Stardustandmoonflowers - Untitled
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Pair of ravens heading home for the evening <3
A Gentle Raven says Goodbye.
Raven <3
Sometimes at night I fall asleep
To dreams of being just a child
I drift off into dreams so deep
Protected by a raven wild
Silky feathers fall around me
Within the soft enfolding wing
Nestling safe in a chosen tree
I am at peace with everything
Lore
Lore
Long ago, before time began, a girl snuggled by a fire. She’d been lost in a winter storm and had been infinitely lucky to be found by a perfect stranger who took her in, and fed her some stew, and let her rest on a thick pile of furs in a stone cavern that he shared with no one else.
He asked her many questions about who she was, and where she came from, and what she’d been taught by her tribe. He sighed bitterly as she’d responded, and made a despondent face that she thought made him look like an old tree, full of knobs and burrows. This face made her laugh a long rippling laugh that echoed through the cavern as if it wasn’t winter, and there wasn’t pure darkness outside but only summer sunshine on bubbling brooks. He smiled despite himself, and his face brightened, as did his eyes. He seemed young again as he explained to her, “I’ll teach you truth,” and then winked. So he began to teach her the true, ancient lore of the tribes, as he knew it.
“You’ve told me that your tribe has taught you a bird hatches from an egg,” he said, beginning. “But they must then ask themselves, which comes first, the bird or the egg? I can tell you where the first bird came from, though you must be warned, the story is told in a roundabout way.”
She nodded sleepily; a hearty bowl of stew, mixed with the exhaustion of the day, was catching up with her. He continued.
“In the beginning the trees lived happily with no cares. They took joy in bathing in the sunlight, and absorbing all available nutrients, in both soil and water; but in their hearts, they remembered a time when they were souls, like the souls of human beings and all the moving creatures of Earth. They longed for freedom and God joyously granted their wish. The trees grew buds along their branches that didn’t become leaves or flowers; they became birds. These birds sang, and danced and flew. They were…the first birds.
“It’s true that some birds now are able to hatch their young in haphazard nests, in a tree’s branches, but this is mimicry. True birds hatch directly from a tree’s heart because they are the soul of the tree longing to be free.
“When a bird dies, a true bird, it becomes a tree again. On the first day after death, it looks like a bird, and on the second it becomes less recognizable; on the third day it has generally become a dry pile of leaves and twigs; sometimes a wet pile, but those are usually indistinguishable.” He laughed a bit and said, “This is the true lore of our tribes.”
A faint snore came from the girl who was supposed to be listening. He wasn’t sure if she was still awake because her eyes had closed. Oh well, he thought, and settled down to sleep in his soft furs as well.
She spent the rest of the winter with the old man, and helped him with any chores that needed doing, and she spent the summers traveling the wilderness area near the cave but always returned in winter. When fall came, she felt the length of her straw-colored hair resonate with the straw-colored strands of wild grass in the plain. She felt the pull of light and shadow in the forest as she stepped lightly through paths on the forest floor. She felt herself blending in and learned to melt into the shadows when necessary.
“This is the true lore of our tribes.” It was as he said, and she understood it; life morphed into and expressed itself in many forms, always creating, changing, adapting, mimicking, reshaping and recreating. It reached for itself or the sky. Her favorite brightly-colored yellow flowers mimicked the shape and color of the sun that nurtured them. The forest inhabitants emulated each another. The antlers of the stag emulated tree branches and a moth’s delicate wings replicated the shade of a tree’s bark perfectly. She wondered if her lost tribe came from trees, as well; perhaps all animated beings were no more than the spirits of ancient trees set free.
She spent the cold, harsh winter nights with the man in the cave; she nestled in his arms tenderly as he told her many new tales of the adventures of his early days and of his people. He also listened as she explained the discoveries she’d made in the woods; eventually, she knew he was her soul mate. Days, months, and seasons passed, and they bore young together, tiny miraculous mirrors of the mother and father. When the old man watched them playing together on the floor of their small cave, he remembered himself saying, “This is the true lore of our tribes,” but he understood more fully what it meant.
It was years later, after their children had long left in search of opportunity, and the old man couldn’t lift himself to leave the cave even in summer, that the woman found out the truth about the man she’d fallen in love with and spent her life with. He breathed his last breath into her arms as she cried.
She held onto his body a long time because it was the only thing she had left to hold on to. She held him all night on the first night, and all night on the second. She hugged his withered bones and didn’t try to move him. She awoke on the third day, still hugging his body to hers, and she knew she would have to find a place in the ground for him and perform whatever ritual her heart was able to complete. She began to lift his body from where it lay but recognized with amazed wonder, his body was gone! In its place was a dry and brittle mass of knobby limbs and branches; the only remnant of her love, whose true form she now knew, was that of a mutative and primordial tree.
