<strong>The Beauty of Nature</strong><br/>When the last old deteriorated path turned back from the dreamy strained light of the forest, the true old growth began. Trees stretched toward the heavens across centuries untouched by Amberdale. From the outside the forest canopy seemed a gentle swell, but on the inside the land sloped steadily town over tangles of exposed roots no horse could navigate and trees stretched long and lean towered ever higher. No one tree had many limbs to spare, but combined the daylight was divvied up into visible rays, and through some fossilized webs, into its component colors of light.<br/><br/>There were things down here where the rainwater emerged from the root tangle clear and spouted into moss-ringed watering holes. Shy animals disturbed the long leafy fingers of the trees darting into hiding. There was something larger, too. Here and there the branches danced from the touch of something nigh ten feet tall. A clack, like wood strumming wood.<br/><br/>If there was anywhere that had felt the presence of a Life Tree, the fertile valley was it. Mushroom-dense slopes pointed down to the very bottom, so dense with different colors of life they could have been cities in miniature, placed by an artist's hand. Elk hooves crossed the fertile soil, tickled by creeper vines but otherwise bare and walnut-black. Grass had never even evolved here.<br/><br/>A hollow through the branches like a chapel vault shot straight along the valley bed, carrying the scents of the deep forest on a warm breeze. And as careful as Helia Plum-Tail may have been, at least once an errant white root crossed her path to trip up, still cold and damp from the earth. The forest stirred.