Prologue
Prologue
The trees stood silently, witnesses to a dying planet. Nothingness surrounded the last living things on a ravaged world. The only sound was the vicious wind as it howled through the leaves and branches. No animals stirred within the forest, nothing mortal had survived the destruction wrought upon the surface by Her. The great trees shivered as the wind blew amongst them. They remembered, long their memory of the world, they remembered the pain and sorrow, they had watched the mortals pay for slighting all She had given, they watched as the immortals succumbed to sleep centuries after the great destruction. They alone immune to Her anger, the trees had survived the planets destruction. They watched her anger cool, and sorrow take over, the last being awake grieving for the world she created, but regret? No there was no regret. For eons she wept and wandered silently through a forest that grew and reclaimed lands previously lost to it. All that time, watching, waiting.
The world changed, seas cleared the debris of the past, earth and plants covered the previous residents’ dwellings. The proverbial slate wiped clean. And still the forest waited and watched. She wandered beneath the canopy, no longer weeping. Calm radiated from her. But still time passed silently. No bird to break it with song, no animal to shuffle the undergrowth. Only Her, the trees and the wind. The Seas had long ago calmed to a soft undulation, only heard near the coastal shorelines. They had reclaimed wreckages, turning humanities waste into coral reefs and breaking down the metal into rusty dust. The once majestic creatures of the sea long dead. Even the sea gods had fallen into the deep slumber like their land-dwelling brethren. Buried under the ocean debris in the deepest crevasses of the seabed.
By now millennia upon millennia had passed, the ozone had repaired itself, the moon hung and cycled as though nothing had changed, still bright in the night sky, but the clarity of which the galaxy could be viewed now, trillions of stars twinkled from dusk to dawn like a scattering of diamonds on midnight velvet. The sun once feared that the star would grow and implode had stabilized. No longer a risk to the small solar system it lit. This was due to the god who resided there. Once the slumber took him over His fiery passions calmed, His anger to the world beneath him dimmed as the mortals died. Like her consort, Luna also slept, bathed by the sun gods light every day. Her home, the moon gliding gently through the void of the universe. Their love as radiant as ever.
The trees stood tall. And remembered the fear of saws and axes. Watching their number dwindle to almost nothing. But now, they had become what they once were, covering the whole planets landmass with a soft green canopy. So many species of tree thrived in the now welcome environments. The wind carried both seed and pollen, perpetuating the cycle as age and decay crept up, the fallen would nourish the next generation. Some of the older trees remembered the first few centuries when the mortals had gone, the Immortals had roamed righting the scarred land and seas, aiding the world to heal and regenerate. They had wondered at the quiet and peace. But they too had raged against the mortals. The greed with which the humans had consumed the earth, decimating entire species of animals and trees and each other. Their self-destruction escalating until the immortals had begged Her to intervene, to end the madness that was happening. To erase the mortal curse from the world. Only she could do this, only she could reset the world. It was her creation; they were her creation. She had listened and having slept for eons before the other gods and immortals had found her and awakened her. She had seen her world and what her mortals had done, and the rage had built, the anger at what they had become and the greed with which they had consumed her creation was turned against them. She started by making the whole population infertile, the last generation born was frantic, rushing through science to find a cure to no avail. Then she sent the famines and droughts to all countries, the crops died, the animals died, still the humans clung to life. Fighting amongst themselves for the last food reserves. Selfish unto the end. Finally, she grew tired waiting for them to die out, tired of their cruelty to their last brethren, She unleased Hell upon them. Lashing the world with wind and torrents of rain, hail and lightning. Her temper caused volcanoes both active and dormant to spew forth the world’s heated core, forcing extinct volcanoes to erupt and new ones to form. The world was devoured in fire and ice. The humans tried to hide from her fury, but she sent the other immortals out, hunting them down until the last two stood before her. One Male, one Female. The immortals stood witness to the last of mortal kinds’ final trial. They were weak and frail and still they begged for life, promising to change and learn from their forebears’ mistakes. She listened in stony silence to their pleas for mercy. They cried and wept upon their knees before her. For days they carried on. The Immortals tasted the fear they held, but also saw into their true hearts. The male lied. He wanted nothing more than to take the female as a slave to provide for his carnal desires. She also saw this and with a snarl of fury pointed at him, a great bolt of energy shot forth and the male crumbled into dust. The female screamed and flinched away, terror pouring from her. But she didn’t stop screaming. She turned away from the human female. And walked away, she spoke then, her back turned from the gathered immortals and the screaming mortal, “That is the last of all my children, ungrateful creatures they were. Nothing like what I had first created. As such it is no longer mine and is an anomaly that should not exist. Do with it as you will. Once you have seen to it, go out into my creation and heal the world, help in its regeneration and rebirth. Bring back the forest for me, erase the mortal presence from my earth. But I forbid life to be brought back. No animals, no beings besides the trees and plants that will flourish. If I see a single mortal creature, I will destroy it and the creator.” She sighed then, sorrow and loss echoed around her as she walked into the scarred landscape and left them to decide the fate of the mortal.
The forest witnessed the slow death of the last mortal. Her screams and cries echoes around the empty world. But the immortals didn’t show mercy, why should they? The Mortals had hunted their kind, tortured and once they believed them extinct, they turned on themselves and other species. The mortals’ death, when finally allowed, haunted the forest for centuries. The immortals had done as they were bid, helping the forest regrow, nurturing the fauna across the globe. Until their work was done. But she never spoke to them, She avoided them all. At first, they revelled in the world being theirs alone, but the eldest of them grew weary and eventually they slept. Never rousing from their slumber. The others followed into that deep sleep. Each succumbed to the weariness they felt. Yet more time passed and soon only the trees were aware, only they heard Her passing beneath their branches, yet still she did not speak.
“Caw!” the silent forest paused in its recollection of the past, a noise not of wind nor leaf, “Caw! Caw!” The trees vaguely remembered this sound that was a bird! A shiver of anticipation passed between them. There are no birds here whispered the breeze, nothing lives but the forest. Silence stretches on and the trees settle. A rustle of leaves travels through the boughs, a bird! Large and black, perched upon a tree limb, the vision fills the forest and the sensation of being touched by anything other than leaf or wind carries through the forests collective mind. This jolt excites the trees, but they know if She sees it or hears it, the bird will perish like the others before it. “Caw!” the birds’ call echoes through the trees, they beg the wind to carry the sound away from Her ears, the Bird listens to the trees whispering and cocks its head. “Caw?” softer now, a question behind the noise, like it’s trying to understand them. The trees begin to talk, not the physical sound but passing a thought between themselves to the tree the bird sits upon. The bird catches these thoughts and half startles, nearly flying away but the trees quieten suddenly, not wishing to scare the bird away, it settles onto its perch again and once more its head tilts and it waits for the trees to begin again. The bird stays until the light fades from the sky. Then with a soft chuff, takes to the air to soar above the forest. Heading north it let the wind lift it higher and its wings carry it away.
The trees whisper with the wind, begging to keep their secret safe, alive. But they are so distracted that they do not sense Her waking up. She has slept for an age and her dreams have disturbed Her. She opens her eyes to the forest above and the moonlight filtering through. She gasps, tears well in her eyes as She remembers again, the horrors She wrought upon Her children. But faintly She hears the soft distant “Caw” of a bird. Past rage and anger her emotions desert her, only that sound calls Her forth. She rises to her feet and follows the sound. The trees notice Her movement and hold their whispering to watch as she walks below them again. But there! So soft its almost not there, Her lullaby, the Earths song, its coming from Her, the melody sung at creation, the song of all life is being sung again, however faintly there is hope now as the trees pick up the song and join with their primal song of old, soon the song has spread to the stone and soil and to the rivers and the oceans, soon the whole world is humming with the song of creation. But life cannot spark from a barren womb and She refuses to allow it again. But the song vibrates deep within the earth. Penetrating the immortal’s dreams and soon they too shall wake from their tomblike slumbers. All because of a single bird in a world of forest lives.
