Then, he pointed firmlyinsidethat invisible arc. Then he pointedoutsideit, toward the deeper, unseen parts of the glowing forest, and shook his head slowly, decisively. The same ponderous ‘no’ he’d used when I’d tried to leave.
This far,the gesture screamed.And no farther.
My stomach tightened. So, I wasn’t just a prisoner, I was a prisoner with yard privileges. A very,verysmall yard. He’d shown me the tantalizing, weird beauty just outside, only to immediately fence it off. It wasn’t an invitation but a definition of my cage’s boundaries.
Part of me bristled, wanting to demandwhy, wanting to test that invisible line just to spite him. But the memory of his immovable presence blocking the exit, the sheer power radiating from him, kept me rooted. And maybe there was a reason. When he’d pointed beyond the line, his expression, or what I could perceive of it, hadn’t seemed angry, but serious. Was it a warning? Was he keeping meinor keeping something elseout?
The thought sent a fresh chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the cave’s dampness. He’d established the rules of my confinement without uttering a single word beyond his name.Stay here. Don’t go there.Simple. Clear. And utterly terrifying in its implications. My world had shrunk again, now precisely defined by the reach of his silent command.
Okay, the silent treatment it was, then. My question about the glowing, breathing forest hung unanswered in the strangely lit air, absorbed by the damp earth and the shimmering leavesjust like my earlier pleas had been absorbed by the cave walls. Kauri stood there, a monolith framed by pulsing fungi and impossible plants. Waiting for what? For me to spontaneously photosynthesize?
With the initial shock of the alien landscape wearing off, and nowhere else to really look, my gaze snagged on him. Reallylookedat him, not just as the giant obstacle between me and freedom, or the shadowy monster from a nightmare, but as, well, as Kauri.
My eyes traced the contours of his form in the eerie blue-green light. He wasn’t just covered in bark. It seemed tobehis skin, thick and deeply fissured like the oldest trees I’d ever seen, but with a strange underlying resilience, like stone woven with wood. Moss and tiny, delicate ferns weren’t just clinging to him, they grewfromhim, nestled in the crevices of his shoulders and limbs, tiny spots of vibrant green against the deep brown and gray. It wasn’t decay. It looked like symbiosis, ancient and settled.
I remembered those enormous, root-like hands bringing me water, applying the poultice to my throbbing ankle. They were weapons, undoubtedly, thick enough to snap bones like twigs. Yet, thinking back, his movements had been surprisingly deliberate, almost gentle. No, gentle wasn’t the right word.Precise. There was an economy of motion, a lack of wasted energy or aggression, even when he’d blocked the cave entrance. It was the careful, measured movement of immense strength consciously held in check.
I squinted, trying to make out his face, usually lost in shadow or turned away. The glowing flora cast shifting patterns, making it hard to focus, but I could see the deep-set hollows where eyes should be. Were they eyes? They didn’t gleam or reflect the light like animal eyes would. They were just deep, dark pools of shadow, yet somehow, I felt observed. Not with malice, necessarily, but with an unnerving, ancient patience. Like a mountain watching a mayfly.
This close, seeing the intricate detail, the sheerageradiating from him, the fear didn’t lessen, but it shifted. He wasn’t just a brute. He was something far stranger, something impossibly old and tied to this hidden, glowing world in a way I couldn’t begin to comprehend. The thought sent a fresh wave of prickles across my skin. Understanding him felt less likely than ever, and that deep, quiet unknown felt infinitely more dangerous than simple monstrousness ever could. He was a puzzle carved from living wood and stone, and I was trapped inside it.
The invisible line Kauri drew hung in the air between us, a silent testament to my shrunken world. Okay, boundaries established. Stay within the tiny glowing patch, don’t wander off into the creepy, beautiful unknown. Got it. But after laying down the law, or the vine, whatever, something about Kauri shifted.
He was still the same colossal, silent guardian, mostly blocking the waterfall entrance like a sentient boulder. But the quality of his stillness felt different now. Before, his attention, even when silent, felt focused on me, my ankle, and the cave itself. Now it felt divided. Distant.
He’d stand there for ages, perfectly immobile, but his focus wasn’t entirelypresent. It was like he was listening to something far beyond the cave walls, some frequency only his ancient ears could pick up. His head wouldn’t turn, but there was an abstraction to his posture, a sense that part of him was elsewhere.
A few times, I saw one of his massive, root-like hands slowly clench, the knuckles grinding like stones, before deliberately relaxing again. It was a tiny movement for such a huge being, easily missed if I hadn’t been watching him constantly, which, let’s be honest, was my main hobby now. It spoke of tension, of some internal pressure warring with his usual stoicism.
Was he regretting this? Was having a broken human cramping his style? Or was it something else? The way he seemed simultaneously anchored to this spot and pulled elsewhere was deeply unsettling. He was my warden, my captor, this immovable object defining my existence. But now, it felt like the object itself was being subtly tugged by an invisible string.
The silence felt heavier, charged with his unspoken preoccupation. What was going on inside that ancient, bark-covered head? Was he reconsidering my ‘stay?’ Was there some duty calling him away, something conflicting with keeping me penned up here? The sheernot knowingwas maddening, adding a new, itchy layer to my fear. A predictable giant tree-man warden was one thing. A distracted, potentially conflicted one felt like a whole new level of precarious.
GLIMMERS OF TRUST
Kauri
The sharp edges of the small creature’s panic had dulled over the cycles of light and dark, but the vibration remained, a persistent, low thrum against the deep hum of the grove. It spiked whenever she performed the ritual with the dead shard of sky metal. Light bloomed and faded twice more across the canopy far above. The moss thickened minutely on the northern stones near the falls. She persisted.
Sienna learned the rhythm of sustenance I provided, consuming the offered fruit and drinking the water. Her movements became less guarded within the boundary I had set, the mending limb strengthening with each slow passage of the sun unseen beyond the leaves. She adapted, as life does. Yet, the ritual continued.
She would retrieve the smooth, cold shard from her strange coverings, holding it aloft near the waterfall’s veil as if seeking resonance from the outside. Her small form would tense, her focus absolute on its dark, reflective surface. Then, the inevitable slump, the lowering of the shard, and the wave of cold despair washing outward from her, chilling the air like an unseasonalfrost. It was a frequency of loss, of disconnection, that grated against the grove’s interwoven life.
Each time, the Vow resonated within my core, ancient and unyielding.Protect. Preserve.She was the charge, brought within the sanctum by forces beyond my choosing. Her physical wounds were mending under my care, as the Vow dictated. However, the Vow offered no guidance for this internal dissonance and ritual of hopeless longing mirrored in the dead shard. It was merely a disruption, a persistent ripple of her strange sadness that I could only observe and endure.
Another cycle, another ritual. She held the dead shard of sky metal aloft, her small form radiating a desperate hope that was painful to witness. Then, the inevitable slump, the lowering of the shard, and the wave of cold despair washing outward from her. It was a frequency that grated against the grove’s harmony, yes, but it was more than that. It felt like a wound, a deep, internal ache I could not mend with moss or clay.
The Vow pulsed within my core.Protect. Preserve. Alleviate harm.It had guided my actions to mend her broken bone, but it offered no remedy for a broken spirit. Her sadness was a harm the Vow could not ignore, a chilling frost that I felt an unfamiliar, urgent need to thaw.
She slumped against the damp cave wall, the shard falling loosely into her lap, her small frame radiating defeat. An imbalance. An action was required. Not just to restore harmony to the grove, but to quiet the echoing ache her despair created within me.
I moved from my stillness near the falls, the moss compressing silently under my weight. She startled, eyes widening as my shadow fell over her, pulling back instinctively toward the rock. I stopped, allowing the space between us. My focus was not on her fear, but on the shard. I slowly and deliberately extended a hand, not toward her, but pointing firstat the object in her lap, then tilting my head upward, toward the unseen sky far above the dense canopy.
Confusion warred with fear in her scent and in the rapid beat of her pulse that I could sense through the air. She clutched the shard tighter. Understanding was not necessary but compliance was. Gently, carefully, I reached down. My movements had to be precise, the strength required to uproot ancient trees resided in these limbs, yet she was fragile, like wind-blown pollen. I positioned one hand securely beneath her, the other steadying her back, feeling the surprising lightness of her, the frantic bird flutter of her heart against my bark skin.
Then, Iextended. Not walking, but growing, rising, my form lengthening as I pushed upward, through the layers of glowing foliage, past the shimmering membranes of fungal light, breaching the dense, interwoven ceiling of the grove. Cool, open air rushed around us. Below, the grove was a hidden bowl of soft light. Above, the vast, star-pricked darkness of the true night sky unfurled, a sight she had clearly yearned for.
I held her steady as she fumbled with the shard, her breath catching. Then, I felt it, a thin, alien thread of energy piercing downward from the void, touching the object she held. A spike, sharp and unfamiliar, unlike any energy within the grove. It lasted only moments, a flicker, before vanishing as abruptly as it arrived. Her gasp was sharp, a sound quickly swallowed by the immensity of the night.
