A breeze slipped over my shoulders.  Drawing my fatigue out into the forest.  My awareness soon followed, sending my gaze adrift until the haze cleared from my eyes.  I felt stone beneath my palms, and glanced down out of the corner of my eye.

It was strikingly similar to that sensation from above, and threatened to be the undoing of the position I had.  Nervous, yet stubborn, I shifted.  The outcropping was sturdy enough, and despite my fears, the forest did not dissolve in a blue or light.

Before me formed a sea of trees.  Lush green canopies flowed over mountain ridges and covered the horizon.  It did not break, and I began to feel the crown of stone and earth was out of place.

I worked my way to my feet.  Shuddering briefly as my senses reported back that all was as it should be.  I was not cracked.  My breathing even.  My blood flowed easily and, my heartbeat, steady.

I was alive.  Lost and out of my element, but safe.  I shifted my weight as I found my footing.  From the wedge of earth, the stone formed a cobbled wall.  I did not know where to go, simply that lessening the height before me was inviting.

I took two steps into the dense forest, and gave a sigh of relief.  Shady as it was, being enveloped felt like a promise.  That I was no longer exposed to the heavens, and given the means to intervene should they pull me away again.

It’s somewhat pointless to mount a defense against nightmares.  Even counterproductive.  It was reassuring though, and that’s what mattered.

I heard a shifting in the leaves.  As it spread, my nerves hardened.  The movement wasn’t irregular, or confined.  It shifted, and persisted through the corners of the wood, where sound and air should be deflected.

I shifted when the first sign crossed my line of sight.  Trees hiked up their branches, and picked apart the shadows in the corner of my eye.  I glanced around, trying to pinpoint the source.

I turned and twisted.  Everywhere a form could be found.  At every sound and rhythm, and shift in the light.  I scanned the treeline thoroughly, but as the shifting settled I gave up.  There was nothing else I could do to what my mind didn’t recognize.

A log.  Moss green and textured bark.  I might have been content to find something to blame that on.

Except…

It was between me and the platform I came from.  Where I’d intended to meditate.  And where the forest gave way to the open.

A mane of vines shifted above the outcrop.  My heart thundered, and reflexes surged, as the entirety of the fallen tree came alive.  The base had no stump.  No roots to explain away it’s position.  The entire trunk warped and curved through the air.

I did not want the impression, but as it cleared about half of the clearing, I couldn’t deny it firmly enough.  It was like a colossal serpent, but for the branching vines that spread into the forest.

I could hear minute changes, routes of sound that we blocked and reopened around me.  Surrounded, I watched in stunned silence as the massive limb moved.   If it lurched, I would kiss the ground.  Either from crushing mass, or for breaking the fall.

The two of us stood there for a minute of silence.  Instinct and hyper awareness holding me firm longer than I ever would otherwise.  I wanted to run.  To move to a tighter space, or something I could use for cover.  But I knew instinctively that the same intricate motions that held it aloft could strike from anywhere.

Then the massive tongue drifted into the treeline.  Like a submarine into water, it phased through them.  Or… like a ghost.

The ripple of motion lingered in the clearing.  Those sinuous movements were apparent in everything bit of vegetation.  Now that I had that massive form burned into my mind, it was easier to comprehend what I was seeing.

I was in a nest, and the thing was alive.

The ‘grass’ rippled in an airless breeze.  A patch of it darkened just a bit in front of me, and I withdrew as much as I dared.  The threads converged together, into a tendril of green that reached as high as I was.  There was a pressure in the air, and I saw an arm begin to form.

That was when everything I believed to be real began to change.

This thing, it’s aura, took on human form.  At the same time, it wasn’t innately so, merely something that my eyes conjured to express that familiarity of it.

Yes, the creature gestured with an outstretched limb.  But so much surrounding that was imagined.  An illusion of intent.  I would be hard pressed to find a living creature that had that much intent.

It’s presence stirred me to my core.  Slowly.  A trickle.  Like someone turning the tap just so.  I saw images and vision.  They did not reach me through my eyes, but through my veins.  Through my pores, bones and lungs.  In the weave where my senses merged with my flesh.  In the very essence of the world I came from.

I furrowed my brow.  This creature.  It saw people as something to be leery of, and yet cared for.  With such a depth to it that any fear or apprehension I had did not compare.  That unanimously, my being found respectable.  Kindred in something deeper than human.

I shook to clear my head as the forest around me rustled.  A prickling in my skin matched that of the forest floor too closely, and I deviated just to unveil our differences.  Whatever those were at this point.

This forest.  This creature.  I would not find anyone so long as I stayed.  So long as I was near the tower, I would be safe, but isolated.  There was nothing but us.  The serpent and the stranger.

There was no water.  No earth, no wind, no fire.  I would not age, I would not grow ill.  I would also have nothing, and become nothing else.  That was not the kind of life I wanted.

That’s what the serpent wanted to convey.  I felt a spark.  The flame of my defiance startled the serpent, as I promised to convert this nothing into a source of strength.

The serpent echoed words about this power that I sought, but I wasn’t listening for reason.  The partial skeleton shrugged in relent.  Wandering off to the side as it’s structure dissolved into thread.  It would not stop me, nor stand in my way.

I was grateful for that admission, and to honor my host, I resolved to move down the mountain a little bit each day. To channel this fixation within me, and develop as it would.  I may not have known the words or sentiment it held, but I saw the visions and the elements it showed.

I wanted to prove to myself that this world was not beyond me, and that I was not powerless to it.  No matter what was thrown my way, I would persevere to the best of my abilities.  I would face others as equals, and only that.