The Three Brothers

      Crimson lines on parchment skin

Will tell me tales of other men

What is it that I do, or did?

What selfless task or silent sin

To earn this charming, hungry grin?

The rules of his existence were simple things, truly.

He could not leave the bounds of the Woods. He could not deliberately destroy the fabric of the prison that held him, though he'd found ways around that precept quickly enough. And, after a daring, rigged gamble, he was no longer allowed to harm Poet when the feeble rhymecrafter entered his domain. Infuriating checks to his power, stumbling blocks at his feet. Chains that held him at barely a fingertip's distance from what he deserved.

But they change. Bending. Tonight, I break them.

A young elf thrashes against a wooden floor like a thing gone mad.

Every forest sits under the sheltering, ever-changing sky. Some sit patiently on the plains, waiting for the charity of the heavens in light and rain. Others labor up the sides of mountains, refusing to accept a lower station, determined to receive the stormclouds on equal footing. Still others sink lazily down, down into the rifts and valleys, greedily draining the rainfall from all about them to fill their gluttonous hunger for moisture. Despite their paltry differences, all the stately trees that make these verdant havens accept the sky as a protector, provider, and lover. All that they are is possible through the rain the clouds bring, and the sun that warms their bark-shod souls.

This forest had no need for a guardian.

This forest required no provision by the weather.

This forest had a soul, warmed not by the sun, but by black and twisted hate.