Cassidy looked out at the Tree again.

Rowan watched her nearby, unsure of approaching.

It was one of those days when the Earthen scents lie heavy in the air, and the white sky flecked with variations of grey illuminates the whole of being with startling clarity. On days such as this the green of the lower branches stood out with more youthfulness than before, and chirping birds struck a gaiety to the general ambience of serenity.

The Tree had many secrets to share as it had idiosyncrasies to be lightly touched upon. Cassidy whistled through broken teeth as a light wind hurried past her face. She held three acorns in her hand. Maybe, she wondered, maybe later she could get some cloud with this. Gammee had promised her sweets anyhow. Gammee could be down in the fields right now, plucking vegetables as she hummed that old song of yore. "It's Presley, dear. P with a puff," she would insist. And with nimble fingers she would pluck cucumber after cucumber, humming, all the while chuckling occasionally at the Tree. The way Gammee chuckled at the Tree it almost seemed as if they were old pals. Perhaps they ever were, Cassidy mused. 'It's not unlikely for Gammee to know things most of us don't.'

Gammee was as shrouded in enigma as the Tree but at least she was reachable. Even now, as Cassidy looked out into the distance, the Tree in the unbridgeable distance looming large, she felt a keen nostalgia of the inexperienced. Wave after wave, this bittersweet feeling washed over her until heavy with heart, she was forced to think of other things. This was when she turned to notice Rowan. 

stupendous stumper

Some believe the Tree was responsible for the creation of all that exists. Others believe the Great Empress is simply a giant tree. The Great Empress was nevertheless an unreachable entity, so distant and so great, so utterly remote, yet sustaining its charming, peculiarly charged strange presence. Looming over all, ever watchful.
When Old Fenrir jocularly put down his third peg of mead, as the bartender at the Mead Meadows Inn watched on, smiling and nodding, while wiping his crystal, the drunk man let out a heavy sigh and half turned to the wide open window, pointing with his free hand towards the endless fields and the Great Empress in the distance. "That," he slurred, "is nothing but a great big blue tree! And I,"  he enunciated, "will be the first to scale the distance to the damned tree so help me Inukai!"
The bartender smiled warmly as his mind drifted, engulfed in memories which came upon him all of a sudden, vivid and powerful.

His Gammee had once told him the Story of the Tree.

In the days of yore, the Air and the Good Earth we walk upon were as yet unsuitable for us to exist in.
Interbeing was impossible; care was harmful; love was futile.

For Love is never futile, not when there are beings to feel it.

And then with the Birth of the Lords of the Sky, from the Seed which would eventually become their Father, The Tree which sets them all dreaming, suddenly all was possible.
Trickles appeared which would become the strong swift rivers now as we know them.
Seeds sprouted which would make the forests as we now know them.
The Earth shook and the Air whistled as creation took place, as the Lords shifted among Matter restlessly, creation took place.

And then briefer than a blink, softer than snow, mellower than a meadow, suddenly there was the world as it now we know.

The Good Earth we walk upon and the sweet Air as we breathe.

When Freyr finished his reminiscence, he found with a start his Inn silent as death. Fenrir's head was bent, filled with thoughts he felt too tired to speak out loud. Heavy thoughts. Strange, far off thoughts he hadn't had before, grazing at the seams of his consciousness. The Air thinned as it dawned upon him what he must do.

Emptying his sac full of acorns on the ebony table, he dashed out the bar, running wildly as a fit of euphoria overwhelmed him. The Air caught in his hair, the Earth soft for his feet and a dream drumming in his heart.

The world seemed to hold secrets in its midst, and the seeking would be his.
And so off he went to seek.

A sparrow in flight, searching the skies for dreams.

The Tree that Dreams.
The bird twittering on its lowest branch.
A being came out from the darkness, into the light.
Into the light he came, finding fierce agony and pain,
Deceptive feelings plunged into him, sent his heart coursing, soaring, and then at once plopped, rejected, trampled upon.
It was the sign of nature that he still stood, breathless.
Sign of nature that he experienced for the first time that he experienced for the first time what was human happiness and sorrow.
With one look cast at a fallen tree nearby he knew agonized The Tree so much, his heart was drumming fiercely against his chest, struggling within its confines.

He had to explore.

Off they went, heart and he, down the ochre-Earth-mud brown road, laid with perfectly ovular, white, pebbles.
Down the Earthen road, and he found a town-market off track, just beginning, the first signs appearing. Hurrying off the track to the market, he found a purple hood cast on the ground. Picking it up gingerly, clutching his symbol from this world with both hands tightly, he waltzed in. Nimble on his feet. Quick in his thinking. He soon realized the townsfolk viewed him as yet another boy, while he himself remained awestruck at the abundance of titillating visions here. Cart to cart, shackle to tent, house to brothel, he explored it all. Muttering, to himself, to his heart, he went on, thunderstruck and painfully so, love unknown, stabbing at his heart.

At the turn of the road he saw her, just as she was poised to take flight.
Riveting red amidst a sea of brunettes.
She was clumsy, her face was smudged with chocolate he mistook for mud and her knees wobbly.
But when she took flight, despite the sarcastic comment of a middling raven-haired beauty nearby, his Breath nearly left his Being.

In a matter of a singular leaf falling from the Tree- a matter of barely a wink, if you will- he found his head fuzzy. An ecstatic drunkenness overtook him. Years dissipated as they were all replaced with that singular moment. A singular moment of overwhelming, joyous, meaning.
His skin tingling and his heart soaring with her abundance of curls, he forced himself to turn towards the Tree.

What he dared not confess was that now this momentary apparition appeared more beautiful to him than the Tree in all it's perennial glory.

What he did not know was that the Tree rejoiced in his newfound joy, his newfound ecstasy.

Deliriously in astonishment with his new world, he picked up a solitary daisy, losing himself in its milky whiteness, already dreaming of the fair face behind the red curtain.