She wore no clothes. Her skin was smooth, eternally youthful, and pale green; her hair flowing locks of brown.
Saille lived in a willow tree. It was her home.
Her home was deep in a very old forest far away from anyone.
Saille had responsibilities. She was a dryad, a guardian spirit, after all. She tended the forest, the trees, the birds and insects and animals. Saille helped heal the sick. And she kept the fire away.
It was this way for Saille since she could remember and Saille had a long memory. She recalled when the towering evergreens were just saplings, and when the biggest elms fell to rot, decay, and produce acres of mushrooms; when the chipmunks' litters were due; when the each acorn would fall from the trees. She recalled exactly when the winds would blow and litter the forest floor with branches and leaves, and when the grasses would grow, and when the rocks would be dry. Saille knew exactly when the colors of autumn would explode, and when the new blossoms were exposed to the sun. And she remembered the day when the earth shook all around.
Saille remembered that day, that day the most.
She remembered that day because it was the last day that she felt good inside.
Saille awoke that day to many aches and pains. She felt intense cramps in her legs. Her home - her tree - had a coldness in its roots that spread throughout its trunk, branches, and droopy limbs. It shivered, as did she, for both of them were afflicted. She felt a sincere sadness deep within her, but yet not within her, for the sadness was projected from elsewhere; it was the culmination of fear, horror, terror, and grief that flowed south-by-southwest, through the roots of every tree in the forest, to touch her tree. Emotion transmitted instantly from hundreds of miles away. She felt an intensity of sadness from others of her kind, and from the grasses, the shrubs, the trees, the forest itself, just as the very earth violently erupted and convulsed. The earthquake shook the land. It uprooted and toppled both young and old tree. It bludgeoned the tendrils of tender roots and vines and plant stalks. The forest writhed in pain.
And the pain manifested in Saille's body just as you or I might feel the punishment of a sledgehammer, swung high and brought down upon our bodies to smash, pound, break bone, and bruise flesh. She felt all of it - the fear, the pain, the terror - and she felt such immense sadness.
The earthquake would soon end and for days on end the aftershocks jolted Saille, made her flinch, disrupted her sleep. She couldn't shake the sadness, the feelings of fear and regret. In the moons that followed, the animals would sense the wrongness of things and pursue unusual patterns - walk when they should fly; sleep when they should hunt; hibernate when they should be shedding their fats; stay under the rocks instead of greet the sun. The whole land mourned and Saille mourned with it.
Then one day, the spots appeared. Brown spots that raced up her legs, over her hips and chest, and covered her arms. The spots was an aggressive fungus. A disease to Saille and to her home, for the willow also contracted the brown spots all across its trunk and leaves.
She concentrated, tried to communicate to the fungus to ask it, Why? Why do you harm me? But the fungus would not obey her. It ignored her, in fact, and spoke nothing to the nymph. It only wickedly tried to consume her. She tried to repel it, but it was too strong. She tried to undo it, but the fungus was too tenacious. It just kept on coming.
Moons would pass and Saille realized that her life was in jeopardy: the fungus was like a poison and it would literally end her physical expression unless that she took action. Realizing that her final days were upon her, she commanded her home to wrap her, strap her against the bark of her tree, to keep her flesh warm and close, to hold and hug her in the final days. At her call, vines wrapped about her and lashed her to her tree. Her body would soon atrophy, her flesh become bark, her skin the texture of leaves, as her body was absorbed into the willow tree.
Throughout those long, last days, as she endured the poison coursing through her being, she tried to reach out to her sisters, other nymphs who were connected to the forest as she was, only to realize - with fearful dread - that they, too, were under attack. That her sisters were equally the target of the encroaching fungus that consumed their physical beings. She would die soon, she knew it, and she reached out her mind into the forest.
Everywhere is pain, said the trees. Can you help?
Saille said. I cannot; I am dying.
The trees shuddered. Unfortunate. We suffer together.
I am covered in brown spots - a fungus attacks me and I cannot control it.
Wicked spots. Many of us are covered in spots. The spots burn.
On her deathbed, her body slowly being absorbed into her home tree, Saille concentrated with the last scrap of will that she could bring rise to.
From whence come the spots? From whence comes the scourge?
Many of our kind suffer in the northeast, replied the trees. Their wails and intense sorrow and pain and fear can be felt all around.
I feel it, said Saille.
Isn't it beautiful, asked the trees. It is a singular and most perfect horror.
The trees were quiet for a while.
Saille asked, What drives this pain?
And the trees said nothing.
Answer me, commanded Saille. What drives this pain?
There was silence.
Saille, weak as death was befalling her, poured the last of her energy into her question.
Answer me, she commanded again.
When the trees spoke, they spoke with a different voice. They spoke with the inflection of a separate, more alien consciousness, that was not that of the trees, but that of something more angry, more bitter and spiteful, than what any tree could possibly be, as if the voice of the trees were quieted and suppressed as another spoke:
Wytchweed, it said. It comes from ... me ...
And at that moment, Saille's physical form expired. Her body exhaled its last breath. Saille the Dryad was no more.
R
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