The Forest

She showed them how the soil remembered what the mind resisted.

There was, and there was not, a time when the Raven flew over the great northern woods, where the forest canopy rose so high it touched the clouds, and the roots below wove themselves into myths.

It was said the elder trees had voices, deep and slow, like the groaning of the earth itself. And when they spoke, the forest listened.

This time, their call was for the Raven.

“We are dying,” the eldest said. Its bark was silvered with age, its limbs heavy with memory. “The old growth trees are falling, one by one. Something unnatural is taking hold.”

“We suspect a sickness,” another murmured. “A fungus, or perhaps an animal. Something that gnaws in the dark.”

“We need your wings, Raven. Find it. Eradicate it.”

The Raven tilted her head. “You are sure it’s a sickness?”

They rustled in agreement. “What else could it be? This has never happened before.”

The Raven did not answer. Instead, she flew.

She flew across mossy groves and through shafts of sun that pierced the canopy like quiet prayers. She perched on fallen logs and crept beneath leaf litter. She watched beetles bury themselves into bark, and vines reclaim what once reached toward the sky.

She saw the fungus, yes. Pale networks of thread weaving through the roots, delicate and sprawling. She watched animals chew the bark of fallen giants, nesting in hollowed trunks. She saw saplings rising beside them, small and certain.

She did not rush. She did not assume. She watched, she listened, she waited.

And slowly, the pattern revealed itself.

The fallen trees had not been poisoned, they had lived long lives. Centuries. They had witnessed migrations and fires and storms. And now, their time was ending.

The fungus was not a sickness. It was a recycler, a messenger, breaking down the old to make way for the new. Animals burrowed and feasted and, in doing so, made space. From the fallen, soil was enriched. From the soil, life stirred again.

It was not death. It was continuation. It was the forest, doing what it had always done.

The Raven returned to the elder trees.

“I have seen your fallen kin,” she said gently. “They are not victims. They are returning.”

The trees grew still. “Returning?” one repeated. “To where?”

“To the earth,” the Raven replied. “To the roots. To the moss. To the cycle.”

Silence followed, thick as sap.

“But we are the elders,” one insisted. “We are not meant to fall.”

The Raven tilted her head again. “Have you not taught the saplings to grow? Have you not stretched your limbs so wide that sunlight trickles down in narrow columns? You have held space long enough. Now the forest shifts, as it always has.”

They creaked and groaned in denial. “This cannot be the way.”

And so, the Raven changed her approach.

She flew to the highest perch of a leaning cedar and sang, not in words, but in images and rhythm. A song that told of branches falling and becoming cradle for roots. A song of seeds carried by wind, fed by the bodies of those that once stood tall. She painted stories in metaphor, stories the trees could understand. She showed them how the soil remembered what the mind resisted.

“This is not the end,” she whispered, “It is your return.”

The wind shifted. A low hush passed through the trees, as if some part of them understood, even if they weren’t ready to admit it.

The Raven did not press them further. Change comes slow to those rooted in place.

Instead, she flew on, her wings catching the scent of mycelium and pine, of endings becoming beginnings, of life endlessly folding into itself.

© 2025 Sarah Dooley. Story and images by the author. All rights reserved.