Marrow

For a time, she was alone here.

Then the two came, and then more.

They're in love.

She laughs, and it sounds like boughs bending, like wood grinding against wood, like the faraway rumble of thunder.

Let them enjoy their saccharine passtimes, she thinks, though not in so many words. She seldom thinks in words these days.

Her ears perk up at faint hints of music in the distance, but she does not follow those sounds. Instead she moves in the opposite direction, vanishing into the treeline, loping through the underbrush. Here, sequestered among mossy branches and a chorus of chirping insects, she has little need for other company.

She crouches down, and as she stops to rest at a hollow in the base of an old oak, she could easily be mistaken for another root, a protruding burl. Her lank figure appears as old and worn as any of the surrounding trees.

A spider crawls lazily up her arm. She turns her head to observe. Deep black eyes in a weathered face watch the tiny creature's progress.

How you walk on me, little one, just as I walk through these woods.

There she goes, thinking in words again. So strange, so excessively sentimental. Probably the others' influence.

She grumbles an exhale and sinks down in the hollow, relaxing into the coolness among the roots. Her attentions turn to the clusters of lichens nestled on her arm. That's something more her speed. She studies their growth patterns. They develop like radial lace, like flower petals. Algae and fungus married in cooperation, like the hybrid magics that grant her this form.

She settles in deeper, eyes drifting shut, and waits for them to grow.