Cold then warm. Bright yet dark. Stormy and calm. Quiet and loud. That was the fog.

  The grayness hung over the world like a heavy blanket, coating everything in a fine mist of silver. Light filtered through it, casting shadows onto the vast flat earth. It wrapped around us all, the many trees of this barren grove. The fog... so lovely to see, always changing, always flowing.

  Sometimes it filled my soul with such longing, a lover just out of reach. Yet, on other occasions, the mist twisted and churned like a dark sea, filling my heart with dread.

  The trees of the grove rustled in the soft, gentle breeze. Our leaves danced, our branches chattering softly to each other. We whispered about everything and nothing, like the burble of a stream. Our whispers only ceased when the caretakers came through the grove, as a stream only halts in the coldest of winters.

  The caretakers. They were coming. Already the silence blanketed the land thicker than the fog ever could. The caretakers moved in a procession. Dark shadowy figures, with eyes of polished silver peering from under the hoods of their black cloaks. They held lanterns high in front of them with dark, shadowy fingers. Their voices rose in a lilting song of ancient times. A song of the gods. A song of the chosen. A sound that rose and fell to no beat or pattern, as if it was a song sung by the mist itself.

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  "Not yet," they sang. "Not yet. Your branches are too wispy."

  "Not yet, not yet, you are too young, too frail."

  "Not yet, not yet, your time will soon come."

  We loved the caretakers and we hated them. They sang of gods and legends and the chosen few, and looked into our souls as if they knew our fates. Their presence marked change, the growing of roots and branches, the deepening of the soul.

  "You are not ready, you are not ready. Your roots are too shallow."

  I could hear them, see them, as they drew close.

  "You are not ready, you are not ready, your soul is too frail."

  The caretakers approached me, circling me in a ring of shadows and eyes.

  The trees around me rustled softly, a nervous laugh, a halfhearted congratulation. A whispered goodbye.

  "You are ready. You are ready," the caretakers sang. "Your time here has ended."

  The fog crowded me, turning everything grey. Then a great wind battered my branches. It picked up the fog and carried it away. So far away. I would never see it again.

  Trees surrounded me. They moaned and complained to each other about the great gust. Not familiar voices of friends, but a loud roar of strangers. No mist muffled their voices. No fog filtered the light. Silvery light poured through their leaves, and strange beings scampered through their midst.

  A forest. My forest.

  A strange sound filled my ears.

  Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

  Like the rhythm of the seasons. Like the shifting of the sun.

  Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

  Like the steps of a man. Like the crackling of a fire.

  Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

  I took a deep breath and stepped forward, out of my tree.

  Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

  And so I was born as a nymph from a tree.