Dreaming
706 Words
The outside of her home was typical for the forest area. Made entirely of tree trunks chopped down and strapped together by complex weaving with strong vines. It was rustic looking and hardy, but the weaving gave it a cohesive feeling, as if it had sprung up out of the ground and grown naturally just like that. She used to trace the weaving pattern that held everything together, her finger getting lost over and over in the maze of intricate pathways.
“Why is our home woven together?” She remembered asking her parents on one occasion, when she was very young. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to use nails?”
“You need to be careful here, Alya.” Her mother said. She had been using the mill roller, grinding lavender into a fine dry powder in the tray below the crushing weight. Her strong, sure hands held the handles sticking out of the wheel on each side. They were steady, consistent, pushing and pulling like the ebb and flow of the sea. Alya loved when she used this tool. It was a soothing sound, and it always released the smells of the herbs she was grinding. The entire house smelled as if they were inside the blooming lavender, and she breathed in slow and deep. The potpourri made from this would be a lovely sleep aid.
“What do you mean, careful? We grind up herbs and plants all the time, don’t we?” She persisted.
“In grinding the herbs and plants,” her father added as he came in from outside, “we let them perform their destiny. To release their most pure essence into the world. But we were warned before building a house here, to never sully the lumber with foreign iron or metals. Never try to own the forest. Others before us did, and look what happened to them.”
Alya thought about it, and they had a point. Others had come and built quickly, almost overnight. The sounds of hammering and pounding ringing out across the forest. But no matter how strong these houses should have been, something always happened. Overgrowth would choke the owners yards making it impossible to enter again, impossibly fast growth that sometimes covered entire homes. Other trees would fall, much too often, crushing these houses, the owners leaving yelling about a curse. Worst of all was the time there had been a mud slide, burying the house and it’s occupants alive. She shuddered at the memory. She had had nightmares for weeks following that horror, imagining herself trapped beneath so much dirt and mud that no one could hear her scream.
“Are you saying the forest is alive? It knows what we do and fights back?” Alya whispered this, as if trying to go unheard by the forest around her.
Her parents shared a look. Mother nodded, and father turned back to her, smiling but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Alya. This forest is not like other forests. This mountain, this land, is...special. We live here as guests, not conquerors. And we must respect this home...or suffer the consequences. We do not know the root of it, but we know there is a power undercutting every square inch of this place, protecting it, and that is not to be tampered with. And so, we do not introduce foreign elements. We do not attempt to create paths and cut away more than necessary. We live in harmony with it, understood?” Alya stared into her father’s solemn eyes, but she had more questions.
“If we live in harmony, how did we get the trees for the house in the first place? Didn’t you cut them down?” Alya felt pretty smart for asking that, and she smugly crossed her arms. But her father shook his head and said, “My clever wild girl, you are mistaken. None of these were cut down. They were collected after falling. What the forest gives, we may take. Nothing more.”
Alya raised her head and looked at the outline of the mountain she could see through their back window. The forest spread out beneath it like a vast, lush tapestry. The giant mountain loomed over them, and Alya thought it was like an ever present guard, judging who may stay, and who must leave. She hoped they could stay forever.
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- Writer
