The Fourth Elder

The morning sun felt wonderful, and the air was sweet and clear when they emerged from their impromptu camp. Sen moaned in a tone that held both surprise and horror. It took Bard a moment to see what she was looking at, since he had his hand full of the felt.

Her gaze seemed to be on the numerous bare and gnarly trees around them. In the night, it would be hard to see the condition of the trees, particularly when they were focused on the shades. Outside of this grove, were trees with yellow and orange leaves, even some bushy pines, but the sight probably disturbed Sen, seeing as it reminded them of the aftermath of the storm shades.

“Bard? Are there storm shades around?” Sen asked, looking at the sky.

“No. Not around here. This is just how these trees look,” he said as he walked up to one of them. “You’ll understand when you see the rest of the forest.”

She seemed upset at the idea, but Bard helped her and Kai prepare to head deeper into the woods. He looked for the craggily rocky slopes and directed Kai to one.

The stones slid around as Kai walked, causing Sen to shiver. Bard comforted her as she looked at the graveyard appearance of the trees.

A particularly tall and twirled tree stood out from the rest. Kai walked to it and Bard hoped down, his token in hand. He flung it around for a second, and the tree shuddered, causing Sen to nearly fall off in surprise.

“Ah,” a yawn was heard. “Bard, you’ve come back. Sorry, I was sleeping…” The tree said, and the rocks shifted, revealing a much larger boulder the roots were attached into.

Sen came over and bowed, following his instructions. Bard bowed with her, and the Tree reached out and tapped their foreheads.

“Another token bearer? Wait… A Dryad?” The tree said with her singsong voice. As she spoke, bits of green emerged from the tips of her branches.

“I am Bard’s Pledged one,” Sen introduced. “Sen of the Silver Wood, daughter of Defender.”

“Ah, one of his children. And a Pledge. How long since you were here, Bard? Surely not that long.”

“Elder Perspective, it is good to meet you again. It has been only a few years since I was here. And yes, I am pledged to Sen.” Bard looked fondly at Sen, who bowed once more. Her necklace of tokens clacked with her bow. She looked comfortably confident at the Elder, and Bard was proud of her.

“So, you seek a token or approval for this pledge?” Perspective asked and Sen affirmed it. “Then climb my branches and tell me what you see.”

Bard respectfully stood back as Sen began her tutelage under Perspective. As her name implied, she was about perspectives. The Elder was the third oldest that Bard had met, and her origins were high in the mountains until a landslide brought her and her forest down. It was a miracle that they hadn’t been crushed in the process. Being down here, meant she saw things differently, and the trees who had survived had praised her for keeping them alive. She had refuted the praise, as it was the strong boulders they had been on who hadn’t rolled like the other rocks. She also had discussed with the other trees who were down here how things were different up in the high altitudes. Most were unaware of the desert on the other side, and didn’t believe there was anywhere with little water. There were also times that the trees of the lower levels thought they had died off, only to be surprised when they moved.

Their type of tree was unusually resilient and patient, even the younger of the trees were older than the lower level trees and so were considered Elders with their mannerisms and thoughts.

But it wasn’t just this, the other trees, while injured from the landslide, had reached out through their roots and supplied the newly transplanted elders with water and nutrients, ensuring their survival. It was an interesting conglomerate of a forest.

Sen climbed far higher than he had when he had come. And her words didn’t reach down here. Though, he did hear Perspective’s voice as she conversed with Sen.

“What can you see?

Anything else?

How does it differ from the ground level?”

At the last question, Sen came down and then went back up, bringing up the differences.

“How many different trees can you see up there?

How about from down here?”

Bard looked about. There were at least ten distinct species of trees he could see from this place. Sen gave her answers when she was at the top of the tree, making it impossible to understand her.

Perspective chuckled and had Sen continue to relay what the differences were from the top and bottom of the tree. What she observed, how it varied and so on. Eventually, Sen was panting and about ready to lay down from exertion. Bard was impressed how many times she had climbed. Far more than he would ever want to do.

He then focused on setting up camp, and preparing the furs he had harvested from Kai’s summer coat. He pulled out a wooden stick with a wide end and shifted the furs in his hand across it. Sen continued her climbs, making Bards back, legs and arms ache in sympathy. He shook his head out of his musings and focused on turning the furs into a rope. The ends stuck out in weird places, making it scratchy, but it would make a decent rope. After a thin pass the first time, he aligned more and more of them, making it as long and continuous as possible. At times, he slowed the process and other times he fell into rhythm. At all times, he tried to keep the rope consistent in its thickness. The sun began to set as he finished the first batch. He would continue it tomorrow.

With Sen’s arms tired, he only helped her poke the fire around so they could cook over it. The camp, he set up by himself.

“Why did she have to keep asking about different things?” Sen moaned and Bard chuckled. Because of her confidence in her ability to climb, she hadn’t thought of ways to mitigate the travels, and so she forced herself into climbing continuously.

“If you tried to grasp a bigger picture, and looked at more than what was asked, would you have climbed as often?” he asked and Sen looked surprised and then growled before whining at the sting of sore muscles.

“Here,” he muttered as he handed her a honey coated tonic he had made. Sen consumed it as soon as he said Healer gave the recipe to help her grow strong and healthy. She limped to bed, too tired to really feed herself after that. Bard coaxed her to eat a little bit, but she refused to sit up and drink any water. She was out in a moment, and Bard finished tidying the camp before heading to bed.