The Dryads Tale

I read this today on a forum called A Witch Alone, which the link can be found in my links section and i loved it, it moved me and touched my soul..

Its taken from a book called; The World of Faires by Gossomer Penwyche

The Dryads Tale…

I stand alone now on the ancient land of my home. There was a time, not so long ago, when I and many thousands of my sisters lied on this once great land together. My family was magnificent forest of oak, cedar, pine and birch. My sisters and I had many children who have all now gone. They the birds and beasts, who lived in our branches, ate our fruit and spread our seeds.

Hordes of creatures struggled daily for their lives. They rejoiced, grieved, played and fought. Fed, starved lived and dies, in great numbers to many to count, over time too long to be measure. I watched their awesome toil for two hundred full turns of the seasons, and then nothing. But I stand here and remember. I stand sentinel to the memory of the lost creatures of this land, and to my own ancestors whose vital juices still flow in my vain.

I once had a name, but I have no need for it now. For there is no one or nothing to remember me. All living forms that could move did so – far away, I know not where. They ran, flew, crawled and burrowed. Slithered and swan away from here. Despite the pleas from my sisters and I. Perhaps they thought we had betrayed them. But that is not so.

My sisters were sacrificed to the mighty beasts, so hard and unbending we could not with stand them. They lumbered and roared among us tearing us down with their shiny claws and their thundering blows. Those monsters, so hard, so resistant, with out any soul, felled us by the thousand, day after day, season after season. Until there were no more. Save for me alone. But I am not done. Oh no not yet.

I am proud of my sisters for they did not go down with out a fight. You may well wonder how we, who can not move from where we stand and must bend or brake to unconscionable tyranny, can oppose such a fierce enemy. It is because we have the power of the place. We stand our ground. You may laugh and say we have no choice, but you are wrong.

One by one my sisters fell I heard their scream of fear and pain. I heard them rail against the fates, and I heard them beg for their lives. But those horrid, rolling monsters aided by those false, sharp tongued with their hundreds of little teeth were deaf to my sisters pleas. Perhaps they could not hear over the clamor of their grumbling war cries. No sound of the forest could be match such a dreadful din; not the roar of the lion or the bear, nor the thunder of the water falling over a chasm. The only sounds more dreadful were the sounds of my sister as they fell to the ground. What cries or portent they were. All the animals, birds and insects heard and understood, so did all the waters flowing, as did the flowers, grasses that lay at our feet. For the final cries of my sister spirits were curses deep and dark. “A curse in thee and all your kind” they cried. “Cursed be your children and cursed be your homes. May the darkness you create come and swallow you whole. My sister’s hexes made my leaves tremble and fall. No wind could shake me as those words did that echoes across the land.

The rampage continued for so many seasons that I dared not count them any longer. Finally the rolling monsters dragged away the last of the empty, lifeless shells of my sisters. Silence fell at last upon the barren land. But it was not the full, serene silence I had known before the enemy came. How different is the stillness of death from the stillness that exists when all nature sings, when life bursts forth and then passes at its proper time. There was daily life and death chaos and commotion in my forest home, but it has gone away forever, as I must, too.
The spirits of wind and rain have not stopped their mourning. The winds howl their rage, the lakes and rivers overflow and flood the land with their tears. Then the droughts come and the sun burns the despoiled earth. Nothing grows, nothing lives. Together, my sisters and I were once able to protect the earth from some of nature’s wrath. But I am alone now. Mt sister’s curses have come to pass. There is no magic that can undo our fate and save the world.


Now I die, too, for my time has come.
I am the last tree.
Who will remember me?