WHEN WOODS WHISPER BACK

__________♔      OH    ALL    THE    ADVENTURES    THE    STAR    HAS    HAD    SINCE    SHE    BEGAN    HER    LIFE    ANEW    !!      not  that  she  recognized  the  rebirth,      but  each  day  she  feels  strength  returning  to  her    &&    a  genuine  happiness  settling  amongst  her  bones.      a  smile  is  more  often  than  not  found  pulling  rose  petal  lips  into  a  delicate  grin    &&    the  trees  have  learned  how  to  find  her  based  on  the  twinkling  laugh  alone.      ❛    i  tried  to  ascend  today.      i  didn’t  quite  make  it  to  the  sky,      but  daphne  i  could  see  the  great  eastern  ocean    !!      it’s  grander  when  you  can  see  the  whole  surface  glittering  under  the  rising  sun    !!    ❜

               SHE LEANED CLOSER to Astoria as the star told her story, her delight sending warmth in all directions. Under their feet, buds strained to find Narnia’s first tree, even as she stepped to settle to Astoria’s side. “I’ve been to the sea,” she intimated. “As the first tree, I can move further than many of my sisters, and I’ve seen the ocean, where the air turns to salt and grass turns to sand. It’s so big that I couldn’t even see where our world ended and the Lion’s began!” 

__________♔      THE    FIRE-BERRIES    HAVE    MADE    HER    STRONGER    WITH    EACH    PASSING    DAY.      she  can  feel  how  the  celestial  power  settles  in  her  bones,      rebuilt  from  the  inside  out,      until  she  can  nearly  forget  the  way  she  fell,      bouncing  into  daphne’s  life  unceremoniously      (      not    that    she'd    ask    for    it    any    other    way    now      )      ❛    if  i  glow,      it  is  only  because  i  have  such  lovely  company.      a  smile  is  the  most  beautiful  expression  of  joy    &&    you  bring  me  vast  amounts  of  it.    ❜

               WHEN THIS STAR had first fallen — was it a fall, in truth? — Daphne had found her and bathed her and wrapped a warm mantle around her shoulders to shield her from the coolness of the night. She had shown her the fire-berries from the Valley of the Sun, since the star had only ever seen the berries delivered by the white birds. And she had shown her the fire-flower as well, since it seemed to her, deep in her roots, that Astoria need not rewind the hand of time more than she needed to heal. 

The tree grinned. “Look at you! As beautiful as a petal. Do stars grow? You look so much taller than the last time I saw you!"   //   @treesprung​

__________♔      THE    STAR    PRACTICALLY    BEAMS    IN    DELIGHT    AS    SHE    TAKES    IN    THE    OTHER'S    WORDS.      much  has  changed  since  the  day  she    fell    from    the    sky.      she  has  learned  much,      seen  much.      to  many  of  her  kind,      walking  upon  the  earth  is  either  a    punishment    or  a  brief  respite  before  once  again  ascending  to  the  heavens,      yet  she  finds  that  living  amongst  the  woods  has  been  a  blessing  disguised  as  a  fall.      ❛    if  stars  grow,      then  i  hope  to  be  one  with  the  trees    !!    ❜

@treesprung​     //     If you see a tree getting ready to sneak attack                                   Regulus when he comes to visit, no you don’t

      It’s not like him to spoil her game—though he’s learned to recognize the feeling of her magic from a long way off. It’s a little tickle in his spine when he enters the forest, a little itch in his toes when he steps on the grass. It’s a sense of whimsy he feels when he walks beneath the shade of the trees and feels eyes surrounding him on all sides. Not cruel or scrutinizing or unkind but bright, mischievous, impish eyes.

      As he himself had, once upon a time.

      “You’re not as sneaky as you think you are!” he turns on a heel in time to see a slithering little vine wisp away into the shadows. Oh, you got quite close to me this time, didn’t you? He begins to walk backwards, hands clasped behind him, a broad grin scanning each tree trunk for signs of his slippery friend, “One of these days I’ll make a salad of you!” 

               “I COULD GO faster, but then you could never win,” she responded from the shadows of her sisters, all of whom were giggling with delight at the dance between man and nature happening on the forest floor. Her own voice carried a laugh — bright and clear and unencumbered — through the wind. 

When he spun, Daphne sent a thin, flowering vine up his ankle, the petals kissing his skin as it wrapped and unwrapped before he could have the chance to possibly, accidentally, uproot it.

 Grinning, Daphne tapped on his shoulder from behind him, dark earth-soaked eyes drinking him in. 

               ONCE, HER SISTERS had asked her if his hands were as cold as winter. And it was difficult for her to explain to them the difference of having her bark bitten by cold for a hundred years before the protective blanket of frost returned to Narnia, but his hands felt nothing like that. They weren’t warm the same way the sun was, but they were warm the same way love was. 

             She’d grown to love the feeling of his hands, and their not-cold coldness. 

She smiled under his hands, her cheeks nudging up against his knuckles in a way similar to how buds burst through the ground by her feet, always eager to be brushed against her. In that moment, a rush of snowdrops had pushed through the earth to meet her the same as she always felt the need of haste to meet him. Daphne grinned at Jack, plain and delighted. 

a hand rose to meet hers, letting her gentle palm settle into his. raising them together so that her knuckles grazed ruby colored lips,   “  not quite a queen, a goddess. something i read in a book, there are many goddesses and gods alongside them. she is the goddess of beauty, love and many other things … i can only really recall those.  ”   smile was gifted in her direction when she questioned the book he held in the other hand, settling it down onto his lap then.

“  why don’t you join me, i shall read to you ?  it’s a book of fantasy, (   i found it stowed away in the library   )  ”   a luxury he was happy for, that they had a well stocked library. even if the old words were sometimes a trouble even for him.

              IT WAS THRILLING as always to hear stories about a different world, a different time entirely where trees were still, but beings like these gods and goddesses roamed. Daphne grinned, shedding sunlight around her as she listened to Edmund’s words, becoming more delighted and amused as his description continued. “I am no goddess, but a tree,” she reminded him, detangling her hand from his in order to trace the bridge of his nose with a sun-soaked finger, drawing the planes of his face into the warm Narnian air. “But beauty and love are words tied to you, too, don’t you think?” 

*     @treesprung​     /      “You look very lovely today.” 🥺

voice was sweet as it drifted to him on the wind, how lovely he did look to her. (   without regal clothing   ) and but a simple button down, it grew blousy around the neck and wrists. a smile was given up to her, he was sat on a patch of sun warmed grass a book in hand. fingers closed it swiftly as she approached him,   

“  if i am lovely, then you put even aphrodite to shame.  ”   the sun gave her a crown, and the flowers she wore in her bright golden curls made her look like she was divine herself. he wouldn’t have questioned it, (   perhaps   ) even believed it.

               WHEN HE WAS within the forest, too infrequently did Daphne occupy her thoughts with anything else. He had grown TALL within these woods, shooting straight up like a birch or her oaken brothers: growing strong with locks bleached in the sun. She knelt, buds sprouting and climbing and yearning for her touch, even as she reached out to the young king. 

      “How very romantic!” He stops. The stone he rests on now is midway between each bank of the river and the water bubbles freely down at his feet, licking up at the undersides of his boots and hugging the stone beneath him like an old friend. Perhaps they are. It seems everything in Narnia knows one another; everything has some sort of sentience. Some sort of soul, life.

      “So you are saying that I’m a magical flower. One that blooms without light. I don’t know that I can accept such a compliment. Least of all without returning one: if I am the flower that blooms without the sun then perhaps it’s because you are sunlight itself; sunlight captured between your leaves like a fisherman’s net. And you radiate its warmth wherever you tread.”

               SHE HAD NOT been trying to be romantic, but there had been, she supposed, a kind of romance in her words. That kind of gauzy warmth that inspired something a touch more artistic than her often-unadorned words. 

Oh, she missed him when he was gone, and delighted when he was there. Long summer days could be spent in his presence, under his gaze, blooming and blossoming and learning. Regulus had the kind of heart that reached out to her. 

@treesprung     //     “ you are sweeter than any flower . ”

                  “Sweeter in what way?” He’s balancing on a slippery river rock with both arms held out on either side of him and his boots carefully navigating the makeshift bridge from one side to the other. It’s all in pure, aimless fun, as Regulus is wont to do, though he realizes how quickly his fun will end if he slips off.

                  “In the way that I smell?” He stops on a large stone and pivots to face her with both hands held daintily behind his back, “In the way that I look? And how can I be sure? What if there are some flowers you just haven’t seen yet? For example, flowers that I might have seen in my Old Life that are not in Narnia now… perhaps I’m not sweeter than those.” 

               "THERE IS NO flower sweeter than you,” she insisted, sitting on the edge of the river, a delicate toe hovered over the water, small lotuses trying to reach for the tree. She smiled, head tilted back like a sunflower, following the warm light of the sun. “It’s in your nature, and the slope of your shoulders, and your sweet features, and the sunshine in your smile.”