Tree Nymph                     by: Petra Pan

 

A consciousness brushes gently against mine, awakening me. I feel the wind in my limbs, gentle water gurgling around my deepest roots, ice locked around my trunk. The north wind drives ice and snow around me, but I am not cold. All is as it should be in the forest during winter. So, what awakens me?

The touch comes again, mind to mind. Words form. "Wake up, Spruce. See what we found."

I come fully awake and leave my tree. My skin is brown, the color of bark, and my hair is the silvery blue-green of Colorado blue spruce. I am wearing only a thin sleeveless shift, white as the driven snow, from my neck to the bottom of my buttocks. North Wind whistles at me mischievously, and flips my hem to reveal the matching thong panties. My nipples poke out from my breasts like strawberries.

"Yes, Sisters," I call out. "What is it?"

Several gray forms materialize from the driving snow and ice, a pack of timber wolves. The pack leader, a huge female, is carrying a bundle in her powerful, sensitive jaws. She lays the bundle in the snow at my feet. I kneel, finding a human child of about six springs, a little boy.

"Oh!" I cry, "What happened?"

One part of my mind touches the child's. He's alive, but just barely and not for much longer. I feel his life-force flickering, flickering, almost gone. Another part of my mind listens to the pack leader, intrepreting the images from her mind: An old truck. The blizzard. Parents and this child. A wreck. The adults dead. The wolves, drawn by the frightened cries of the child.

I feel his tiny life-force as it flickers, almost out. What can I do? This little body, unlike mine or my forest friends, cannot take the cold or the wind or the snow. And I can feel the hunger in his little belly. He cannot eat meat like the wolves, nor grasses like the deer! And it's the wrong season for my forest friends to give him milk! I begin to weep, the tears freezing as soon as they form.

Suddenly, I know what we can do. Just a short way off is a sapling, one of my daughters. Fifteen springs ago there was a flood. The waters picked up one of my cones, carried it off a ways, then planted it in good rich flood-silt. The cone has sprouted and grown, and is now a healthy sapling.

Holding the child's life-force in his body with my own will, I hurry to my daughter the sapling. The pack knows what I am doing, and joins it's will to mine. His hands and arms stretch upward, toward the sky; his feet and legs stretch downward toward the good earth, and the tiny cold body slowly vanishes into the tree. There is no more we can do. The wolves return to their lair, and I to my interrupted winter nap.

The seasons change.

I awaken slowly, as is the way with trees, feeling the snow melt from my needles and fall from my branches. I come from my tree, feeling the gentle south wind tease my hair and swirl around my legs and under my shift. South Wind, though gentler, in no less mischievous than her North Wind sibling. I hurry to my daughter, my mind reaching into the tree and calling to the little boy I had left there.

He leaves the tree, puzzled. His memory is intact, but fast fading. "What happened?" he asks. "Who are you?"

"My name is Spruce. You've been asleep." Back when I was human, I could lie, but no longer. We forest creatures cannot lie, and now I was one of them. "What do you remember?"

He shakes his head, his brow furrowed in thought. "I was littler than I am now. I was cold and hungry and scared. And I hurt really bad."

"And then?" I ask gently.

"Then I went to sleep, and then you called me and woke me up."

"And now, what do you want to do? Would you like to be like me?"

"YES!" The answer is emphatic.

"Ok." I turn him around and push him gently toward my daughter the sapling. "Go back into your tree."

His arms wrap around the sapling, and he vanishes from view into the trunk. My mind reaches in, finds him, feels that wonderful bond between being and tree, and calls him back.

Soon standing before me is a beautiful girl of fifteen springs. Her skin is brown, the color of tree bark, and her hair is that silvery blue-green of a Colorado Blue Spruce. We are dressed in matching outfits of white, pure as the driven snow. Our sleeveless shifts cover from neck to the bottoms of our buttocks. I have a considerable cleavage, and she will have one in a few more springs. South Wind giggles, and flips up the hems, showing our matching thong panties.

"What are we Mommy?" my daughter asks.

I hold her to my bosom, the embrace which can only be known between mother and daughter. "We're tree nymphs," I whisper to her.

 

finis

 

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© 2001 by Petra Pan. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.