Back In Bloom

After weeks of trekking over sea ice and rocky coasts, the feel of vegetation beneath Tsuga's paws was an immense relief, even if it was brittle and brown. The first bit of spring growth was just beginning to eek it's way out into the open, small slips of bright green amidst the leftover husks of last year's leavings. The air still held a snap, and the morning had greeted him with a rime of frost, but still the seasonal tide had shifted.

As Tsuga made his way through the grasses, stopping every once in a while to investigate the base of one sentinel pine or another, he took care to reflect on the shifts in his own life as of late. He missed his ancestral Grove and the kin he'd left behind there, of course he did, but was also eager in nearly equal measure. It had been a difficult decision to set out on his own, one he did not take lightly, and he had come too far to turn back now. All he could hope for was to make them proud, and perhaps one day when they crossed paths again he could tell them all about his journey.

The large male sat in the sparse shade beneath a raggedy conifer, not to get out of the sun so much as to lean into the bark and allow it to steady him. Its roots held firm to the soil, soil that ran to the distant ocean, which stretched across the leagues and leagues to distant shores with trees all its own, beneath which his kin might also be sitting and contemplating. He quietly asked the old pine to pass along his greetings if it would, and lingered just for a moment to see if those distant trees might then deign to reply.


"Talk," - "Listen" - Think