<strong>The Beauty of Nature</strong><br/>In the right daylight, the strangely uniform path down under the boughs of the trees glowed the green-gold of perpetual spring. Out of this perpetual twilight where the sun barely nourished and decay ought to have set in, flowers were blooming out of season. Beetles the size of palms who had never experienced a winter trudged along the path like small turtles with great stag horns. Hung from the branches, on string and ribbons, were the small lost items of humanity. A child's lost doll. A button from a pair of breeches. Old coins, twirling in the breeze.<br/><br/>Through this museum on the queer trinkets of Amberdale people a clear path continued, growing more lush and green by the minute. There was a living rustle high in the branches as a bud spontaneously popped into a huge white chrysanthemum. Sweet air, thick with pollen, freckled cloth and skin with sugary spots. And there ahead, surrounded by a small clearing, was a lone tree so twisting and ropy it might have been a composite of fifty young trees, all braided together into one mossy, everblooming, mushroom-terraced column. But despite its obvious age and power, it was not that large- just enough shelter for a picnic for two.<br/><br/>A thirty-eight point stag tall as a man at the withers stepped onto the path and regarded both Stanis and Helia.<br/><br/>His handlers came from either side, elven maidens or forest nymphs with hands empty save for a single grooming brush. If the stag was warden of the tree, the implication was that these were his virginal daughters, curious, flirtatious, a flutter of felt ears.<br/>"Greetings, city-folk."<br/>"You've trespassed deep where city-folk oughtn't go."<br/>"But, now you must turn back."<br/>"Turn back."<br/>"This place is not for you."<br/>"Let us show you the way."<br/>The maidens approached. So tantalizingly close was the tree, but if the stories were true, tomorrow the way to it might be completely different, buried without a trace.<br/><br/><div align="center">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/5/5f/Forest_nymphs.jpg)</div>