Thirteen Days of Halloween TFs 2: Day 6 Dryad

Thirteen Days of Halloween TFs 2: Day 6 Dryad

Amber gave a tired smile at the brightly colored fall leaves, autumn was her favorite season and the forest just felt… special come the end of October. The blond girl hefted the ax on her shoulder and adjusted her flannel shirt, She had been working hard chopping wood for the  winter all morning and was about ready to take a break. She sat down on a nearby stump to catch her breath, thinking about the old logging trail she was on. It was strange that it had been abandoned like it had, there were still a lot of great trees here.

She decided to fell one more of the towering trees before leaving for the day on her four wheeler with her wagon of chopped wood. She grunted as she stood up and grabbed the handle of her tool. She walked for a moment before a tree caught her eye, there was something magnetic about it and with an almost mechanical force she approached it and swung her axe at the base.

*Thud*

The axe sunk deep into the tree and she went to pull back but the axe was stuck. Amber groaned and put her foot against the tree to get better leverage. Nothing, the blade was stuck. She got on her knees and started to look it over closely, one hand prying at the handle, the other leaning against the tree. Suddenly she felt something sharply prick her hand. She stopped what she was doing and held her palm up, there was a sliver of wood that had stabbed right through her thick leather glove, but as she tried to grab it the splinter went beneath the glove. She quickly peeled the thick glove off and look at her naked skin, there was a large welt and she saw the splinter for a moment before it went under the skin. Instantly she felt a sharp pain, it felt like her veins were on fire, like her blood was boiling. She cried out and fell to her knees.

Amber panted heavily as the burning continued and could only watch in silent horror as her skin seemed to twist and distort on her arms until it almost looked wooden. She could feel her root like arms digging into the earth and she realized after a moment that she was stuck to the ground in this kneeling position by the arms… her roots? As she struggled to free herself and figure out what was going on she saw her long cascade of blonde hair almost catch fire in how suddenly it shifted to a brilliant gradient of fall colors. Her eyes watered and stung as they took on a color similar to her namesake and she began to truly see the forest for the first time.

Gone was the lonesome logging road, replaced with a lush meadow in the center of a towering forest, she lay at the foot of a massive oak, her feeble axe buried three inches into the root of the massive tree. She became distinctly aware that she had done something grievously wrong and could only hope that whatever was doing this would take mercy on her.

The burning sensation started to wane, the leaves and ferns sprouting from her hair, the roots growing from her arms and legs lost momentum and eventually stopped growing in size. Slowly amber regained control of her body and was able to uproot herself. The world shifted and she was suddenly back on the old logging road, near hysterical with joy, she knew that if she hadn’t have convinced whatever spared to do so at that moment that she would have ended up just another tree along that road. Instead she was… well she wasn’t exactly human anymore, she could feel the warm sunlight almost feeding her with energy. She could feel her leaves blowing in the breeze, the ferns in her hair were growing out of her scalp and it was but a simple muscles reflex to twitch her roots. Amber knew that she had been spared, but she wasn’t off the hook for her misdeeds, she knew that it was her job to protect this forest now, to make sure that nobody else disturbed the old road or the towering tree in her dream…