I wonder how I got here, how memory and sense of believability guide me throughout life. I have asked the trees, but I don’t quite understand them. I have similar difficulty with the winds and rain. They are deep in the flow of things, unwavering from their path. They have no separate self to reassure, can only man believe we are alone? Choice… I cry out in my heart but in my words I say nothing. Do I choose anything? Am I anything at all…

‘You’ll make sense of who and where, when and what goes on, soon enough. Don’t worry little one, it takes time to lure a reader into the mist.’

…

My village surrounded by trees, the untamed beasts of greater size don’t like to travel through them. We are protected by the forest, though some do fall prey to the monsters in its depths, some patterns are mitigated but never escaped. We do the best we can, we have begun to live more than survive.

My mother was taken before I could know her, out into the forest by the mist inside her mind. The others would fall silent when I came around, some feared the mist and what it was, some had theories, but only those who lived outside seemed to really know much of anything about our world. I could only remember the corpse of her now, buried inside the glacial tower.

The dead lay peaceful in their sleep, we flirt with death each night until we are betrothed eternal to her in the end.

Our buildings grow out of the land, working with the stone and forest, a great canopy over the entire village sprawled out to comfort us from the void beyond. In warmer times the canopy would blossom into a sea of light, flowers from the plants whose roots consumed the sun; the trees were always moving in a steady rhythm all around us, only those the branches accepted could freely go outside, the rest of us had no direct experience and relied on the stories of others to paint a picture of the world.

Windows to the outside world would unwind within the branches, water held between complex networks of plant matter would provide refracted glimpses of beyond, appearing as liquid insect wings with branching veins of green and earthly color.

People spoke about my father but I hadn’t really known him either, he cared for me several years before vanishing one day into the trees… Will I go off into the forest next? Will I return as a corpse like Mom did? It’s hard to know what to trust or who to believe, I feel too young to decide or know much of anything… but the older I get the more I feel everyone else thinks that too, even the elders.

‘The journey begins on the morrow of awakening. We have been protected long enough from the unseen.’

There is a whispering on the wind sometimes, leaves and whistling sounds filter in through the branches of our Great Tree, Nemorosa says she listens to these winds… but I have only ever heard rustling. I wonder what she hears in it.

“Rosaaaaa!” I called out to the giant turtle shell my grandmother had made her home, it was large enough that it could fit about 20 people inside it alongside the furniture and belongings. Sometimes she would tell me stories of Gilbert, her turtle, he was over 700 years old by the time he died! But I never got to meet him, and I was too young when my parents were here to hear what they knew of him. Grandma had lots of stories though.

A small, dark green face popped itself out of a flap of cloth shrouding the entrance of the great shell, “Hi Marble!” I greeted Rosa’s happy guardian. He crawled further out from the flap and smashed his torso sized head up under my chin, “Where’s momma, big guy?” He nipped gently at my shirt and turned to lead me back into the house. I followed his turtle behind through shelves and boxes full of medical and refinement supplies, magical bits and bobbles in a vaguely ordered mess were shoved to the periphery to create thin pathways barely wide enough for Marble to fit through. His feet made little splashes of water wherever he walked, with subtle blue luminosity flashing as the water ran ahead to cushion his forefoot; the ground remained completely dry behind him, I still couldn’t tell if it was some sort of magic or innate Talance from this breed of animal.

Nemorosa would just smile and tell me to stay curious whenever I’d asked her about it in the past.

*splash, splash, splash* I followed him and his wiggling stub of a tail over to one of the rear leg holes of the turtle shell, having come in through the head where the front entrance is. A little storefront sits behind the veil and wooden shutters, with grandmas workshop and living quarters back behind it. The leg ports are connected by large hallways, dense clay and plant fibers form a sturdy perimeter of concrete plastic, with little windows of water maintained through surface tension. Water can move freely throughout the house to anywhere it needs to at the whims of its owner, one of the few phenomena i’ve heard of outside worlds is the need for “plumbing” and something called an ocean… I thought our great pools were big.

I don’t see a reason not to trust the outsiders, rare as they are, if the great tree saw fit to let them inside, I can trust them can’t I? I remain neutral, i’ve seen what happens to those in our village too emotionally invested and obsessed with knowledge.

A circular room in this corner of the shell was where Marble stopped, a dark pool of water lie beneath a thin layer of ice, though the ice was only cool to the touch slightly below room temperature. Marble clicked his beak at me and let forth a grunt, gesturing for me to step into the circle. I had done this before but it was still weird, his eyes bulged out as he gulped in great breaths of air, sat for a moment, and spat a bubble out onto me.

The ice gave way instantly and I fell down surrounded by a bubble of breathability, sucked down through a channel of water and out another layer of ice into a dark cool cellar beneath the house. It wasn’t a far drop and the bubble cushioned any fall I would have had, but I still gasped for air out of fear and surprise upon landing, it was like stepping out into open air and falling, exhilarating. Little fish in the reservoir above gathered around the clear ice at the bottom to gawk at me, and with a whoosh, Marble shot down and burst out onto the ground beside me, happily sucking all the remaining water in through holes in his glistening shell.

“Oh hi, Nita, sorry I couldn’t lead you in myself, I was busy with something I couldn’t quite leave running.” She sat cross legged midair as shiny golden metals crimped and bound themselves together in constructing or repairing some machine, I don’t know which.

“Hi Gran, it’s alright. Marble let me in!” The turtle had left my side to float behind a great enclosure, peering curiously at Nemorosa through more of that clear ice. He had his own little world in there.

“Mm.. I can see that.” Water leeched from the wall to cool the surface of now gently blushing golden metal, steam hissing quietly on contact. Coils of tubing began winding round some object at the center. It looked like a snake wrapping a bright colored egg. “I am getting old, and the wind keeps saying things that I have been putting off! I need to grow you up, i’ve been remiss to do so… and I’m sorry. I’ve never been much good with others, and sometimes I feel responsible for what happened with your mother.”

“Oh you don’t need to”—

“Hush, girl. Sorry. Nita, you know how I feel about being told things.” I nodded, tongue pinched between my teeth. “I’m making you something, and I want you to watch, go sit with him in the glass.” She gestured toward Marble, who had begun bopping around a large orb of light resembling the lesser sun within The Great Tree. She was one of the few people who called our ice glass.

Marble saw me approaching and dunked the orb into the water, pushing it down into a little net at the bottom of his pool. He quickly swam up and opened the ice to let me through. I still wasn’t quite sure how they do that. I sat along the edge of the ice and stared through at the process going on outside, Marble came beside me and bucked me backwards with his head, “hey what are you doing?” He pushed again and grunted toward a big stone a few feet back, he made another raspy bark sound and I did as he wanted, sitting atop the stone. He laid down in front of me and I stared out curiously toward my grandmother.

More shards of that golden metal flew up out of containers along the walls and molded themselves over the egg like structure, a buzzing noise slowly began to permeate the environment. “Mar, glass.” She said. The turtle went stiff and shot a great streams of water out of his mouth, that faint blue luminosity swirling around and directing it like a cannon, the wall of ice rushed toward us far too quickly and I fell off the rock onto my back with a squeal.

“Ah!” Marble made a stupid chuffing noise of laughter as I crawled back onto the rock behind him, the wall now only a few inches from his face.

“Watch now!” Yelled Rosa, the dull humming had gradually become a roaring turbine, ripples of heat projecting off from the center of the object. Sweat droplets off her brow vaporized into the surrounding atmosphere, her thick, dark goggles pulled down over her eyes reflected a maddening array of light. The ice began clouding in vapor against the oppressing heat, radiant energy felt like it was sucking all the life out of the room in front of me. Living roots and branches started shifting the room and forming a protective barricade. Marble started to chortle, like an excited little kid unable to sit still. My fingers digging into the rock beneath me. What is that? Branches shot out over the ice.

BANG!

The room fucking exploded holy shit! Ice vaporized, turned to steam, exploded. A boundary of ice surrounded Marble and me, held together by sticks and coiled branches, most of it was blown to pieces. The cellar walls had eaten all the supplies back into them, stone-like branches formed weaving layers of a scorched wall and ceiling, now slowly replacing the objects tucked away behind them.

Nemorosa stood in the center of a rapidly regrowing crater of earth and rubble, staring at me unharmed and smiling. I sat dumbfounded and frozen, slightly shivering behind my turtle companion, he released the walled enclosure and with agile curiosity hopped out to see what had been made, grunting and croaking at me to come look. “Hahaha, ah. Sorry about that, you've never really watched me use my forge room, huh.”

“Forge room? I thought this was a wine cellar or something!”

“Oh, yeah, I mean it is… also that. Hehe.” She held out a glowing disc in front of her, about the size of her palm, “here, come get your present, kid. I need you ready to leave the forest.”