The dreamt, a dream within a dream, a memory - but in a dream, a memory is like a dream, A red bird landed on the tree and took three leaves in a slender, beautiful beak, and flew away. And the tree bowed, just slightly toward the bird, and shivered, wordless, and obscure. The leaf in Ricky's hand began to turn brown, then to crumble. And then the whole tree began to quiver, all its leaves furling up and drawing in, like watching a season, then a year, then a lifetime of growth all in reverse, the tree groaning and creaking as its limbs fled backward, its trunk receding inwards, down into a young tree, then to a sapling, then a branch, and then... a child, a very small child, perhaps five years old, a girl child in a torn linen dress, stained and ill-fitting, the neckline so loose it hung off one shoulder. She shrugged it back atop, and pushed her thick, brown braids back from wide-eyed, near-sighted face.
"You are both searchers, you are both seekers. Why are you here? Why are you in my wood?"
She looked at the enormous man, her eyes wide, intense, suspicious, her mouth flat and expressionless, "You. You know nothing of the heavens, for you know nothing of yourself to speak so empty-worded." Her voice had the piping, bird-like quality of a child, but her diction was precise, queerly adult, "You rely on yourself, then? What are you but a little shard of heaven, as we all are? Lhex's table-sweepings."
She turned then to Ricky, and her body grew smaller, narrower, just subtly. The dress hung lank, the thick malnourished bones of her jutting through like an unfinished wooden doll.
"And you... you, soldier. You sword-bearer. You... you should seek the gods. For you will need them, soon. You need them now, only you do not know it."x
