[BlueEyedKite]

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE! MY BELOVED

[leopia]

BREATHTAKING BEZEL MY GODDD
MARK!!!

[Cheeb]

marking to watch!! so gorgeous!

[vanilla bean.]

fable name: Yggdrasil

to be written like a chapter for each truth / lie?

- The heart that fuels it is not of this world. - true

- There are names carved into the wood of its body, but it has forgotten who the names belong to. -false

- It has never died. - true

[feverdream]

fable name: rhune

✧ into the idyllwild ✧

[Loonamoth21]

fable name: Eleanor

- The heart that fuels it is not of this world. - truth
- There are names carved into the wood of its body, but it has forgotten who the names belong to. -truth-
- It has never died. -lie-

[Veramora]

fable name: Julius

The truth is that his wood is carved with the names of people he does not remember, but he knows he loved once in his past. Family, lovers, friends, all that he knew but have forgotten what they looked like or how they sounded or even how they loved him, but he knows that he loves them regardless of if he can't fully remember them. He only hopes they love him as much too in the next life. The lie is that he has not died. He has died, many times, and rose again with spring and fell in winter and repeated the cycle endlessly. He is a Phoenix at his core, and goes through the circle of life with the old oaks around him, reborn in the chill of spring, and laid to rest in the frozen ice of Winter. The truth is that his heart is made of the earth, the dirt and rock and wood, wild fields and deep caverns and the breezy skies, but his heart is also made with Stardust and Dark matter, used to bring life to his wooden flesh. He is the Earth's first son, her most beloved. She cries every time she has to watch him die, freezing the land in her grief, and rejoices when he's reborn, sprinkling the land with life giving waters and sunshine.

[caravant]

mark!!

[knickknacks]

possible marking… might just watch

[L.V.L]

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Fable Name: Keeper of the Last Leaf | Moroš
Name Meaning: from the old Slavic root mor, meaning “death” or “fate"
Moroš Playlist: Ethereal Forest Ambiance

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ᴛʜᴇʏ ꜱᴀʏ ᴍʏ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ ɪꜱ ɴᴏᴛ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ.

ᴛʜᴇʏ ꜱᴀʏ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ɴᴀᴍᴇꜱ ᴄᴀʀᴠᴇᴅ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴍʏ ᴡᴏᴏᴅ,
ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ꜰᴏʀɢᴏᴛᴛᴇɴ ᴡʜᴏ ᴛʜᴇʏ ʙᴇʟᴏɴɢ ᴛᴏ.

ᴛʜᴇʏ ꜱᴀʏ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴅɪᴇᴅ.

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I stand under the branch that holds the last leaf and I let the sentences settle in my ribs the way small birds settle in a nest and I do not argue with the first because I can feel the slow and foreign pulse where my sternum never grew shut and I know what breath not of air feels like, a faint pressure against bone that is not exactly light and not exactly heat and definitely not sap. I do not argue with the second either because when the wind is low and the frost is honest I can feel the shallow scoremarks where knives and sharp stones and broken glass and sharpened bone once bit into me, and I know there are names there because I was told they were names yet I cannot return the faces that belong to them even if I wanted to; even if I wanted to say I remember you and I forgive you or I remember you and I am still angry.
It is the third line I will not let stand as if it were fact because I have died many times and I will die again. When I am at the end of myself the forest takes me back in a way that is not gentle nor cruel but simply inevitable; vines entering the seams between my ribs and the roots asking my hooves to lie down with them until I am something the soil knows how to speak to and I come apart under the leaves. Where I come back together somewhere else with the same antlers and the same hallow and patient foreign heartbeat, along with the same ache of not being done.
The stump in the middle of the Grove has been my witness longer than anyone and tonight it smells like clean rot and wet bark with a decision that has bene postponed and finally will not be. When I lower my brow to it the rings under my skin answer with a slot arithmetic that feels like a prayer for soft endings. I tell it I will hold the pause as I always do and the stump tells me without words that it will let me lean as much as I need to .. and this is enough.
I can hear the two of them long before I see them. Orren always arrives like weight that the ground recognizes by name and Sylvae always arrives like light that has learned how to touch without startling. I do not move until they are in the clearing because moving too early would be a form of impatience and I am not impatient with them, I am impatient with my life.
Orren steps in first and there is the deep scent of loam and mushrooms and damp bark. His antlers are thick with shelf fungus and I know he has been in the old places again listening to the parts of the forest that prefer to speak in a slow grammar and as he inclines his head once with a steadiness that has comforted storms - I tip mine back to him and that is our greeting.
Sylvae slips after, smaller, sure-footed. When he comes close enough to brush his shoulder along my ribs he waits for the decision instead of taking it; I turn toward him to give him the choice I always give him because he has never mishandled it.
"You called," Orren says and his voice is low and rough, "or the forest carried the message you did not say in which amounts to the same thing for those of us who listen."
"I didn't want to do tonight by myself," I say and the confession tastes like iron and rain and a relief I do not yet rust, "and I am tired of being the only witness to my dying."
Sylvae's breath moves against the open cage of my chest and he looks at the small, slow throb of the thing that keeps my walking when the ret of me is ready to be still. He does not flinch because he never has, he only nods as if to say yes, I see you, and he asks in the quiet way he asks when he is trying not to decide for me, "May I?"
"You may." I say as I angle my antlers away so he can come nearer without crowding the nest of ribs that is mine and not mine. He touches the wood at the edge of the opening with the tip of a horn and with the soft of his muzzle. He says after a long moment and a drawn out breath, "It feels like something that used to be worshipped and is not sure why you are the one still carrying it."
"The gods that the realm swallowed when it decided they were finished. The ones who were not meant for seasons, the ones who were meant for altars and stone and thunder. They live in me like coals, they feed this heart. They keep me from being finished because they were not allowed to be and I do not remember the names of the killers and I do not remember the names of the gods either; that is a mercy I did not ask for and cannot return."
Orren comes to the stump and sets his brow against it and listens longer than most would, long enough that I can see his spine ease under the weight of history that has finally decided to sit down. When he lifts his head he looks at me the way a Fable looks at a cliff they have climbed before and is not sure if they should climb again, then he says "If you asked to be let go, would the forest hear you differently tonight than it heard you last year?"
"I ask ever year," I say and the leaf above us twists once and holds, "and ever year I die and every year it takes me back. Not because it loves me and not because it hates me, but because I am useful in a way that cannot be argued with and I have no learned how to be useless."
Sylvae presses his forehead to mine and our antlers touch and he says, "Then let us be here when you are taken and let us be here when you are returned. And let us say your name when you do not have a mouth to say it with and if there is a year where silence finally holds you - we will be the ones who keeps the stump warm and the seed fed." and he adds in a voice that makes my stubbornness feel seen instead of scolded, "and if there is not such a year we will still keep saying your name."
I set one forehoof in front and lift the other in front of me and the Grove recognizes the shape of the work beginning. Orren steps to my left so the ground can lean on him instead of pulling at me and Sylvae steps to my right so the air knows it is being watched by someone kind. I open the bones of my chest another fraction and tell the guest inside with a breath that I am here and I am ready and the heartbeat answers with its slow, ancient consent.
"The game," I say because turning the riddle into a conversation is the only way I have found to make it useful, "two truths and one lie. And I am asking you both to hear me say them before the forest takes my tongue." and I hold their eyes as the leaf loosens from the last of its pride and I say, "My heart is not of this world - that is true and I can accept it without resenting it tonight because the gods who fuel it deserved a better ending than they got and if I am the place their last warmth lives then I will carry them even if it means I do not get to be finished when I Want to be finished." I take a deep breath, "There are names carved into my wood and I have forgotten them. And that is also true, because if I remembered all the ones who cut me and all the gods who keep me I would not be bale to stand here. I would be on my knees until the moss covered me."
I look at the old scars along my ribs and I say, "And I have never died. That is the lie because I die every year. Sometimes twice and sometimes I go so far down that even the roots think they cannot find me and the forest keeps me because it loves its own plan and I am so tired of serving a plan that cannot imagine me as finished."
Orren does not respond with words, instead he leans his shoulder into mine, steady, and I push back and I let his spine hold the small tremor I cannot afford to show to the leaf that is almost ready to fall. Sylvae leaves his head against mine long enough that part of me that believes in loneliness forgets itself.
The last leaf lets go and there is the sigh that always comes with it, a soft circle that rises from the ground as if the Grove were exhaling. "Now," I say and we take it together the way we have learned to take it. Not with teeth or with anger but with that part of our bodies that knows how to carry the last breath of a stag that has lain down under snow and it hangs between us. Sylvae's faint glow of life and Orren's gravity keeps it from skittering away and the foreign pulse in me recognizes it as kin; we lower onto the softened heart of the stump and the rings widen as if a tight fist finally unclenched and I feel something in my chest unclench too,
"Stay," Sylvae says quietly, because he hears the shape of the taking when it begins and he wants to see if this is one of the years where I can refuse it, "stay as long as you can." And I try, I truly try and for several long heartbeats that do not belong to this world I remain exactly where I am. The forest hesitates and the taking waits for just a moment.
It comes anyways.
It always comes.
The moss climbs my legs with a tenderness and the ribs the realm left visible for honesty's sake are laced with fine green threads that know my shape better than I do and I say to Orren and Sylvae - "I do not want to go, not this time, not in this way." My voice already far away.
Orren spoke, "You do not have to want it, we will hold what you leave."
"I will say your name until the taking has to return it." Sylvae whispered quietly.
And I want to tell them that I am not only a keeper and not only a task but also a Fable who is tired and I cannot find the breath for it because my breath belongs to the forest again.
"It is not love." I say because I need one sentence to be the last, "It is not love when it will not let me finish."
Orren's antler hooks mine and keeps me upright as long as he can while Sylvae's horn is in my ribs at the safest angle to keep the nest from falling. The wren inside me does not wake because in me, sleep is a kind of safety even when the world is pulling me apart. I let me eyes find the place where the leaf used to be and I try to memorize the emptiness as sometimes the only thing I get to keep is the part that isn't there.
"Come back," Sylvae says, not as a command and not as hope, but as a fact he will build the next dusk upon, "come back even if you don't want to and we will be here arguing with the forest on your behalf."
"If a year comes when you do not return, we will not call you coward and we will not make your ending small with a story that sounds good at night; we will stand here and say nothing and the nothing will be honest."
I try to say thank you and I think the sound happens but it might only have happened inside us.
The moss covers more of me and the roots find the soft places under my hooves and I feel the gods who keep my heart move once, all together, a slow assent like a council agreeing to end early because the matter has already been decided. I drop my head into Orren's shoulder and leave it there because I want the last feeling to be something the belongs to this world. He takes the weight without complaint and Sylvae's muzzle is just below my eye and the light on his ear is steady and I use that steadiness to measure the distance I am traveling. I find that I am going farther than last year and I do not know what that means.
I want to reach for them both one last time. To say the words my mind wants me to but my tongue refuses. I hoped they could feel what I need to them to. A long soft pull, relief floods throughout me.


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When I wake again the stump is wet with a night that was kind. My antlers are mine and the ribbon Sylvae promised is already tied and the words Orren spoke still hanging in the cold as if he has just spoken it. I take a breath that does not belong to the gods just to prove that I can. The Grove answers with a thin white light that does not bother the moss and I stand up on legs that remember and forget all the same.
They whisper three things about me and if you ask me which is which I will answer all the same way every year until the forest finally learns how to let me finish: my heart is not of this world, this is true and it hurts and it helps. There are named carved into my wood and I have forgotten them, that is true and it saves me from a grief I could not carry if I wanted to. I have never died, that is the lie, I die so often I know the taste of it better than I know the taste of Spring. I come back because the forest does not know how to say goodbye to a tool it still needs.
If I win freedom one day I will say nothing. I will not be cruel and name a day and give it the dignity of a holiday. I will just not be here and Orren and Sylvae will stand for a time then go because they will know the difference between absence and end. But until then, I will keep the pause and I will hold the last leaf and I will let the forest take me and I will come back. I will say these three lines to anyone who needs the comfort of thinking a riddle can contain a life and when they ask me why I am not angry I will tell them I am angry and that I am also alive and those two things are not enemies, they are neighbors that borrow without asking and return with small gifts.
The sky is pale and the frost is honest and I lift my antlers to catch what is falling. Somewhere to my left I can feel Orren's weight and somewhere to my right I can feel Sylvae's light and somewhere beneath everything I can feel the gods who live in my ribs agree to keep beating in the only direction they know. I do not thank them nor do I curse them. I only keep going because that is what I do and the forest has never learned to let me go.

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