Fertility
Legacy Name: Fertility

In the quiet and calm of the forests only two sounds can be heard: the flitting of wings as the Guardian takes her morning post in the top of the highest tree, and her pencils sketching the world before her. She cares for the living, breathing or not, and takes great care in sketching, drawing, painting, or engraving every little aspect of the giant woodlands she calls her home. Like most Guardians she has no birth name, but the land given call name of her's is known as Fertility. This is the reason why...

The spring had ended, great showers making the flowers launch up in myriad shades of the rainbow as the Guardian took her routine post on a tree branch in the marshy glade. Markers and crayons moving with skill and grace to make the scene before her come alive on the paper. She had no voice, lost in a childhood accident, but her pictures spoke for her. The reds of the tulips seemed to describe the passion she felt for her duties, the oranges and yellows of the sunflowers seemed to mirror the sun's joy and warmth. The shades of green and blue made the paper come to life as the shades of purple added that extra dark hint to make it all the more realistic.

She took her work seriously, and the world was one forest healthier and happier with her caring touch.

But soon after the spring ended and the storms that had once come to replenish the land every few days vanished, so did the reds of the tulips and the golds and orange of the sunflowers. The green and blues of life were left with various shades of brown signalling the proable death without the water. Purple turned to black as the forest became bleaker. She'd drawn this scene out once a few years back, but it had never looked like this. Never seemed this... dead.

The springs were dying up, and the animals were leaving to find new homes; they couldn't live there anymore. The life was brittle and sickly, nothing to sustain them but the small reserves that they had taken stock in making before the showers ended. But they didn't last long, they couldn't last long.

The sun seemed to relentingly beat down upon her dying abode, most animals either gone or preparing to leave. The temperature drove to extreme highs that even she was having hard times dealing with. As a Guardian she had been trained to undergo harsh conditions, but nothing could compare to the blazig flares of dry heat she experienced each and every day that she alone went through to keep up her routine depictions. She wouldn't fail, not yet. There were few options left, and only one that could really help the trees to heal and the animals to return: to pray.

Praying to the holy Goddess Ashtarte was the only idea she could fathom. Once a month they would harvest what they could and send their thanks to the hidden entity, but now it seemed that she would get more than her abundant fruits and grains of the earth. She'd recieve the best art that the young Guardian could manage to draw showing the two sides of her home: both good and bad.

For days with little sleep she drew and painted and coloure and sketched. For days the land began to worsen and worsen until even she had to debate survival over responsibilities. But she stayed, and worked on the most magnificient wok of art that she could fathom. Half of the canvas had been shrouded in greens and blues to show the healthy leaves with the richest brown for the dirt and trunks of the trees and bushes. Animals were scattered throughout, living peacefully and in harmony like the Great Mother had asked. The other half was a mixture of dark browns and light tans, a few patches of yellow for what was left of the withering lifeless grasses and leaves, the semi-bare trunks visually hard and cold with a deep red sun shining down upon the area. No animals, no life; just the empty dark abyss that her beautiful paridise was soon becoming.

She prayed over the portrait for what seemed like weeks, her nonexistant voice reaching out into nothing... and soon they were answered. Showers like none seen before came and replenished the land, all the colours could be seen starting to appear as they drank in the shimmering liquid that gave them consistency. The sun seemed to dull and the air cool as the waters made everything right. The animals and more began to return to the woods, new species never seen by her eyes of both animal and plants graced her with their presence as they began to coexist in her already perfect world.

They called her the land's maiden, the saviour of them all. They called her heaven-sent. She was named Fertility.

And as tradition, once a week the Guardian and all willing participants draw their thanks to the Goddess Ashtarte along with a small offering of food to help keep her favor over them so that a drought as bad as the one experienced would most likely never come again.