Trees don’t think in the way of humans, but they do think.

The Fate, an immortal being, and now a tree, thinks in her own way.

It’s something like a waking dream, a knowingness without thought. No lines of thought, that is. Her thoughts would not fit into lines. They’re more like a landscape, which she drifts through dreamily, breathing in quiet understanding from the air.

She can’t see in the way she once could, but she is aware of and part of things even far away. She knows them. She is them.

Far off, she is the warm white sands, the minnows flashing beneath topaz waves. Little colorful boats and great vessels alike glide through her waters. She grows quietly as coral beneath them, stretches out as the sky above them.

In other places, she is stone. She is snow. She exists in the endless masses of trees making up a forest. She is a ripe fruit falling softly to the ground, and she is the little creature that comes out of its burrow to find it, drawn by the enticing splatter of its impact. She’s the butterflies and the birds, even as she feels them roost in the safety of her own branches. She’s the little human children who sometimes run through the woods, laughing and stumbling.

It is all part of her earth, so it is all part of her. She spends her days and nights wandering through all of them, loving and appreciating everything, learning new wisdom. She is free to roam, not tethered to the tree. But she adores the tree, and she always returns to it eventually. It's a breathing body for her consciousness, when she wants one. It is always quietly waiting for her.

Her siblings, she knows, would lift her back up into the stars if she called for them. But she’s not yet ready to walk among the Fates again. She has more to do on Earth. She must be the fountain of power for all of her child trees. And she loves it here. For now, she is happy, as a tree.

As The Tree.

She loves to think as a tree does, but occasionally she will gather her consciousness together and weave it into what it was before. Sometimes simply because she feels like it. Sometimes because she senses that she must choose a new Guardian.

Other times, in its unspoken ways, the earth mysteriously summons her back to the surface. Something calls her to come back.

It calls to her now, so she lifts herself out of her wanderings. It takes a moment. She was in thousands of different places. But she draws herself back into the peaceful, physical solidity of her tree.

She settles into its long, flowing branches, its vivid leaves and heavy roots. She lets out a silent, contented sigh, the sigh of a traveler returned home and ready to put their feet up by the fire.

The Fate can feel the night and the forest all around her, the familiarity of her roots, half in the earth, half in the open air. Her branches sweep softly against the highest strands of forest grass, which greet her with cozy recognition.

The Fate says hello to them warmly, then reaches out through all of the invisible secret connections that nature offers. She's curious about what called out to her. It takes power, to summon an immortal.

Her senses silently and invisibly flow out beneath, above, and through the lush green landscape. Feeling, exploring, searching for anything unfamiliar.

Slowly, her thoughts begin to form around a presence in the forest. Something tiny, in the grander scheme, but then again, all things are.

It's there, and new. A bright, glowing thing.

A little spirit of warm golden light is wandering through the woods.

Hello, bright thing, the Fate thinks in its direction, her curiosity piqued. Who are you?

She can’t see in the way of people anymore, but nature offers her other ways of seeing. With the wind and the grass and the leaves, with the earth beneath the spirit’s feet and the soft night sky overhead, with invisible connections humans have no words for or knowledge of, she looks closely at the spirit.

He looks like the sweet, heavy heat of a blue and golden summer twilight. The hot sunshine evaporating droplets from sea-wet skin. The warmth of stepping out from cold shadows into a sunlit grove. The inner glow of a body suffused with the heat of passion. The sunglow that stays emanating from sun-rich skin long after night has fallen. The perfect stillness of golden shafts of autumn sunlight. The snap of a bonfire. The vivid, molten light of a deep red sunset. The quiet glow of fireflies.

All of him glows. He’s a being of pure flame.

There is a soft halo of golden lightning blazing around his bowed head.

The Fate perks up instantly, her immortal heart flooding with immense surprise and delight, then with a rush of love. She knows this spirit wandering the forest. He’s grown into a man, but she met him when he was a tiny, perky little baby with big, soulful eyes and an adorable tuft of soft hair.

He’s one of hers. One of her children. One of her Guardians.

If the Fate could, she would throw her arms open wide for him. One of her sons, come to visit her! Her whole being hums with happiness, brimming over with joy.

She knows that he came here looking for her. She can hear him calling out to her. And he traveled long and far to find her. The traces of many distant lands are lingering on him, all the different landscapes he’s walked across to come see her.

She smiles radiantly through all of her leaves. But slowly, she begins to sense him better. Her invisible smile falters, then falls away completely when she hears the sound of his soul note.

He sounds so utterly lost and lonely, so battered, so - broken.

The Fate draws back in concern. She listens intently to him for another moment, then gazes down the pathways of the future for answers.

She sees why he came here looking for her. He came to ask something of her. She sees what it is.

She had been about to silently call out to him, answer his silent calling out to her. But she stops herself, considering.

After a moment, she calls out to him, but not in a way that he can hear.

Come here, my little spirit, she says gently. Let me look at you.

The bright spirit begins to come through the forest toward her, without realizing. Drawn by his instincts, the ones she gave him. She feels his heavy footfalls on the grass, his slow, quiet breaths in the air. The chirping creatures of the forest echo the form of him back to her so clearly that she can almost physically see him as he steps out of a tangle of tree branches and stops in her clearing.

She does not reveal her full form to him. She dims the radiance of her bark and the glow of her leaves. She closes up the brightest and strangest of her flowers, lest he recognizes her right away for who she is.

Still, she hears his breath catch as his eyes fall on her tree.

"Whoa," he says softly.

He stands unmoving for a minute, then drops something off of his shoulder and onto the grass. He comes closer, steps through the rippling curtain of her long green and indigo branches, and slowly presses a palm against her bark. She feels the racing beat of his heart through it. Feels him silently ask, in a voice breathless with hope -

Is it you?

The Fate could answer him easily, but she doesn’t. He stands there in silence, straining with all the force of his heart to listen for her.

Is it you? he asks again, with increasing desperation in his voice. Please, please talk to me, I'm one of your Guardians, please...

She knows he senses something. Her own magic and power lives in him, and it senses her, with this close proximity. Still, she remains silent.

The moon has shifted its position in the sky by the time he gives up and lifts his hand away. She feels his head fall, and his heart, too.

“No,” he whispers softly, in a rough, broken, strangled voice. “Really? No, come - come on… I - I thought I felt...”

The Fate senses the immense depths of the crestfallen disappointment and crushing heartbreak spreading through him. He lets out a heavy, trembling breath, then leans his forehead against her bark in pure exhaustion.

With him this close, the Fate unintentionally hears some of his thoughts. He’s wondering what the hell kind of tree this is, if not the one he’s searching for. He's definitely never seen anything like it. And how can there be so many different kinds of flowers, all growing from one tree? He’ll have to try and remember what this tree looks like, so he can ask Jamie, one day. Jamie would probably know.

The Fate can hear on many different planes, even when hearing thoughts. She hears a great deal in this one thought of his.

She hears, throughout time, the constant recurrence of many variations of this same thought, always rising in the Guardian’s heart. In the deepest, most secret places of himself, the hopeful places, it always resounds. Waiting for one day.

Remember to ask Jamie about that, remember to tell Jamie about this, to see what Jamie thinks about that, to show Jamie this, to see if that would make Jamie laugh, to see if Jamie would like this…

And that is not all that the Fate hears in those thoughts.

The Fate hears very much in the name Jamie, when it's spoken through the voice of this Guardian. She breathes out a bright sigh of delight as the Guardian’s love, wild and powerful, brushes her senses. She loves the way that mortals love.

But this one is hurting, too.

The Guardian takes a sharp, shaky breath, then steps back from her. He picks his bag up off of the grass and settles it onto his shoulder. He starts to back away, then stops, hesitating.

The Fate watches him as he comes back beneath her boughs, takes something soft from his bag, and reaches up to put it down in a nest formed of her roots. Then he climbs up one of her roots, drops down onto the soft thing, and leans his back against her trunk. She feels him gather his knees to his chest and wind his arms around them tightly.

He sits with his back against the trunk of The Guardian Tree, breathing slowly, his shoulders heavy.

Eventually he lays down to try to fall asleep, though the Fate can tell it will take him some time. She sees many sleepless nights on him, deepening his already bone-deep exhaustion, weighing his already anguished heart.

What happened to you, my child? the Fate thinks sadly. Beings of the sun are usually so full of laughter.

He can’t hear her, because she did not intend for him to. He lays there silent and unmoving, sniffling every now and then. But without his knowing it, his struggling, shattered soul is crying out to her, trying its hardest to answer.

She listens until she understands everything that brought him here to her. Then she looks down at him where he lays broken and curled up, hiding in her roots, tears silently sliding down his face.

Oh, my son, she thinks, her dismayed heart aching. I’m so sorry.

She understands now why he wants what he asked for. Why he’s pleading with his whole soul. She wants to say yes right away. It strikes her heart with unbearable pain to see him suffering so deeply.

But what he asked for... that pains her heart, too. And she is not sure that it is right.

She lapses into thought, looks again to the glowing threads. Thinking now not as a tree, but as a Fate. Gazing far across the invisible planes, seeing all at once all the possible endings and beginnings, following the paths of the bright, humming strings to see where they lead. Considering what he’s asking of her.

She comes to a decision, and looks down at him in her way again.

He’s asleep, she realizes. Some time must have passed. He’s curled up in his little nest beneath her boughs, his face half-hidden in his arm. A storm is building overhead, thunder growling in the distance, but it doesn’t rouse him.

The Fate, knowing she won’t wake him, gathers her ground-sweeping branches closely around her son as the rain begins to pour down. She keeps him dry. The wildflowers, her shy friends, nestle up around him protectively. Her own flowers open up again, making a soft blanket for him.

The little spirit sleeps on, unaware that the forest itself is holding him.

The Fate uses the wind to soothingly tousle his hair.

Aiden, she whispers, keeping him tenderly cradled in her branches. You won’t hear this. You will think we have never met or spoken, and that is how it must be. I know what you’re asking for. It breaks my heart to have to turn you down, after all that you've done to get here. I understand that you’re begging. And I understand why.

The Fate feels his sleeping breaths, exhausted and ragged, and her whole soul aches for him. If tears could come to her, they would.

But there will come a day when you will no longer hate me for this, she goes on, as Aiden sleeps amidst the roots. For refusing to do what you asked of me. For choosing not to let you speak with me, knowing your pleading might change my mind. For letting you go on without knowing that you have already completed your quest. You will forgive me for all of those things, Aiden. You will understand why I made the choices I did. One day.

The Fate hesitates, knowing that it’s not possible to convey to a human being the true depths of what she’s seen and understood. Not even to one of her own children, even a bright flame like him. And she knows that he won’t hear it, even if she could tell him in a language he understands. Because she won't let him.

But in her heart, she feels that she must try to say it.

I see a future where you are a Guardian, and still dreaming and loving, she whispers, through the rustling movement of her leaves in the wind. I see a loving heart and warm face always turned towards you, in the way things turn towards the sun. I see hands with great healing power, waiting for you even now. Your fate has not been taken out of your hands in the way that you think. You are Fate, bright one. You are my son, and I will not give you up.

Through one of her flowers, she brushes a gentle, affectionate kiss onto his sleeping face.

I promise you, Aiden, this is the best way. I know it’s hard for you now. But it’s the best way.

The Fate stops, then draws her branches more closely around him, sheltering him from the rain. None but her can see the brilliant, beautiful, celestial glow of him. Even with his body and soul so exhausted, even with his heart so hurt, how he glows. How that lightning encircling his head blazes.

Exactly where it should be. To take it away would be wrong. He is worthy of it, and strong enough to wear it, despite what he thinks. It is rightfully his. And he is rightfully one of hers.

The Fate looks down at Aiden with warm, loving, reverential eyes.

She’ll let him go by morning, and he’ll be none the wiser. But she’s going to hold him all night, while she has the chance. This is the last time they’ll meet again until she comes to choose one of his children.

Stay strong, little spirit, she whispers. You will gain so much more than what you’ve lost.