by Ammie Hague

Created on: November 14, 2008

"The forest of stories is covered with a thousand leaves." Her windy voice rustled through the thinning branches as the gardener swept together sheaves of autumn color which had splashed across his yard.

Pausing to lean on his rake, he drew in a refreshing breath and quietly listened to the breeze as it whispered through the outstretched arms of the languorous beech and generous maple that made their homes in his yard.

On particularly leisurely days, he often envisioned faces within the whorls of bark and knots. Other times as he pruned and planted, weeded and landscaped, he fancied that he wasn't reciting poetry only himself or merely thinking aloud, but rather sharing a conversation with the wood-sprites and gnomes that frolicked among the foliage of his house.

Her breath whisked his cheek again. "So it came to pass that the Dryads made their dwellings within the warm and tender flesh of the majestic oak and silver birch. We sought solace and lodging within the boughs of the ash and yew and dressed ourselves in robes of the finest pine-bark and coats of madrone-husk."

Affectionately, he thought of her as Faela: the lovely nymph that inhabited his beech tree, though he never was quite sure where he had heard the name. On bright summer days when the breeze frisked through her fully adorned branches, it sometimes seemed that he could pick out the shape of her form against the smooth contours of beech bark.

"The memory of trees is long and the airy zephyrs delight in whisking tales around the world. It is the delight of these stories which stirs the leaves to chatter and rustle in an effort to be tickled with those airy adventures."

Slender as a sapling branch, there were times he felt certain that she was flirting with him as she swayed and waltzed to the jazzy wind in her arms. Sometimes, after the first showers of spring, he could swear that surely those dappled and sun-pierced drops reflected the sparkling smile in Faela's green eyes.

"And so the leaves spend their seasons listening and tittering, quietly convrsing or talking all at once. Each has its favorite quest or apologue, rhyme or legend that it cannot wait to tell."

Often he daydreamed that he could hear the melody of her laughter rising upon a gust. Today, he recognized that soothing hush which enchanted him into contented stillness.

"Beginning in the spring, they excitedly collect the chilly winter tales and bold summer adventures until every leaf is jostling and full, ready to carry their tale to the world."

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