V,

I’m writing as you asked, so you’ll stop pestering me. Or maybe because you wanna live vicariously through me since you’re too much of a coward don’t want to actually enter the woods. I know you said you wouldn’t read it. You also said you wouldn’t come back to the village. I’m going to be safe in those woods, because I know how to respect them and love them. And V, they love me too. 

- B

V,

Well if you have found my corpse (unlikely) then you know what I’m about to write is true. I know you won’t believe it until you see it, but this is the reason that I’ve been wearing the gloves lately and I wouldn't tell you along with the larger boots and hat. 

I saw a vision V. A dream, or something. I know you had it too. I saw the dark circles under your eyes that you tried to hide and wouldn’t look me in the face. Well, it worked. I did that ritual that called to us, collected the birds and lizards and completed that ritual that would make all your high society friends faint if they even thought about it. And I understand now. 

The way the rocks move and the forest. It’s talking. It’s calling and you are just too damn stubborn to listen to it! It loves you too! You know that! 

It has given me gifts V! I can feel them squirming along my spine, etching them into my very bones and sprouting out through my veins. The mud has given me roots, their words have given me branches. And their own servants listen to me now! 

A shadow tried to take my fingers when I chanced upon its tools and it bowed before the language that I spoke! It knows that I am blessed and you can be too! What is here for you? All you have is me, and I am it’s. 

I’ll hope you join us soon,

- B

Sister, I have met another member of my congregation--OUR congregation for it is yours too, though you still refuse to accept it! We are waiting for you here! To see the reddened lilies in your hair would be a holy sight as I have woven them into mine. 

But as you have not yet joined us I will tell you of the holy sights that I have seen today. It was through the fields of the reddened lilies, the ones that cannot leave this place, the ones that turn to ash upon the sight of your so-called ‘civilization.’ They grow fast and thick as rivers through the deep parts of these woods, they are a path on which we are to walk. An arrow, a guide, a pathway through the blistering light of the sun and into the cool embrace of the darkened woods. 

If only you could see it as I do, sister. Please join me. I beg of you. 

But of my other member, I have met her deep in the ruins of a once and still holy place. Deep in this ancient grove through crooked roots and broken stone, and into place carved away by the forest itself, there was a story to be told. It tells of those not beast or man but of both and neither and together joined and rejoined of holy consumption. 

And so she of teeth had of my blood and skin and we prayed and we sacrificed to our altar and from that wound the lilly grew, reddened like the blood but no longer ashen for I am the forest and when it is in me, it is in the forest. 

And sister, please, you can be of us too. I am sorry I am shaking with ecstasy and cannot form the words on the page but.. 

I love you. 

I’ll hope you join us soon,

- B

V,

I am now welcomed amongst the beasts of this place. The foxes and the moles join me in long walks through the darkened woods and down the winding paths of the lily. 

The birds too see that I am of this place and seek to rid me of the touch of man. They pull and tug at my vestiges and vestments, begging me to be rid of any sign of the place that I once was. 

You cannot live in a world of dead wood, sliced stone, and broken fibers. Be free with us, they say as they remove the last of my hair from the scalp which blossoms the reddened lily. And I was taken to their nest to see the remnants of humanity woven into a home where nature is free to live. 

Humans think that we are special. We think we are above all that is around us. We are of nature as it is of us and to deny it is to deny ourselves. 

One day I will be free to live fully in these woods. But that day is not today. 

I did find signs of human tempering today as well. It was a garden. It has sprouted from the hands of those who care most deeply about this forest. So beautiful and so thick the air itself tastes sweet. Growing are the honeysuckles, the jasmine, the wisteria, but most importantly the reddened lily. 

It grows up from those arms buried deep, and blossoming through nourishing veins to holy fingertips. 

In this, a contradiction. But what is more human than to be hypocritical? To have a cultivation, wrest control in a place so feral and so free to show a holy purpose, but who’s innate holiness comes from the wild and untameable?

But we are only human, and it is of our nature to control. And to deny our nature is, as I have said, to deny ourselves. And so we honor our nature by controlling nature, and embrace divinity in hypocrisy. 

But oh dear sister, how people reject this place, for I have seen others who enter these woods. Hunters, dear sister, not unnatural and not unwelcome, for there is need of those who hunt lest the prey overgraze and the plants wither and die. 

I do not know what they see when they look upon me, for as I watched them they spat and cursed to themselves. I do not know them, sister, but perhaps you do? Are they from your city? 

I pray the others of my congregation do not meet them. They may not see things as I have. 

I’ll hope you join us soon,

- B

Dear Sister,

Do you remember when we were small? The stories they told us about the woods? The people who lived there? How they were destroyed? How they had tried to tame the forest instead of letting it live as it was? 

I have found one such of these homes. Far from the hypocritical garden. Far from the lily path. I cannot remember how I entered. But from the woods I saw it, like a hazy recollection, a dream of a dream of a memory implanted. 

Inside I found myself, turning over the furniture. Turning over the bed and the bushes and the leaves that have made homes inside. The spiders were unperturbed, but the rats fled from noise. This place is being reclaimed as I am being reclaimed. And inside there was a hearth. And in that hearth this journal. Was it you? Are you reading as you said you wouldn’t? (As I knew you would?) I’m not mad, Dear Sister. How could I be? You will join us soon. 

All of time is cyclical. What once was will be again and then return to the start on the wheel that ever turns. And like myself, returning to nature, and like this building returning to nature, there is but another me, a shadow through a window. 

It is me but not myself. Or maybe it will be once again. This shadow through the window turned to stone in an instant when I have come upon it. 

It is far too heavy for me to move, but it is myself, what I will be, what I was before. What I can be and yet might not. A literal return to earth. And it reaches out, towards the ground, as if inviting it into itself again. Does it wish to be returned to rubble? That I cannot say, but it bled when I took its finger. I cannot say why I needed it. But to know there is a piece of me, returned to me, is comforting. 

More comforting than what else I saw today, dear sister. For this is a day of memories. And do you remember when we were older than children how our dear friend, Delisa, despite all the warnings, traveled through those hills, the ones with so fine a ground and deep caves beneath. 

All the adults searched but could not find her. Dear sister how you wept then, and how you would again weep now, for I have found her. 

For over these hills I traveled, guided by the reddened lily, as if the forest wished for me to find her. And she was grown. As grown as we are now, but dead, or perhaps something else entirely. 

For it was the blood that led me to her. Underneath the trees I stood, holding a piece of me, my shadow, when from above the sky rained blood. And from that blood the lily sprouted in the ground, but it was not the sky that bled but instead the animals. 

Small at first, frogs, mice, birds, impaled upon the tree as if it had grown through each creature and partook of them as another sacrifice. And the lilies grew from the blood they formed a path, leading to more sacrifices of larger and larger animals. 

The blood has returned to the earth, and are we not clay ourselves? I, covered in red life, followed along until I found these caves, and I heard within. 

She called and I answered. Her body was pale, and her own blood drained from her body, but still I recognized her despite never seeing her at this age. 

My knife, the one I keep above my desk, was buried deep in her chest, and rusted as though it had been there all this time. 

“Take it,” she whispered, and I obliged. But freed from this prison she grasped me and though my skin is of bark I could feel the cold of her rotten fingertips seep the warmth from my skin as she laughed. 

She was not of my forest, but of an older god that claimed her. The knife burned in my hand but I could not release it, and so I struck her again with it. We fought, and, having known I lived to write this, you know that I escaped. 

She could not leave the hills, as she was of them as I am of the forest, but the knife, still burning in my hand, I took with me into the trees. 

I pried my fingers from it, and barely just managed to release it and from the ground when it touched the earth, the forest grew rotten, rusted roses. Their thorns were as sharp as the knife, and I dared not to reach my hand inside. 

This forest is protecting me. Think what it will do for you too, sister? 

I’ll hope you join us soon,

- B

Dear Sister,

if you wish for me to return you should not have locked the garden gate. You should not have built the fence taller. You should not have gotten a new dog, so angry. 

Have you given up on me? I still love you, you know. It still calls to you. Our congregation is not complete without you. We only wish for you to love these woods are they are by them. By me. 

Do you not still love me sister? Though my form has changed it is still me. It is no different as if I had grown older. There is nothing in life that is stagnant. Forests are meant to grow.

 I have returned to that small cabin, the one that is returning to the woods as I am. Maybe it was meant for me all along. 

On my way back to it I passed a statue, large, strong, and open handed as if holding something heavy--a pieta for no one. And in front of this statue, an offering, a crown of flowers, none of them my lilies, but still I felt compelled to place it upon my head, and let it intertwine with those which have grown from me. And when they conjoined I saw the statue in entirety, for there was something in its arms. A body, a sword, and a warning. 

It spoke to me about the future: about a gift, about rejection, about the earth, about threads, about life and death and trees and all there is to do. 

THere is so much more in this forest dear sister. Please. It loves you. Come back to us. 

I’ll hope you join us soon, 

- B

V,

Our congregation grows and I was given a gift today. It is as the statue told me. The night was dangerous, but I was safe within the reclaimed house, for now. I miss you dearly. You would love it here. 

The forest continues to change me, and the flowers grow down my back like a cape of a royal king. They are not crushed and they are not fragile, but I cannot feel them. They are on me but not me. But today was another blessing. 

They emerged so suddenly, as if from nothing they sprouted like flowers from the ground. In their hair the reddened lilies, and their clothes the white of the choir. 

One man from their group stood forward and told me to hold my arms wide and  my eyes closed and accept the gift from them. I obliged as is my nature, and placed upon my palms was the heart of some beast, still bleeding, still bleating. 

And the congregation was gone for they should not witness the holy act for which I obliged. And I partook in this feast, making it a part of me as is the bird and as am I of this forest. 

Dear sister these gifts are to be yours too.

I’ll hope you join us soon, 

- B

V,

Sarah came by today to speak with me today. It has been a while since I have seen her. Has she been doing well? She looks sadder than usual and said she cannot see the forest as well as she once was. 

Do you overwork her, sister? We all need time to visit the forest. I sat with her a while today, brushed her long hair, and paced the reddened lilies into it like always. She asked me about the forest, and I told her of its beauty. I told her of  the beasts, and the birds, and the flowers. She loves the flowers most of all, and I can see them taking to her nicely. Their roots are digging deeper into her now. I asked her to join the congregation, the one in white, who sings and makes offerings. She is amenable, but she misses you. 

Have you turned her away? She was your favorite. She left me soon after, back towards the house. Perhaps to you. 

I came upon a hole today, with a shovel, brand new. I felt drawn to it, as though it had been a gift to me and I could not stop. Did not stop. Why would it? Was this hole not for me? Does the forest not provide? The shovel felt like it was made for my claws and I dug, and dug and dug until there was no further to dig. 

On the ground there were scales, like that of a fish, to the size of that like a plate. And to the touch it pulsed like a living thing and I understood. Sharp claws in sharp scales and from that fish I wrested the scale. It squirmed and writhed but did not move as I dug my claw into it, and wretched the meat and blood from within. And I partook in this feast, making it a part of me as is the bird, and as is the beast and as am I of this forest. 

And in this I am near complete. The congregation knows this to be true as I was invited to one of the most holy ceremonies. A marriage, a bond not to broken. Dear sister you would have wept at how beautiful these brides were. Hand in hand, flowers upon their hair and in their dress. 

We gathered upon the creek, in the water, the white-dressed choir, and I dark-bark and red-flower a  chosen witness to this ceremony. And in joining each other and this forest a sacrifice of blood upon the couple. Poured from me unto them and they are a part of it and myself and all that is in these woods. 

Dear sister, please open your heart to us. We love you. 

Ah, but at this wedding two old maids showed me another vision of the future. More of mud and blood, as to be expected of this place. I welcome it to me. 

And as a part of nature the sky did cry at the beauty of this wedding, and my congregation dispersed. But here I am, far from the home in the woods, I had to find shelter from the waters. 

But the forest provides. And a tree, with smoldering carvings etched inside, made itself known to me and I obliged. I have returned to the earth as all things should, and I feel these roots surround me and enjoin in me and for now, I am safe. 

Dear sister, please forgive the state this journal is in when you find it. There isn’t much to protect the paper from the water. 

I’ll hope you join us soon

- B