Cenn poked at the logs in the fireplace, glancing back to where Treesinger sat on a rug, playing away at his lute as always.

“As you have been glancing nervously back at me for the past half hour,” Treesinger said, “no, I am not distressed that you are burning dead dried wood - not that it is even one of the elders of my people. I know of scarce few elder trees that will grow in these mountains.”

“The trees…,” Cenn asked, “they’re… alive?”

Treesinger did not look up from his lute. “You are denser than a rock.”

Cenn’s face tightened in annoyance. “You mean to say, that the trees can think?”

“I’m not sure,” Treesinger said, “they don’t really have mouths now do they? I still ask them questions anyway.”

Cenn took a deep breath, and rolled his eyes. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. In some ways, this Treesinger was at least more tolerable than people he’d been around in the past, but Treesinger also did something Cenn had hated - thrive off of causing others anger and annoyance. It pained him because he was very aware what games they were playing at, and yet he let himself get angered anyway.

And yet the loneliness in Cenn’s frame forbade him from casting the kweebec out. He had told himself, numerous times, that if some pompous noble ever knocked on his door, demanding that he return “home” and fulfill his responsibility, the fool would be walking home with an arrow in their shoulder.

He’d considered the leg, but had decided after much thought that he wanted the person to actually get back and tell his mother that -

“What do you think of those prisms in the night?”

Cenn took a moment to uncloud his mind from the interruption. “What?”

“Do you think that they are loose fragments of magic?” Treesinger asked, “Maybe they are as the faun legends claim, and they are ancestors dancing among the festive light of the stars.”

“I don’t know,” Cenn said, “and I don’t really care.”

“How unfortunate,” Treesinger said. “I would have thought that for someone who had lived so much time in the forest alone, admiring the wonders of Gaia, you would - “

“I never said that I didn’t think…,” Cenn trailed off.

“Think what?” Treesinger looked back at him expectantly. The wood-grain like face glimmered red in the firelight.

“I… I came here for things like that,” Cenn finished. “I find towering pines and cloudy mountains far more pleasant than the settlements of man.”

“Really?” Treesinger said in surprise, “I found that large walled city in the south to be quite exquisite. I never thought I’d see the humans recover. Grow to be something in Orbis again. They are not like the other races. They desire something more. They desire not stability, but growth.”

“Hmph,” Cenn said, “They desire to conquer.”

“Who is ‘they?’”

“The leaders of those human settlements in the emerald groves,” Cenn said. “They desire to subdue the more peaceful outlying human strongholds, to subject them.”

“Odd that you know so much of this, considering you have been away for a number of years. I was there not too long ago, and I perceived that in some ways, you were correct.”

Cenn was allowing his tongue to be far too loose. He’d promised himself for so long that he would scorn any visitors, but now, desperate for company, he foolishly was allowing himself to talk further.

“Those men and women do not know what life is like outside of their polished castle,” Cenn said, essentially thinking out loud. “All that they see is that their domain is not swelling fast enough. You say that it is admirable that humans desire to grow. I do not. If they grow, they grow as a canker, poisoning the land.”

“I never said anything of the sort,” Treesinger said.

“You literally just said -”

“That they desire to grow,” Treesinger said, “I made no claims on whether that was admirable or something to be feared. I do not travel Orbis to make any claim on morality.”

Cenn snorted in derision. “Can you claim to be much of a teacher then?”

“Is that what a teacher does?” Treesinger asked, “enact rules?”

“Rules are how one learns,” Cenn said. “In these years, the forest has been my teacher. Its rules are brutal, and they cannot be broken. Do not disturb the cubs of a mother bear. Be watchful of where you tread your feet, as to not lose your footing and slide off a steep hillside.”

“I fail to see how that teaches you anything,” Treesinger said. “It seems rather, that the forest taught you as you learned to respect it, as you learned to understand its rules, and live by them.”

“What is your game kweebec?” Cenn asked in a strained tone. “Why are you pestering me? Why do you think that you must teach me? Teach those disguised Varyn worshippers in the south. Annoy them with your lecturing.”

“An interesting suggestion,” Treesinger noted, “but there are some people who do not wish to be taught.”

“I…,” Cenn clenched his teeth, “do not wish to be taught.”

“Hmm.”

Treesinger was silent. For a moment, the only sound was the crackling fire. What was this little forest creature trying to do? Why should Cenn listen to anything the kweebec was saying? The kweebec didn’t know the pressures that Cenn was under, the stain that was on his heart. The weakness in his soul.

The quiet was broken.

Treesinger began to pick the strings of his lute in an ascending and descending pattern. It was almost… a haunting tune. And then after a solemn prelude, the Kweebec began to sing in a deep voice.

Over the forests a canopy reigns

Of ancient trees, who endured many pains.

Though they stand firm, they outgrew the rest,

For only they could finish the test…

In rain, in storm, in fire and quake,

In poisonous magics, they did not forsake,

For roots beneath, and leaves reaching up high,

The trees they stand still, for they did try.
The trees they stand still, for they did try.

But they all grew from a little thing,

A kernel of promise, a yet future king.

They faced all the harshness in life, some were spent,

But others they thrived, and encouraged they sent,

A root in the soil, and a branch up above,

To strike at a chance to catch Gaia’s love.

As they grow, and live out their life,

It must needs be, to endure their strife,

At the fork of a branch, they choose a new path,

To grow and to search, for what they don’t hath.

The branch cannot pause, the root turn away,

A choice must be made, to live a new day,

And from that small choice, a dozen more grow,

And all of that growth, from a seed that was sown.


“Another song about trees,” Cenn said when Treesinger finished.

Treesinger didn’t say anything.

Cenn did not look into the kweebec’s dark eyes.

“What lesson should I draw from this song?” Cenn asked with intensity, “what wound in my mind must be unearthed?”

The kweebec once again, did not respond.

Cenn found that he was especially frustrated with this song for some reason. It was hard for him to place the meaning of it, and he knew that twisted kweebec had some equally twisted meaning in it. He’d had a hard time even placing the feeling of the song. He’d thought it’d had a haunted, solemn sound at the beginning, but imperceptibly, it had become almost hymnlike at the end - not a happy song, but simply a calm, contemplative one.

A song of branches, of roots, of growth. He thought of the strong roots of one of the great Borea pines spiraling down into the ground. One of the lines of the song reentered his mind. The branch cannot pause, the root turn away.

The kweebec couldn’t know. Maybe the creature had logically puzzled it out. The way those annoying fools thought they had puzzled him out all those years ago. Then he’d fled without warning in the night. They hadn’t expected that.

But now… now what did they expect? Did they expect him to remain here, a woodsman off alone?

Cenn had pestered them. He had been a thorn in their foot, a shackle on their wrists. He was giving them what they wanted.

But what did he want? Did he want this? This lonely forest for all his life? Did he want to live permanently with the fear that he had made the wrong choice all those years ago? That he had irreversibly ruined his destiny?

Treesinger’s song came to him again, but not any specific lyric.

When a tree branch grew into a shadowed place, it did not die for lack of sunlight. It grew in a new path.

Cenn clenched his jaw, and his fists. He tightened his muscles until it seemed that he would staunch the flow of blood in his veins.

“Why have you come to curse me!” he shouted. “I have brought you into my home, and it has only caused me…”

As he allowed himself to open his eyes, he trailed off. He turned his head, glancing about. Then he got to his feet, and…

And the kweebec was gone. He’d not heard the slightest creak in the wooden boards, or of the door. It only convinced Cenn that the kweebec was some dark apparition that simply wanted to torment him.

Cenn sat on his bed. He ran his hand along the frame. It had been one of the most satisfying things he’d built in his solitude. The cabin was rough, and sturdy. The bed frame however was comparably more delicate. He’d shaped it with intense effort, and after many months, finally declared it finished.

He didn’t want to leave it.

No. No, he was not thinking of leaving. That was foolish. What would he accomplish by leaving? What obligation did he have to the human settlement? He’d only be deprived of his beautiful, quiet forest. The conniving snakes there would rope him into their schemes, seeking to capitalize on how the people seemed to be fond of him.

Cenn heard the sound of brush being disturbed outside. The sudden noise startled him, but just for a moment. He graciously hadn’t changed out of his clothing or boots, and he quickly strung his bow.