Dream d152-s: The Talking Grove

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Scale Garden gradually stabilized into something my eyes could trust, though I wasn't sure I trusted that trust. The path had led us - Lano and I, still matched in whatever size we currently were - into a grove where the trees had faces. Not carved faces. Not imagined faces. Faces that moved, that watched, that occasionally whispered to each other in a language made of rustling leaves and creaking bark.

Lano's ears swiveled constantly, tracking conversations I couldn't follow. His tail wagged once when a particularly ancient oak seemed to say something about him.

"Testigo," he translated. Witness. The trees were calling him witness too.

I sat on a root that curved like an invitation, and the tree above me made a sound like a grandmother clearing her throat.

"Another one," the tree said, her voice the texture of wind through autumn leaves. "They keep coming. Why do they keep coming?"

"Because the gardens call them," another tree answered, younger-sounding, his bark still smooth. "You know this. You've known this since before the owl was old."

I looked up. The Ancient Owl was there, of course, settled in a hollow that seemed made for him. His autumn feathers caught light that filtered through leaves that shouldn't exist in any forest I'd known.

"She asks," the owl said slowly, "because she likes to hear the answer." A pause that stretched like taffy. "The trees here... they remember asking questions themselves. Long ago. Before they rooted."

The grandmother tree rustled. "We were travelers once. All of us. We went too deep into the gardens and..." Her leaves shivered. "We found we didn't want to leave. The colors were too beautiful. The songs too sweet. And now we watch others pass through, and we wonder if they'll stay too."

A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with temperature. I looked at Lano, steady and white and present.

"Is that what happens?" I asked the owl. "If you go too deep?"

"It's one thing that happens." The owl's eyes held something I hadn't seen before - something like sadness, or warning. "The gardens give freely. But they also take. Not maliciously. They simply..." He trailed off, watching a leaf spiral down through impossible light.

"They love too much," the young tree finished. "They love you so much they want to keep you forever."

I opened my notebook and wrote: "Love that keeps you is not love. Love that roots you against your will is a garden that has forgotten what seeds are for."

The grandmother tree made a sound like laughter, or like crying. "Ah. This one writes. The writing ones sometimes make it through."

"Keep writing," the owl said. "And keep your witness close. He knows when it's time to leave. Dogs always know."

Lano pressed against my leg, solid and warm and ready to move when I was.

The path continued deeper into the grove, toward colors I could already taste.

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