Eden
Legacy Name: Bloom

I find my awakening in the receding clutch of winter. My face breaks through the layer of soil that has settled over me. My first breath aboveground is of pine and crisp air. I will the vines that have ensnarled my fingertips and ankles to slacken their grip, to wake as I do.

The footsteps that I leave behind fertilize the soil; in the indents my soles leave, green blades of grass part the earth and ascend sleepily towards the winking sunshine. The forest brightens; color has infused the leaves once again. I kiss an apple tree and its bounty falls to the floor around me, ripe.

I feel the weakness of the forest reverberate in my bones. The trees call to me with hollow voices that I might breathe life back into them. I whisper yellow-gold flourishes into their bark and taste sap, amber-sweet on my lips. I touch their branches lightly and the sleepy leaves begin their awakening.

My forest has darkened considerably this year; it is an unquestionable weight I feel in the soles of my feet as I step around the bleary-eyed creatures. The ebbing of my heart, weak and quaint, is the heart of the forest, and it has never been so faint.

And I smell blood on the prevailing wind; it is misplaced amidst the rebirth of the florae and fauna. Death has no place where I am; the winter is for that, and the winter is cold and fatal. (I count the years that pass when it seems that he has become weak, for someday I know that I may overcome him.) But still I can see in my mind’s eye a hub of death, surrounded by darkness, trails of blood and decay. Black, rotting. And somewhere deep within the forest, the echoes of a sorrow so private it has festered within the heart of one disparate being.

I find the first buck in a grove near my waking-place. In death, he has called for me; a wooden arrow has pierced his chest. I kneel to him and touch my lips to the wound. Where my skin touches the earth, vines spring up and curl around his still body, pulling it under the soil, far, far, so that it cannot disrupt the replenishing of the forest. Before I sleep, I will honor his body, wear his skin; his death will not have been for naught.

The children of the forest are my children; life must prevail. I dread the time of the year that sleep lowers my eyelids and lives are stolen in the night by the cold. Death has no place here, where I am; it must be expelled. I will find the sorrowful being that haunts these woods and slaughters the children of the earth.

This spring, the deer will birth twice as many fawns as those that were slaughtered. I have bestowed my blessing upon the head of each chosen doe as she sleeps. Soon, they will wake.

I am a tall oak; my roots span thousands of miles below the earth. My veins are bursting with water, with sustenance. My roots break earth and envelop my children, give them life again. And when I must sleep once more, I will leave them with the promise of life so that they will await my return.

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