He had heard a great deal or rumors about the wood; rumors that only made the desire to venture deeper to this land more prevalent. For most, there are a great deal of fears that sleep within this forest that fight to drive away the visitors. Perhaps, however, it was the desires of the visitors that lead to the demise of the people in their roomers. Some of the stories involved great treasure hunters who ventured to this land in search of whatever this forest had to offer; whatever it was that made the towering plants of this forest shine in the manner that they did. Others came for the adventure alone; wanting only to add the conquest of the land to their book of travels. Sometimes the greed of material goods are enough to cause everything to come tumbling down around the adventure. But The Blacksmith. No. He wanted something else entirely.

From the age of about thirteen the man held abilities that he should not have had. It was true that there were people that shared blood with him in the past that had a great deal of magick and in their veins, but it was not the same as his abilities. He held the power to understand and recreate materials from touch alone. It started with things as simple as touching rocks and understand what elements came together to create that structure. Then it escalated. Soon he was able to understand how one could use magick to recreate them. As it stood, he did not have the magick to build anything from the ground up. However, he was able to understand how outside forces could bend and meld the element into something else. 

For a moment, his mind moved to the face of his mentor. A tall, muscle bound, man that was most often seen covered from head to toe in soot. He had been the one that had found the boy in the remnants of his childhood home and given him purpose. He took him in and showed him how to build swords. He showed him how to defend himself. He showed him his craft. He showed him how to build a life for himself. It was him that first showed him how to use his abilities to create something beautiful. Something deadly. 

Instinctively, his hand moved to the hilt of his sword. It was the first and only gift that the gruff man in his memory had given him. It was meant to protect him as he moved through the lands; to protect him from the dangers of the world that surrounded him. It was something that meant so much to him. It was pretty much the only thing that means anything to him. 

A twig snap not far off pulled man from his musings. His black eyes searched the area frantically; a glimmer of hope that it was nothing more than a squirrel as a culprit. Rather rapidly, he was able to realize that he was met with nothing more than trees. Seemingly ordinary trees. He had heard tales of how the trees were very different; things that were life altering. They were, in all reality, the entire reason that he decided to bump this place up to the first in his visits. He wanted nothing more than to lay his hands on the trunk of one of the legendary trees. To understand it. To feel the spirit within it. And, gods willing, find a fallen branch that he may take as his own.

His eyes moved up to the trees; fear triggering him to look in all directions. After all, you never know when a bear could be falling from the sky. But instead of any falling predators, it was a structure that caught his eye. It started as something resembling a shack, but as he stepped sideways through the underbrush, the structure became much more defined. 

”A treehouse.” 

Her life had been a road of ups and downs. She had fallen and risen like the tide with the sun and moon. She had only seen the ocean a handful of times when she lived in her mother’s temple. It wasn’t the real ocean but it was still the essence of it. She had always loved the trees and animals the most. They were who she wanted to protect, but at night when the dreams came she found herself fearful of being one with the wilds.

When she was only eighteen she became the guardian of a particular tribe. She wanted to be the nymph that her mothers envisioned. So the treehouse was born. It was a tall mahogany structure up in the gentle redwoods. Pillows of all colors littered the floors with pots of different flowers from all over Revaliir growing, gifts from people who would visit her tribe. She was their spirit guardian. She was doing what her nymph mother could not.

So when the Blacksmith came to her tiny little village he was immediately surrounded by small weapons and slings ready to fire. “She doesn’t have one of these.” the whispers ensued. “They all have them.” “But she’s never taken one forever.” The whispers were unsure as they gently jabbed him up the rope ladder. “Our gift Spirit! Take him!” All nymphs took men but she wasn’t truly a nymph, not completely.

Her gentle golden gaze stared at him. Her long red hair for some reason would always remind people of leaves from a branch. Her soft skin was a cream, not sun-kissed like her goddess mother. She was small and curvy, like most nymph spirits. Fabric of purple was around her body, still a color of royalty for these parts. “I hope they didn’t hurt you too bad. I suppose they are just trying to please me.” She offered him her hand. Druidic symbols were painted down the left down of her body in a berry color and she gently blushed. “The children… they like to paint my tree.”

To say that he was terrified by the tribe would be an understatement. Despite the fact that he could have outsworded most of the villagers, he was afraid. He had, despite the sordid past that he held tightly to, lived a somewhat sheltered life; the arms of his master blocking anything that could have hurt him. He had kept his closed as they pushed him forward and somehow centered himself around the fear enough to make his hands steady. He could hear their whispers; their motives. Was he to be a gift? And if so, to what? What kind of beast would accept a man as a present? Would it keep him as a trophy? Use his bones in some otherworldly spell? Or simply consume him whole?

He had to stop himself from shaking again.

Before he knew it, he found himself on the floor of what he asssumed to be the treehouse that he had seen from a distance. He kept his eyes on the floor as the whispers disappeared behind him. He was alone now. Alone with something powerful enough to deserve a gift as meaningful as an entire other being. Where was his Master's wise words now? Where were the soot covered fists of his "father" to protect him from the dangers of this world? He was back home. He was most likely sitting in front of his flame and bending metal into sword. Or perhaps something else. What day was it? Tuesday? If it's Tuesday, he would be making some sort of craft. Maybe a wrought iron bird in honor of his freed apprentice?

A voice sounded. Gentler than he expected. Female. And not at all the voice of a giant man-eating ogre. 

His black eyes slowly moved up her form. The woman seemed human enough. Small in stature, but definitely humanoid. To say the least, she was beautiful. But something about her made his spirit jumpy. What in the world was she?

She reached out to him in a gesture of aid, he supposed. Her arms were wrapped in symbols that seems so familiar, but somehow impossible to understand. Were they actually foreign, or was he simply overwhelmed by the recent events.

He took her hand, more out of instinct than anything, and felt her. Something spirit based. Something otherworldly. She was no human. Nor was she completely divine.

"What are you?" he asked; shakily getting to his feet.

Daphne’s eyes met his and she felt drowned for some reason. As if his soul was in fact the very ocean her mother would show her in the temple. “I’m actually a mutt but I’m part wood nymph.” She tilted her head. “This is my tree.” She pulled him gently. “And I protect this part of the forest… The villagers seem to think of me as their goddess I suppose.” 

She thought for a minute and blushed. “Normally by my age nymphs take many lovers and have many daughters. I guess I am weird to them because I’ve never taken anyone they have brought to me.” She didn’t understand why she was telling him but it was something about the way her soul was lost near his, that ocean. 

“This is tree is me and I am the tree.” She blushed a bit more. “But not in the traditional sense of a nymph. Most nymphs are tied to their tree. I chose to be this tree but if anything were to happen to it, it would hurt but not kill me.” She chuckled a bit. “Why are you in Laeto it is dangerous. If I were another nymph I would have tied you up and had my way with you.” She blushed again but told him the truth. “That is what nymphs do. They are tricky beings who trick men into sex to have daughters. Their daughters become trees… and eventually, their daughters become a forest.”

Now she was stuck trying to explain what she was. It was hard but she chuckled again. “I don’t have a father like most nymphs. My nymph mother went to my other mother and asked for me to be made. So I was born of two women instead of a man and woman. So I am half of my Goddess Mother and half of my Nymph Mother. So I am not in the same sense tricky as my Nymph Mother.” It was hard to explain how she came to be. Now she found herself blushing. “Like I said I am a halfling.” His soul felt so wild like the ocean. It made her jumpy just being near him.

She reached down and grabbed a fresh apple and offered it up to him. “Here.”

He listened to the woman closely. Partially for fear of misunderstanding the slight air of safety that began to surround him and partially because he couldn't help wanting to hear her voice more. There was something about her that felt too… homelike. He had never met her, why is it that she could make him feel so comfortable. What was it in her that made him feel like this? 

For a moment, his thoughts ran through the contents of her being; at least the portion of them he was able to determine from a single shake of the hand. There was no element that was anything out of the ordinary. Sure, there were things that did not necessarily belong in a normal human. Tree essence being the major of those components; the majority of which has recently been explained. Mostly there was salt, water, normal elements of the earth, things he supposed were something specific to nymphs, and then… something else. Something that he couldn't even see. Something that his mind would not let him fathom. 

She was blushing. Something so endearing; letting her eyes appear almost rose-gold from the pigment change. He was almost certain now that he did not need to fear her. Although, he might need to take care to stay out of the path of some of her brethren. Nymphs were terrifying in their own little way. Definitely something that his Master didn't prepare him for. 

He reached out and took the apple from her hand with a nervous smile. "Thank yo–" he trailed off. 

Something within him pulsed as they both touched the apple, and for one shining moment he felt powerful. He felt the magick that people fought and died for. He was filled with the power of something more than human.

"Oh. That was weird. Sor–" he trailed off again; suddenly unable to finish a sentence. His other hand began to tingle. It was the same feeling that shot through his being whenever he read materials, but somehow reversed? His mind shot to the pulse he got from the apple. Was is something about the two of them holding the item at the same time? 

Another pulse. 

Suddenly, there was an apple in his other hand. His eyes grew wide; imitating the shape of the apple he held. This was a kind of magick that he only theorized; not one that he expected to ever hold in his hands. 

"uh… would you like an apple?"

The red of her face was much like the red of her hair. She felt the pulse and she almost pulled back but something in the deep reaches of her mind said not to. She hand her hands around his now with the apple in it. Her gold eyes were so soft and focused on the apple itself that when she looked back up at him she was confused. Never before had she had this happen. She couldn’t tell where it came from and from the look on his face she knew that he did not know either. She felt that ocean pulling her in farther.

“I would love an apple.” She moved his hands from the one she had given him to take the one that he had made. She was quick to scoop it for fear that she would case another reaction.. Her eyes went to the warm red of the apple skin and she chuckled lightly. “This is wonderfully made. Do you make things like this all of the time?”

She was quick to bite into it and she blushed a bit more. “This is the best apple I’ve ever had.” She had eaten a ton of apples but something tasted different, better. “Thank you.” She took a seat away from where others could hear inside of the tree house. She patted the seat by her and laughed a bit. “You don’t have to stay here but I was about to make my supper. I get gifts from the village… If you want you can stay. It would be a shame to let you leave without what you came for though… Why did you come here?”

Pausing for a moment she looked up into his black eyes again. "My mothers named me Daphne."

"No, actually this is the first time I've made one. Glad to hear it's good." He chuckled despite himself and opened and closed his hands a few times. He wasn't sure if this was a one time thing or if it was going to stick around. Either way it was pretty interesting. He stood up as the woman crossed the room and held the apple up to inspect it closer. It was just an apple.

He moved closer to the woman as she patted the seat near her. She was so welcoming. In any other instance it would have made him more uneasy; more prudent. But something about the woman matched whatever it was about him that made him different. Maybe he just liked feeling like the more human one in a conversation. Though she was more than whatever it was that he was. She was born of two women. That made her something divine. Nothing like that could happen without some kind of magickal intervention and no magick that he was aware of would allow that kind of gift without some kind of major sacrifice. 

He sat down next to her as gently as he could; finally taking a bite of the apple in his hands. It was quite delicious; perhaps something that came from being born of the trees around here. He was hungry. That much he couldn't really deny. For a second he simply thought about how often he wasn't hungry until he put a little bit into his stomach. Starting at the apple, all he could think was that this was one of those times. 

"If you would have me, I would love to stay. I'm embarrassingly hungry. I suppose trekking through the wilderness looking for magickal trees can do that. And that, since I presented it someone cryptically, is what I was here looking for. I wanted to feel the trees around this area. A lot of people have told stories about how these trees have some sort of magick. I, unfortunately, haven't had the pleasure of anything other than bugs out here though." He chuckled at himself; realizing that he was rambling. 

"It's very nice to meet you Daphne. I never knew what my parent's called me. I was called boy. Then I was called Blacksmith. I suppose you can call me either." He smiled at her. A practiced smile. The same smile he had given to a hundred different people whenever they pitied him for never knowing his family. The smile he gave whenever someone asked if his Master was his father and he had to explain the contrary. It was a sad smile. A smile he hated. But a smile nonetheless.

The blush had started to drain when the words finally came from him. The color shot right back up to her face and she laughed. “Maybe it’s this feeling that I have.” She didn’t mean to say it out loud but she found herself staring at him. She was drawn in like high tide.

She was glad when he came over by her and she smiled once more. This time, the blush could make its way home and she found her color normal once more. “I never have guests so I would be honored to have you.” When she thought of the magic in the trees she chuckled. “I’ve nurtured my part of this forest for decades now. I don’t get many visitors that care to stay. The words of a nymph scare them.” She frowned softly. “I don’t think I’m that frightening but I guess my nymph sisters are a tad extreme.” Maybe more than a tad but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

“I can help…” She scurried up and away into another room. A few crashes were heard and she came out with a large limb. “It was knocked off in a storm. I had been hoping that I could save it but sadly I cannot reattach it. If you could use it I would be honored.” She held it out to him and let him have it while she turned to the pot and began to make their supper. “Blacksmith? That is an odd name but a name none the less.” She worked in silence but something had been bothering him about the smile. It seemed fake and she couldn’t put her finger on why. In the middle of her cooking, she swallowed what pride she had.

“Did you know there are no male Nymphs? Only females. If I were to have children they would be odd I think. Because I am not wholly Nymph. My Nymph mother went to the Goddess Mother and argued for a man Nymph. The first of his kind and my Goddess Mother declined. Instead, she mothered me… I would say fathered but it doesn’t make much sense does it… It was under the stipulation that my Nymph mother not tell anyone else what I was.” 

She paused her story to keep fixing the stew and when she was ready to continue she did. “One day… My Nymph mother got over her head and began to tell everyone I was a gift from the Goddess Angela… People came to get me. They killed everyone. Goddess Mother had told her that would be the consequence of her actions and when the day came that she broke the promise Goddess Mother would come get me. I was eight when that happened. I see them even now in my nightmares. Goddess Mother would never let anything harmful happen to me. I lived in her temple until I was strong enough to come out here.” She grabbed a bowl and began to fill it with the stew for him.

“My name.. Daphne… I don’t feel like it is wholly mine. I was named out of spite. Rosenites, my Goddess Mother’s race, are named after plants, animals, and other naturally occurring things. Goddess Mother is harsh and must have angered Nymph Mother. But my Goddess Mother was truthful. I struggle with if I should be mad at her for letting my Nymph family be slaughtered… but at the same time, consequences need to be answered for… Right?” Her eyes searched his for a moment.

“I smile too when I don’t know what to do. When I don’t want people to know I’m upset because if I get upset the trees cry. I don’t want that… so I smile even when I don’t want to. I feel like you did too. For some reason, I just feel that way. If I am wrong I am sorry.” She gave him a spoon and frowned. “I smile to hide my pain.”

He chuckled at her words. The feeling that she had. Apparently, he wasn't alone in the unusual impulse that had happened with the apple. He was happy to see that she wanted him to stay. He liked being able to feel at ease; completely at ease. 

All at once she was scurrying off; rummaging through the expanse of her tree house. What was she looking for? How could she help him? It was true that they were surrounded by trees, but he didn't want any of them to be harmed. Especially if it was her tree. Before he knew it she was back; brandishing a limb. He felt his eyes grow wide with excitement. If it was from this tree then it was sure to hold something ancient and powerful. He took the limb into his hands and quickly placed it in his lap; wanting to listen to the nymph's story without being distracted.

That was it. The powerful magick that bound her seems together was from Goddess Angela. He had heard of her of course. She was revered in towns that valued creation and life; which seemed to be most human settlements. Daphne was a gift and just like powerful human magick, god magick seemed to come with a hitch. This one just seemed a greater than he would have expected though and his heart filled with sadness for her. He knew what it was like to be ripped away from a family.

He listened as she spoke of the pain that she had experienced and the impact that her pain had on the nature that surrounded her. She spoke about her family; the Rosenites; a race that he had come across only in texts and blacksmith jobs. She spoke of consequences. Was there something that made his family part of a consequence? If it was, who did it belong to?

"I feel like smiling makes things easier to deal with. Whether that be sadness or nervousness or simple uncomfortableness," he said with a nod. "But technically there are a great deal of emotions and wants that are better hidden behind a smile than to letting yourself seem fragile. At least in my experience." He looked down, hoping to shake off the thoughts that were lining up to upset his mind; only to be met with the intricate bark patterns of the branch. 

He looked up at her for a moment and then back down at the branch; wanting to feel the power of it. 

"Then there are things that are worth smiling. Like finding something that you really wanted to see. Like finally understanding something ancient," he said as he placed his hands on the branch and focused on its make up. It was everything he had hoped for. He traveled through ears of exposure; each year adding a ring to expanse of elements. The tree was made up of more than essence and bark. It was made up of time. An element that would spoil most conjures, but only strengthen this one; at least in theory. He felt a smile move across his face. A real smile. A warm smile.

"Thank you for this."

She thought on his words and Daphne nodded. “I feel the same way but my Goddess Mother once told me that admitting things like this from time to time makes you stronger.” She chuckled softly at the memory and decided to go on about it. “Though she said to always find someone you can talk to… Once you find that someone you can tell them anything and it won’t make you seem weak because that person makes you feel stronger.”

Watching him examine that limb made her feel a bit exposed like he was examining her.  In a way it made her feel like he was seeing her naked. Perhaps because she was the tree and the tree was her. She subconsciously covered herself and smiled at him. It was his smile that made her smile. “Be careful with me… I mean the tree.”

She got their food down and got some bread for them. She put some loaves in front of them and sat across from  him. “I don’t normally give my branches to people but I am glad that I could give something to you that brings joy like that.”

She put a spoon into the stew and brought it up and blew on it gently. “I’ve been growing this single tree for as long as I could remember. My Goddess Mother always let me come back to water it. My tree is so large now thanks to her magic. I’m sad since most of these trees around me lack a spirit but I protect them all. They are my family, what’s left. But this tree.” She motioned to the branch. “That is all me.” She was so proud of herself. She was glad he could make use of it. “I can’t feel it being crafted by the way. So do not worry about it hurting me if you wish to use it for something. It will become part of something and I am happy about it.”

It made her feel excited. “If my tree can become something wonderful I would love it. I will let you use my wood if you ask me. If you ever want more just come back. As long as it lives you can have my branches. Not too many of my branches but enough.”

She decided to finish her stew as quietly as possible and at the end of it she merely chuckled. “I can’t remember the last time I ate a meal with anyone.”