Fjorrod had one heck of a hangover. He didn’t know where he was, and he couldn’t recall what happened. He was lying on the ground, with a stick digging into his spine. His head was like a drum, his arm that he was laying on felt thoroughly abused, and he wouldn’t be surprised if his legs had been dragged through all the Planes of Oblivion.
He opened his eyes to the cloudless sky. A hill on his left was blocking the sun from dazzling him, though he was in no shape to take note of that. Trying to get up, he found he couldn’t move his legs. He still couldn’t summon memory of how he got here, so far away from his cabin.
Fjorrod noticed he had something in his hands, clutched protectively to his chest. He pried his sore fingers opened, and found a diamond. Looking into it, he forgot his pain.
The light blues entranced him, delivering him into another world. As he looked, the lighter shades fellel away to reveal deeper and deeper colors, reminding him of the ocean, of a sapphire. These hid away greens, which in time became apparent to him. Soon he was no longer aware of his surroundings, just different hues of green.
A tree. A tree swaying in the wind. A tree surrounded by its neighbors and friends, a tree that lived, proud and tall.
A storm. Lightning, flashing and clashing and striking down anything it touched. Trees fell, faded, decayed, splintered, died, in the mere presence of it. It hits Fjorrod’s tree, for indeed he couldn’t think of it as anything else now.
NO! Fjorrod thundered in his thoughts, watching this. He could almost hear the tree’s cry of pain. The entire trunk, desecrated. One of the neighboring trees had a branch fall down, hit by another batch of lightning, but he didn’t care.
The storm faded. Fjorrod noticed that not all of the tree was black and charred. A dangling creeper somehow had found its way inside the tree, and redirected the lightning into the ground, carrying it some distance before the sky’s rage met the earth. As he watched, time sped up. The surviving trunk, and perhaps even more importantly, the root system, worked to prosper.
Fjorrod watched in something approaching awe, as the tree grew and pushed, shedding its charred husk. The tree grew and grew, ‘till it reached heights it could not imagine before the storm that almost killed it.
Meanwhile, the branch on the nearby tree regrew. Fjorrod reluctantly forced himself to look from time to time, and saw its progress, until it was fully recovered.
Suddenly, he was jarred out of the vision. Thinking on what he had seen, Fjorrod drew a sharp breath. Kyne, he thought. Thank you for this image, showing that everything will be alright. In time.
Fjorrod frowned. He was the tree to the side, of that he was certain. Testing his legs, he found he could now move them. Then, who was the tree that almost died?
Ma’osri!
Fjorrod scrambled to his feet, using the nearby hill to boost himself up. Limping as quick as his current state allowed, he set off in a random direction. Climbing up the hill, he reached the crest and almost yelped in shock.
A wolf was circling Ma’osri’s still form, darting in to give her a claw mark or bite. It was getting more confident too. It looked up at him, then whimpered in shock and pain.
As it ran away, Fjorrod saw that a thorn branch had seemingly come out of the ground, lodging a thorn in the wolf’s paw. As it ran, more grew out of the earth, disencouraging its temptation to come back to its victim.
Fjorrod waited until it was almost out of sight before suddenly hurling himself down the hill. Ma’osri lay in the center of a large depression in the land, circled by one long hill on all sides, making a natural pit with gently sloped sides where the flat crest should be.
Reaching Ma’osri, he saw that she was in a bad state. Claw and bite marks adorned her body, her chest bled freely, the blood soaking her shirt, and her arm seemed to be wrenched out of its socket.
He gently placed his finger on her chest. A heartbeat. She wasn't dead yet, and she wouldn't die, not even if Fjorrod had to fight all of Skyrim to keep her safe.
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