Yggdrasil

He watches.

In his vigil, time flows around him. Trees shed their emerald cloaks and sprout them anew. Grass grows and wanes and grows again. The freeze that falls over everything once a year speeds up – a flash of cold, a wave of warmth – and repeats, faster and faster, over and over.

He waits.

The mud and the plant life around climb up his unmoving form. There are hatchlings being born at his feet, in the nests of the creatures that live here; there are nests on his horns, mossy covered and heavy with ivy, with plantlife of all kinds; there are critters around him, in the actual trees. There is death, too – a hatchling’s first hunt, blood warm on its muzzle; the last breaths of the elder, shallow and low; the rot of the roots he feels tangled with his paws. Life happens, with all it entails. It blurs within him, after so many years on this place.

He sleeps, and the low thump of Nature is the only thing that remains to keep time by. He sleeps, and in his sleep, he dreams of the times that passed – of when he used to wander the world.



There is a second heartbeat close to him now, as if the Heart of Nature has split into two.

Yggdrasil wakes, slowly, painfully slowly. One by one, his senses awake with him: his hearing, telling him there is wind in the trees; his sight, alerting him that it is day, and that the Sun is bright; his sense of smell, proclaiming it is summer, for he smells the Juneflowers all around – and in the end, his tactile senses. The earth is warm, they tell him. Your core is warm, and the soil and plant you’re made of are thriving.

And there is someone at your paws.

Yggdrasil looks down, sleepy, confused, fully expecting to see a nest of hatchlings, or a dryad of the land – and he finds a hill, toppled with moss, with small wildflowers… and with a set of horns, brown and gnarly, like wood. It reaches to his middle, forming a shape almost too round to be natural. There’s something oddly familiar to Yggdrasil about it.

For the first time in what feels like eternity, he moves, bending his head downwards. The plants on him rustle, as if windblown. A few get uprooted. Yggdrasil folds himself slowly, aiming to minimize the damage. He twists his head to this hill, where he feels Nature’s second heartbeat emanate from, and we watches it. It doesn’t take him too long.

The hill – no, Yggdrasil corrects himself, the creature that forms the hill – lays nuzzled at his side. It moves slowly, breathing faintly in its sleep. It’s formed of mud and moss, it seems, not unlike Yggdrasil himself (“and yet completely unlike me”, he thinks). He senses Nature in its chest, keeping it together.

“Have we changed?” he wonders. “Or have I seen another of my kind so long ago that I cannot recognize us any longer?”

And then he remembers, with a start, and there’s a sudden joy in his chest. It being here can only mean one thing – his watch is over. Another one has come to take his place! Yggdrasil shudders, fully awake, eager for the lands he had to leave behind. The leaves of the plants on him tremble.

He starts uprooting himself now – much more vigorously than before. Plants tear, the earth trembles as he pulls a paw from deep within the soil. It doesn’t matter – he cannot both protect them all and leave, and leave he will.

Whatever plant has latched onto his coat instead of the ground around shall survive. It’s good enough.

The other creature gets startled awake, jumping away like a frightened deer would, crouching to stare at Yggdrasil as he towers over it. The thumping of its chest is so fast now, Yggdrasil can barely make the separate beats out. It cowers.

It… cowers? That makes little sense. Yggdrasil slows down, stops completely. He turns his head to look at his sibling, small and shaking.

“Are you… afraid?” he asks. The other doesn’t answer. Yggdrasil lowers his head, coming so close to the creature he could nuzzle it, if he wanted. And then, as he’s about to ask it what’s wrong, it shoots away, running as fast as it can, jumping through the trees and out towards the clearing. Yggdrasil blinks, and then he looks around, a cold tremor down his spine. He doesn’t understand, and the one that can explain – the one that can liberate him of his vigil – seems to currently be high-tailing it out of here. Out of Yggdrasil’s sight. Out of its duty.

He doesn’t know how long more he’ll need to wait if he takes another shift. He longs to be out there – he deserves to be out there, if they send another! He did his part, why would it refuse-

Angry, hurt and confused, Yggdrasil runs after the other creature.

“This place will be fine on its own for a little while”, he thinks. “I’m just going to have a chat with them, clear things up. Remind them of our duty.” His feet are feeble under him, unused to walking, but he pushes on. “And then I’ll leave them here, and I’ll walk to the South. I’ll walk until there is nowhere to walk on.”

He’s gaining speed now. His limbs, at first so irresponsive, are starting to remember what goes after what. He can see the small hill dashing away.

“Wait!” he shouts after it, and it jumps compulsively in the air.

The hunt had begun.