The forest loved me. It was a gentle and patient kind of love that only the ancient could possess. For many years, the trees had watched me grow; they had sheltered me under their tender branches, soothed me with their soft shade. The brown and mild earth had cradled me in its sun-warm richness. The birds had called to me with their sweet songs. I liked to sing in those days. The birds and I had shared music, lilting and rising melodies that hovered in the air like glowing lights, shimmering and radiant.
I miss the illuminations and the tittering refrains. Now the music is all but gone. When I returned to my forest the birds had flown, the wind had swept them away to a place that I could not follow. There were no pigeons to coo or crows to caw, no woodpeckers to hammer away at the trees. The dry leaves and sticks that littered the forest floor snapped under my feet, echoing in the eerie emptiness of the woods. The trees huddled together and whispered secrets that I was no longer welcome to hear. They no longer recognised me. When I reached out my hands, wishing to embrace them again the way I had so many times before, they shrank away from me and shuddered, sending showers of brown leaves tumbling to the ground. I tried to sing, to summon a familiar melody but my voice had been worn by time, sounding harsh and unpleasant even to my own ears. Without the accompaniment of the birds, my song fell away, leaving behind a silence that felt even more pronounced. I was tired. I wanted to be held and to be loved the way I used to be loved. I wanted to press my face against the blossoming bluebells and feel their tiny kisses against my cheeks, to feel the warm reassurance of the rough tree bark under my palms and delight in the soft sounds of the gentle deer as they passed through the glade. I was too late, the time of wonder had passed. The hungry mouth of time had swallowed my forest, leaving behind a cold phantom. I strained my ears to hear the ghostly echoes of what once was and I was confronted with nothing but silence.