by Robert Bird

Created on: August 04, 2010

Sunlight breaks the canopy, bird calls bring the morning to life a chorus of cheeps and chirps, whistles and whoops. Scent of wood and earth mingle overlapping. He drew a deep breath filling his lungs with the thickened air, saturated with life, with power, with energy.

The staff little more than a branch seemingly fallen from a tree in some distant past reflected the gnarled fist that grasped it, a fist that shook as the arm tensed on every new step. He walked stooped over, bent on the spine where years of hard life added their own weight.

Brush and scrub tugs at the hem of his frayed cloak as he walks, pulling up loose branches, leaves and dirt, joining the weave so that it becomes impossible to tell where the man ended and the forest began. His gait slow and ponderous yet filled with purpose, announcing to no one for no one watched that there was a destination set in every step, a determination born from years of turmoil.

Massive trees tower above reaching for the sky, for life and for the energy. Colossal entities trunks thicker than a man, their voices sang to him even as their souls moulded to his own. On the edge of his hearing was their song and it was a melody to lift the spirits, that even muted and confined as it was by the difference between them and him, the song still dwarfed the efforts of the birds.

A clearing appeared ahead waiting patiently, the trees lining it's edge standing like sentinels over this oasis, this island in the sea of life. No bird dared fly above it and no creature regardless of size broke path across it.

Destination now in sight that careful agonisingly slow gait sped up, a soft groan of pain breaking through thin wind dried lips, tightening the lines surrounding the mouth, thick lines carved by the elements that creased with every facial expression. A rogue strand of grey white hair fell across his gaze fixed on the clearing. His spare hand held perpetually in a claw by withered muscles draws across his forehead liberating sapphire bright eyes to stare once more.

Edges hold a power of their own, denoting the boundary , a flip of authority. Crossing in to the clearing new energies flow forward, he straightens marginally, his death grip on his branch staff loosens. Before he had leaned on that croaked aid all nobbles and peculiar angles as if his life depended on it, now the butt end; already coated in mud is driven to the ground in a thumping drum beat, steady and constant.

In the centre of the clearing

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