Still reeling, eyes wide as I tried to absorb the sheerothernessof this hidden pocket of the world, I took a tentative step toward the creek. The water looked impossibly clear, inviting even. My boot, still damp from the misty jungle beyond the vine curtain, landed squarely on a patch of innocent-looking,vibrant green moss clinging to a smooth, dark rock at the water’s edge.
Wrong move.
It was like stepping onto oiled glass. My foot shot out from under me instantly, sideways. There was a sickeningly loudcrackthat seemed to echo in the profound silence, originating somewhere around my ankle as it twisted violently beneath me. A sharp, involuntary cry ripped from my throat before I could clamp down on it, startlingly loud in the heavy air.
I landed hard on the unforgiving stones of the creek bank, the impact knocking the breath clean out of me. White-hot agony exploded up my leg, radiating from my ankle in nauseating waves. Stars burst behind my eyelids.
“Ah,hell.” I gasped, clutching my throbbing ankle, tears of pain and shock blurring my vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to breathe through the fire. “Well,” I choked out between gritted teeth, forcing my eyes open again to stare at the impossibly serene, ancient-feeling clearing around me. “That’s just perfect. Nailed it, Sienna. Absolutely nailed it.”
Lost was bad enough. Lost in a place that hummed with weird energy and felt older than time itself was worse. But lost, injured, and trapped in that ancient, silent place? Brilliant. Just brilliant.
My sarcastic dismissal of forest spirits felt childishly naïve now. Maybenowwould be a good time for that mythical Green Man I’d scoffed at earlier to make an appearance? You know, leafy face, magic nature powers, maybe carrying a supernatural first-aid kit and a glowing map pointing to the nearest ‘Exit, Stage Left?’
Yeah. Probably shouldn’t hold my breath for that one. Just my luck, stranded and crippled in a place that felt like it had been waiting, silent and watchful, for millennia.
Alone.
Or was I?
Because just beyond the edge of my pain-blurred vision, did a shadow among the ancient ferns on the far bank just shift?
THE GUARDIAN AWAKENS
Kauri
For time untold, my awareness had rested, interwoven with the deep, slow pulse of the rainforest, my sanctuary, one of the dwindling emerald hearts in a world growing gray and brittle. I felt the slow encroachment beyond the veil, the distant tremors of loss from other forests, other guardians, echoing the fragility of these ancient places. So when the sharp, discordantspikeof pain lanced through the quiet harmony near the creek, it was more than just a disturbance. It was anintrusion. Alien and raw, radiating from a small, warm life that had somehow breached the hidden ways into my protected domain. Was this another echo of the outside world’s carelessness, a harbinger of the threats I constantly guarded against?
Immediately following the pain came the scent, thin but sharp, the acrid tang of fear. It wasn’t the fleeting startle of a forest creature, quickly fading back into the undergrowth. This was different, a rising tide of sustained, frantic energy that vibrated outward, polluting the sanctuary’s clean, charged air. It felt fragile. Desperate. And deeplywrongwithin these ancient borders. Mingled with it, faint but unmistakable, wasthe coppery whisper of blood spilled upon the stones. Minimal, yet a clear note of injury added to the growing discord. I sensed her life-force, previously a steady pulse against the cool, vibrant backdrop of the rainforest contained within my sanctuary, flicker like a flame caught in a sudden draft, weakened by shock and pain. My ancient vigilance, honed by the awareness of external threats, sharpened instantly.
The balance was disturbed, and the source felt dangerously out of place. Deep within the heartwood of my awareness, where the rainforest’s energy converges like tributaries flowing to a central pool, I focused on the breach itself. I felt the subtletearat the veil—the shimmering, hidden boundary she must have stumbled through into my sanctuary. An intrusion. Such things were unusual, unsettling reminders of the fragile separation between this protected heart and the encroaching world, but they were not entirely unprecedented over the long ages.
But mere milliseconds after registering the tear, something else slammed into me. Ajolt. This was no simple alarm, no mere ripple of a disturbed boundary. This was a profound, seismic shock that resonated through every root anchoring me to the earth, through every branch reaching for the sky. It vibrated through the very core of my being. The Ancient Vow, quiescent for centuries beyond counting, a deep, slumbering power woven into my essence, flared awake. It ignited like lightning striking dry tinder, an instantaneous, blinding surge of energy. Itsangwithin me, a resonant frequency I hadn’t felt in millennia. Itthrummedwith power and purpose, shaking off the dust of ages. And in that same, shattering instant, itrecognized.
The source of the pain, the fear, the blood scent, the dangerous intrusion was not merely an intruder. She wasShe. The One. The life tethered intrinsically to the Vow. Mate.
The slow, deep rhythm of my existence, the patient observation of seasons turning across the canopy, starswheeling in the gaps between ancient crowns, stone eroding grain by patient grain, shattered. It fractured like river ice under sudden weight. Awareness, usually diffused like sunlight filtering through the densest layers of the rainforest, bathing my entire sanctuary in a calm, steady regard, snapped into sharp, immediate focus. It narrowed and intensified, centered entirely and irrevocably on that specific point along the creek bank where she lay.
Dormancy, the deep, quiet resting state between the slow cycles of the world, fell away from me like dead leaves ripped free in a sudden gale. Ancient senses, usually attuned to the subtlest shifts in the sanctuary’s energy—the whisper of wind through ferns, the burrowing of a grub deep in the soil, the silent unfurling of a new leaf—flared to their full, piercing intensity. The low hum she might have felt as a mere vibration in the air intensifiedwithinme, becoming a powerful, resonant frequency that locked onto her presence, her specific life signature, with unwavering precision. Time itself, usually measured in the slow thickening of growth rings and the imperceptible shifts of mountains, warped and accelerated, suddenly tethered to the frantic, panicked beat ofherheart, echoing within my own ancient core.
The Vow demanded proximity. Protection. Action. It resonated through me, an imperative older than the mountains, leaving no room for the patient stillness that had defined my existence moments before. I flowed from my place of quiet contemplation, not stepping as humans do upon the earth, but becoming movement itself. Shadows under the dense canopy deepened and shifted, flowing around me, becoming part of my passage. Roots beneath the thick layer of moss and damp soil rearranged silently, subtly altering the forest floor to facilitate my path, leaving no trace. My form coalesced and dissolvedthrough the tangled undergrowth, less a solid body and more a current within the living fabric of the sanctuary.
I moved like water finding its inevitable course downhill, silent as falling mist settling upon ferns, drawn inexorably toward the discordant, painful notes of her fear and injury, drawn toward the blinding, magnetic beacon of the awakened Vow now centered entirely upon her. To her senses, likely overwhelmed by her own plight, I was not there. I was merely the ancient, undisturbed quiet of the rainforest itself, drawing ever closer, a presence felt only as the deepening of the surrounding stillness.
As I drew nearer, flowing through the deep green shadows beside the creek, a dry twig, brittle with countless cycles of sun and rain, succumbed beneath a shifting root tendril near the bank. It was an utterly insignificant sound in the grand, layered symphony of the sanctuary, less than the rustle of a skink in the leaf litter or the drip of water from a high branch. Normally, it would pass beneath my notice entirely.
Yet, I instantlyfeltthe shockwave this tiny sound sent throughher. Her fear, already a sharp, pervasive scent polluting the clean air, spiked violently, flooding the immediate vicinity with its acrid tang. It was like a physical blow against my senses. A fragile, almost imperceptible tremor followed immediately, the vibration of her voice, thin and high, cutting through the charged silence that had fallen. It wasn’t a word, not yet, but a raw sound, a vibration of desperate hope tangled inextricably with raw, primal terror. A sound that resonated with the vulnerability I had sensed earlier, now amplified by the sudden, unexpected noise in the oppressive quiet.
Concealment, my constant state within the sanctuary, was no longer the priority. The Vow, now a burning core within me, urged presence, demanded visibility. Protection required proximity, and proximity now required revelation. I allowed myform to fully cohere at the edge of the small clearing by the water, stepping deliberately from the deep, concealing shade of the ancient, towering ferns into the muted, dappled light filtering down by the creek bank.
I did not consciously choose this shape. It simplyisme, the physical manifestation of my awareness within this place. I rose to the height of young, strong saplings intertwined, my limbs formed of living roots and weathered branches, textures of rough, time-worn bark interwoven seamlessly with patches of soft, vibrant green moss. Within the deep core of my being, the very light and energy of the sanctuary gathered, spilling softly outward through the apertures in my upper form that served the function of eyes—an emerald luminescence that held the quiet, steady memory of millennia. I was stone, wood, leaf, water, and ancient, patient energy made manifest, standing now before the source of the disturbance, the focus of the Vow.
The wave of pure, undiluted terror that slammed into me from her was almost a physical force, a suffocating pressure against my senses. It felt colder than the rushing creek water beside her, sharper and more piercing even than the signal of her physical pain had been. Through my heightened awareness, I perceived her small form locked utterly rigid against the stones, her breath held captive in her lungs, a sudden stillness born not of calm, but of paralyzing fear. The small, fragile life warmth I had initially sensed radiating from her felt suddenly overshadowed, almost extinguished, by the overwhelming flood of adrenaline her body released.
Her eyes, wide and dark in the dim light, reflected the faint emerald luminescence spilling from my form. They were fixed on me, unblinking, and in their depths, I sensed no recognition, no curiosity, only the primal, absolute certainty of seeing a monster, a threat made manifest from the deepest shadows of the forest. The Vow within me pulsed again, strong andinsistent, a deep, resonant counterpoint to the frantic, high-pitched frequency of her fear. It demanded I bridge the chasm her terror had instantly created between us, an urgent command layered over the instinct to soothe and protect.
The overwhelming wave of her terror crashed against me, yet the Vow acted like a lens, cutting through that blinding fog, sharpening my focus instantly onto the core source of her distress, the reason she lay vulnerable by the water’s edge. I saw, with a clarity that transcended mere physical sight, the unnatural, sickening angle of her lower limb against the smooth gray stones. I sensed the fragile bone beneath the soft flesh, compromised and broken. The throbbing heat radiating from the injury was a distinct signal, a beacon of pain, highlighting the profound vulnerability of her small, soft form against the ancient, unyielding rocks, alone and wounded within my domain.
The Vow surged within me then, an overwhelming, instinctual tide flooding my entire being. It wasn’t a sequence of thoughts, but a fundamental command woven into the very fabric of my existence, now directed solely and fiercely at her.Protect. Shield. Mend. Keep Safe.Yet, her terror remained a tangible barrier, a shriek of panic that prevented the very protection the Vow demanded. Her fearitselfwas a danger to her, potentially worsening her state. The imperative to ‘keep safe’ clashed with the reality that my current manifestation was causing profound fear.
