wept, and her tears soaked into the wood of her tree. She thought of death that winter, but there was life again in her tree. Nourished by the smoke from the Master's hands and the life of the village. Her tree was alive and she couldn't leave it. Years passed and she watched the people of the Hamlet grow and die, becoming friends with many of them, and weeping when winter took them. She did as her friend had done, brewing tea to keep them strong, infusing a little of the forest magic that every dryad knew.
In the springtime when the young dryads danced in the light of the new moon, she visited the grove. She was an outsider now, more human than wood, but the crones bade her sit with them. They valued her knowledge of the wider world. When another tree died and left it's dryad to weep for it, she invited her to come live in the tea house. The young dryad accepted, and slowly became part of the village. When another winter came, Pomeline welcomed death, and joined one last time with her tree, her spirit infusing the wood of the tea house. The Master knew, and came to bury her mortal body at the roots of the tree.
Death comes to all things. Time swept away the little Hamlet and the Grove, but the tea house is still there. A few ancient apple trees planted close by. The Master of wood comes no more, but sometimes a ship with bright sails drops anchor, and travelers from the Smoke come to enjoy a tea made from the blossoms of apples and ghost peppers.
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