by Ross Turner
Stumbling forwards, Vivian placed a weary and blood stained hand upon Orion’s scaly shoulder, smiling affectionately up at the great dragon, thanking him with her eyes, not saying a word. She cast the same look out across the countless animals still frozen in time all around her, silently portraying her gratitude to each and every one of them.
Forcing her legs to move once more then, Vivian turned her back on Featherstone Keep for the last time, as she had always known she would do, never to return, and began calmly off into the trees, focusing all of her strength on simply staying on her feet.
Slowly, the woodlands around her thickened as she cut deeper and deeper into the great Redwood Forest. As the light from above faded as the canopy gradually thickened, Vivian slowly allowed her hold upon her vast, albeit weakening power, to steadily slip from her grasp.
The subtle strains on her will that were keeping what was left of her body functioning, subconsciously keeping her alive, dissipated bit by bit. She just let them drain away as she continued walking further and further into the endless sea of trees, the hundreds upon thousands of animals all around watching her remorsefully, with tears standing heavily in their eyes.
Then she was illuminated again by blinding moonlight, streaming in through an enormous break in the canopy. Her weary eyes fell then upon the body of Euan, blood stained and defeated, lifeless, spread out across the forest floor callously, where his father had been forced to abandon him to save her.
Vivian’s pace slowed more and more and tears stood heavily in her eyes as she left Euan’s body behind, brushing his massive shoulder lightly and sorrowfully with her hand as she passed.
Her pain did not lessen, and eyes only grew heavier as she felt her life begin to slip away.
Images of her mother and father, mixed with images of Red and Clover and Kael, and Emerson, the father she had never known, all flashed before her eyes then. For the briefest moment, lost amidst everything else, her senses were alive with the complete vision and smell and even touch of her loved ones.
She hoped she would see them again, in one form or another: in another life perhaps.
Knowing that both Virtus and the Redwoods were now safe, able to support themselves and grow and indeed thrive, no longer in need of her, no longer in need of protection, Vivian allowed her heavy responsibilities to thankfully drop away, filling her with almighty relief.
Now she too was free, and her thoughts wandered immediately to all those she had lost so terribly, and missed so dearly.
Vivian slipped gradually away into the darkness, both of the deepening and thickening Redwood trees all around her, and of the endless clutches of death consuming her.
As she finally allowed it to claim her, she was comforted by those happy thoughts of her family, and it was a great relief to finally be seized by the emptiness of death, freeing her from the long, lonely and painful torment of living.
Young Vivian Featherstone, fabled in folklore and legend from one end of the Redwood Empire to the other, had finally completed all that had been required of her.
Having endured and overcome her burdensome rise, Vivian’s work was done, and she now gladly succumbed to her eventual, well deserved fall.
Thank you for reading The Redwoods Rise and Fall
I hope you enjoyed it
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Voices in the Mirror
Evening encroached upon them and a deep, vast, endless darkness swept in upon the tiny, insignificant village of Riverbrook.
Cold winds cut through the trees and bit harshly at the exposed faces of anybody who dared still remain out under the enormous sky, scattered with an ocean of burned out stars that seethed and watched without a sound.
A million and more shining eyes that had gazed down upon the face of the Earth for a hundred millennia and even longer, turned their cruel eyes now to all that was unfolding before them, and for not the first time in history, something impossible and wonderful, a miracle, began to unfold.
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