Willowind

There was once a dryad that refused to play her part. Her willow tree grew in a ring of other trees that other dryads lived in, all of them much older and wiser than her. They cultivated the forest and danced within the clearings to cheer up the plants and encourage them to grow and thrive, and with their songs they called the migrating birds home and sang all the ancient tales that the trees had witnessed. However, this young dryad didn't care for the stories or dancing or the importance of making sure the forest prospered. She was more interested in the dragons, with their powerful wings that carried them far across of the land and their clans that warred and bred. Surely their society was much more interesting! She daydreamed about visiting the merchants that had rich ornaments to adorn oneself with, or finding love as a dragon herself, or fighting the many battles the dragons were infamous among the forest spirits for. One fateful spring morning Willowind slipped away from the dance and with feet as light as leaves on the wind ran to the edge of the forest to look out on the land and the dragons dancing in the sky. She took the form of the most beautiful dragon breed she saw in the sky - for dryads had to be masters at disguise and shifting their forms so they couldn't be found by those who wished to exploit the magic their trees carried - and left the forest. Immediately she felt a pang in her heart as if the forest itself was begging her to return, but she cared not.

The dryad in dragon's form flew across the land and saw the many wonders that dragons had, but the pang in her heart intensified the farther she traveled until it nearly made her cry out with the force of it. She forgot that all though when she met a handsome Imperial with a voice like honey who whispered flattery in her ear and won her over quickly. She told him her greatest secret: that she was a Dryad. He asked her very kindly if she would show him her forest, his voice soft but pleading. She agreed joyfully and they returned to the forest. Immediately the aching in her heart subsided, but it was replaced by foreboding. The dryad was foolish, though, and ignored the whispers of the forest and listened instead to the whispers of her lover. She invited him to dance with her in the forest and he agreed, but at first he wanted to see her tree, telling her that if she truly loved him she would reveal her innermost heart as he claimed he revealed his. She showed him her Willow, and the trees of the other dryads that raised her and now hid from the stranger. He told her in a strange, hard voice that it was a perfectly miserable looking tree, and to her horror he began to burn it and her grove. She writhed in pain as he lapped up the magic from the dying trees like water. He revealed that he was in fact coming to the end of his life and his magic was leaving him, but with this magic he would remain young and vigorous for hundreds of more years.

The screaming in her ears was the loudest thing she heard. The sound of smoldering and breaking wood felt like the sound of her smoldering and breaking heart. Willowind gathered up the remains of the forest's magic before he could and sobbed for it, her home and her entire life. The blood of the forest ran through her veins, the magic of the forest sustaining her. It was her family, her hatchling that she was supposed to nurture and protect, but instead her foolishness and discontentment destroyed it and the other dryads and soon, her. She barely even needed to think it, to ask the forest for help at avenging itself before it did. Vines, withering and smoldering, encircled his neck and soon consumed his entire body. Willowind turned her head away as the forest exacted revenge on its murderer. She has no desire to watch. The feeling of power began to burn away and the pain returned. Willowind put one draconic hand on her dying tree and wept as they burned. She was still in dragon's form so she didn't catch fire, but she felt every inch of the pain as the tree that held her very being withered. But wait... Willowind beat her wings so she hovered over the top of the tree and saw a single clump of fluff that held the last seeds of the tree. She grabbed them and cradled them to her stomach as her tree was consumed by flame and she fell back to the ground in agony.

Her vision was beginning to blur, but as she writhed again Willowind clawed at the ground until there was nearly a hole. She weakly put the seeds into the ground and covered them with earth before she blacked out and died like the rest of her forest.

It was months before she stirred. Was she dead? She looked around and gasped at the horrible sight that lay before her. The once-proud forest was now just charred logs stretching for miles. The dirt was mingled with ashes and the sun beat down upon the land now that there was no shade. She was back in dryad form. Her leafy hair was short and blackened, but she saw a few new strands growing. She could barely move and when she did get up she fell, as if she was learning to walk all over again. The only green was right next to her. It was a seedling poking out from the ground. How did it live? Perhaps she had planted it right above an underground pool. With a jolt she realized that sapling was her. She tried to look at herself and saw that her body was that of a child. She felt almost devoid of magic, save for that of the tiny sapling. It was connected to her tree, after all. She began to realize that she had been born from the ashes by the magic of the new tree, and had a new chance at life. She only wished that the others could have that, too. As soon as she could walk she began caring for the sapling as much as she possibly could. She sang it to sleep, and danced for it, and did all that she could for it. As years passed and it grew to a tree, she began to travel short distance to different forests and gathered every seed she could, planting it and watering it.

Centuries later, there was a massive forest, that Willowind was the sole nymph protecter of. She felt the roots of a dragon diety reach out to those of hers. It was the Gladekeeper, asking if the forest could became a part of her domain, and Willowind consented. It was comforting, joining with her roots, and Willowind could hear her whispers now as she communicated to her children. Willowind took on a permanent dragon form, and became one of them. Soon a clan of Nature dragons came, looking for a new place to build a lair. Willowind met with the leaders and agreed to let them live there if they took care of her forest. She became a sentinal and a guardian of the clan, though she truly is a guardian of the forest itself. She doesn't care for dragon culture anymore and has no excitement for that as she did in her youth, so she is elusive and rarely every communicates with anyone except a few friends that helped her. One of them is Manzanita, because she built the lair with care for the forest, and Pascal, because she nearly seems like a dryad herself in her work of healing injured plants.

The forest is all she cares about, Willowind will say in the few times she speaks, and its protection is her utmost desire.

However, there here have been many times when hatchlings have wandered off and fallen into rivers that have been gently deposited at the tribe’s entrance. The stunned hatchlings rarely can give an answer, and their parents only remark it was as if the trees themselves bent down and saved them.

It wasn’t too far from the truth.