She was falling; sliding down the length of a great tree. It was slippery with sap, so she slid down it quickly and hardly had a moment to register anything more than fear before she hit the ground hard and the lights went out again.

***

She opens her eyes, blinking slowly twice before her eyes adjust and she can see clearly. Or at least...she thought she was seeing clearly. Lying on the ground at the base of a tree, she looks up to see what looks like a carving in the shape of a person. There was space for a head and arms reaching out with the branches. It continued down to form a torso, tapering off at the legs and blending into the trunk. In fact, the shape seemed to be disappearing before her eyes. From the bottom up, the tree was repairing itself, erasing the image. Hoping for a better look, she moves to stand, but as she reaches out a hand to brace herself two things happen. First, she sees herself. Her skin looks to be only a shade lighter than the rich brown of the tree she'd been so preoccupied with only a moment earlier. She hardly had time to notice that it seemed to be lightening rapidly before her palm makes contact with the ground and her whole body shudders as she is hit quite suddenly and a little violently with the knowledge of her surroundings. She knows this forest. Overwhelmed, she closes her eyes to try and clear her head and finds that in her mind's eye she can see everything around her. For a moment she keeps her eyes closed and concentrates on breathing until she becomes a little more comfortable with this new knowledge.

Finally, she is able to stand and looks up at the tree again, to where that shape had been, and finds that it is almost entirely gone. Her breath catches and she begins to cry. She feels suddenly as if some part of her is missing and reaches for the tree as if it is an old friend. As her fingertips brush against its' bark she almost hears as much as feels it say goodbye and her heart begins to ache. Whispering her own goodbye, she curls up at the base of the tree and cries herself to sleep.

***

In her dreams she is free. Her reach is without bounds. She is connected to everything and it all speaks of life. Even in the fall when others see she has lost her beauty, she knows differently. Her leaves have fallen to contribute to the cycle of life and there is undeniable beauty in that. She is a mother and she is a home. She knows only peace.

But it is not peace she feels now. She feels things she'd forgotten she could feel, things she does not welcome. She stares off into what she knows is a starry night, though she cannot see it through the canopy, and feels little more than despair. She remembers now what she once was, what she'd come to be, and mourns its loss. She hadn't expected that it would last forever, but as the years passed she had begun to hope and eventually to forget. And now, just as she had forgotten all those years ago what it was like to walk and talk and feel real pain, she is forgetting peace and the ongoing hum of life she'd come to so value. She is losing her connection to the forest. The knowledge she'd been given is fading.

She hugs her knees close and keeps her back against the tree. She needs to feel it. She can't leave. It is three days before hunger and a new emptiness drive her from that spot.

*****************************

She knows where to find food. It is one of the few bits of knowledge left to her, as the rest had rapidly faded into nothing more than a vague memory. As she hungrily eats the berries she's found, the first raindrop hits her and she is more than a little caught off guard. She very simply hasn't a clue as to what had just happened. Everything feels so different now, so much harsher! When she feels herself hit again, she looks at that place on her arm and sees water there. She remembers being a little girl and frolicking in the rain, stomping in puddles.

Things kept coming to her that way, in little spurts. It is as if she has to remember how to be a person again, and it is all coming back very slowly. It's confusing to her. Her fall and disconnection from the tree had been so quick, so sudden, that she had expected everything would stop feeling so foreign just as quickly, but she was wrong.

As it begins to pour, she wishes for the millionth time that this hadn't happened to her, remembering what the rain was like to her as a tree, how much she had loved the feel of it. She stands up and plants her feet on the ground, her arms outstretched, head up, just feeling it, and she has to admit that although she misses what she had felt before, this too is beautiful in it's own way. And for the first time since she fell, she smiles.

She is exhilarated, bathed in sensation. She can almost feel every cool drop of water as it splashes on her skin and runs down her body in tiny streams; how it catches in her hair like the leaves of a tree.

With her eyes closed she fails to notice how foreboding the sky has become, how black the clouds are. Without warning, a light so bright that it blinds her even with her eyes closed flashes before her. She starts from her stance, eyes wide and momentarily unseeing, falling to the ground. "What was that?" she thinks as the recoil from the lighting finally hits in a ground-rumbling boom.

This combination of light and sound and sends her into flight. Scrambling to her feet she runs off into the woods, jumping over roots and dodging branches. Smaller branches slap her bare skin, stinging her flesh as if to drive her further from danger. Another flash/boom makes her scream in terror.

Franticly she runs, until she finds herself in an open area in the middle of the forest. A small structure sits off to one side. "Safety!" she thinks, and bolts toward it.

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