Chapter Text
One shouldn’t fear a sudden noise in the forest. A forest makes many noises as its roots dig deeper into time; chirps and whistles and crackles and creaks. The sounds of life, life that cannot be paused, no matter how man may try.
Instead, I advise you: fear a forest that lays in silence.
For too long, the forest surrounding Leshy’s cabin had been silent. Its silence hung like a noose, but no body had been found. Not a carcass, not a whisper, not a soul. For the beast that silenced the forest had already run its rampage. It was not a beast that nature had seen before, a beast that nature could recover from. A fire spurred succession. A parasite would find a predator. And even the humans that ravaged the forest would one day cannibalize themselves. Their bodies would be eaten by the detritivores, and nature, uncaring, would continue.
But this beast was not natural, nor was it made by man. It was supernatural, with human intelligence and nature’s inevitability. It had barely laid its eggs before it struck - or perhaps its eggs were there for eons, perhaps one could have saved this world’s soul if they had simply noticed the signs. But no one had. And so, the beast took the forest. It took everything. The trees, the squirrels, the air and water and fire, the neurons, ideas, atoms, and even the necessary nothingness, leaving an emptier shade in its stead. In the little time before life dissipated, everything infused with it felt a new kind of fear. A fear it had always been warned about; a fear that would never end. It failed to heed those warnings, believing itself to be the ultimate judge of reality. Fear was anticipation, not situation. It could survive yet again.
This beast was judgment. This beast was ultimatum. This beast was eternal silence and eternal pain. This beast left nothing in its path but captured souls and a desolate sight to behold. There was no saving those trapped. This beast was intended to be the solution. And that is why the forest was silent. It was not quiet to hear something it did not know; it was a silent witness to folly, a monument to bow one’s head in respect even to the fools who used it as a grave, for they were once alive. They had suffered a fate so grotesque it dared some to call justice cruel, though they could not deny it was justice.
And yet, something survived justice. The friend she kept in her satchel, the friend who kept her sane. The two were opposites, and yet they were inseparable.
The friend of justice was mercy.