OOM: The Garden
Quiet.
The Garden is at once large and small, stretching further than can be imagined yet as small and comforting as a treasured few square metres in the backyard. A man could walk for hours and not find the edge, if that was what was needed, although there is a wall of sorts, created by a hedge reaching high. Set in the hedge is a simple wooden door, always at a different place no matter how many times it is used. There is no lock; there is no need for locks, not here.
Paths wind their way through the Garden, weaving and twisting and never the same. Not paved paths, not for this place, but depressions in the soft grass, like the trails deer make in the woods. And deer there are, and a largesmall wood to the east, trees native to the Americas housing small families of beasts and birds.
A river, too, wends through the garden, setting off a merry, bubbling chatter as it flows over the stones beneath a simply-carved wooden bridge following the one true path that leads from the door to the Tree in the middle of the Garden.
The Tree is mostly dormant still, a few buds and green leaves gracing its bare branches despite the flourishing Garden around it. And at its roots lies the Trickster spirit of agriculture and fertility. His skin is still pale, the colour of the crystals that had poisoned the earth in his favoured village, but the burns are healing, and in sleep his face is peaceful.
The Garden is at once large and small, stretching further than can be imagined yet as small and comforting as a treasured few square metres in the backyard. A man could walk for hours and not find the edge, if that was what was needed, although there is a wall of sorts, created by a hedge reaching high. Set in the hedge is a simple wooden door, always at a different place no matter how many times it is used. There is no lock; there is no need for locks, not here.
Paths wind their way through the Garden, weaving and twisting and never the same. Not paved paths, not for this place, but depressions in the soft grass, like the trails deer make in the woods. And deer there are, and a largesmall wood to the east, trees native to the Americas housing small families of beasts and birds.
A river, too, wends through the garden, setting off a merry, bubbling chatter as it flows over the stones beneath a simply-carved wooden bridge following the one true path that leads from the door to the Tree in the middle of the Garden.
The Tree is mostly dormant still, a few buds and green leaves gracing its bare branches despite the flourishing Garden around it. And at its roots lies the Trickster spirit of agriculture and fertility. His skin is still pale, the colour of the crystals that had poisoned the earth in his favoured village, but the burns are healing, and in sleep his face is peaceful.