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Through the willow leaves woven in your hair, the forest guides you towards you prey. Dreams and memories that move like sap through the roots and the rhizome play back before your eyes like the visions of a daydream, a collective recollection given form by thought and shape by the million eyes that saw her. You take more satisfaction than you should in the panic stricken across her face. Something about the broken illusion of her pride as she spurs her white horse to continue galloping away at full speed pleases you tremendously. The crumbling edifice of a thousand layers of arrogation and the affectation of authority paints a beautiful picture that you will surely cherish for at least a few decades.
What that says about your personality regarding how you treat people whom you well and truly do not like, you would rather avoid thinking about too hard.
You follow the spectral trail of the woman in red up the stream and through the forest, along winding trails left by deer and other beasts as she retreats towards the mountains. Roots and brambles make way for your swift steps, every plant and friendly fungus respecting the laurel woven into your hair and the great boon that you have given these woods. As you pass through the overgrowth and the thick humus of the forest floor, a light smile crosses your face. Not for the fact that your prey cannot escape your clutches so long as she remains within the forest now, but for the manifest work of the newly christened Heart Tree.
For all she was a cranky and greedy old willow, your choice to trust her with the responsibilities of carrying the light of silver within her heartswood appears well founded. These woodlands will never be as majestic as the groves of Alfheim or the other elvenhomes, but already the willow's light has begun to spread through the woods. Within the dream of the Great Mother - the space called reality by those who do not understand the nature and design of Yggdrasil - the forest begins to bloom out of season. Its roots will never again know the deprivation of winter and drought, lest the Blight again come to the shores of Alagonia. For the light of a Heart Tree now runs through the forest's rhizome alongside the sap of dreams.
The light of a Heart Tree is the light of the Stars
The movers of fate.
The magic without.
The light peaking in from beyond the veil of Great Mother's dream, exceptions to the rules that Yggdrasil brings to the world.
A Heart Tree gathers the light of the stars into the silver gilding of its hearts and shapes it into a dream of its own, which blossoms into existence beneath the watchful eyes of the Great Father. An imaginary grove that spreads as far as the Heart Tree's light can reach within the roots of the forest to which it is connected. A place that can be moved through freely, if one knows the way to travel between real and imaginary. The final destination of those who become well and truly lost in the real forest, and do not know their way out.
