Volbjorn stooped low in the gloom of the Old Forest, reaching out to gingerly cup the strange flower in his rough, calloused hand. It was large, and stood out from any other flower in this sick forest, its radiating vibrancy like a beacon of light in the dark. “Curious..” he thought to himself. “…I know many a plant in these lands…but this..I have not yet seen…”. Maybe it was its illuminating glow amongst the dark, but his mind wandered as he observed the flower, and harkened back to a simpler time, when he was a mere boy listening to one of his Chieftain’s great stories.
“Gather around, young ones, by the fire now, and let me tell you a story of Old. One of Ents, Wives, and fates thereof. You see, many-a know of the Guardians of the wood. Much like the line of Beorn, our line, we share a kinship with the beasts of the wood, and are charged with their safeguarding. So too were…or rather are, the Ents and the trees. They speak the tree tongue, shepherd the forest flocks, and protect them from dark powers and greedy men. It Is their wives a mystery is found, for none, not even the Ents themselves, know of their whereabouts, or their fates.
Some say in the rising dark they hid, becoming more and more treeish as the ages went by, now part of the woods themselves. Others say they were sadly felled, for their power of growth and gardening was great, and where green blooms, so does hope. Of course, some Ents believe they are merely lost, and one day, will return to seed anew, and bring new gardens and forests to flourish.
Regardless of where they lay now, one thing is true, little ones. Where they lay to rest, great flowers bloom, glowing with their spirit to bloom green anew.”
Volbjorn smiled softly as he reminisced on this memory. A smile that was quick to fade as he grew grim from under his ragged hood. This forest had a sickness, a plague or spiders and things most foul, their webs choking the trees for miles around. Perhaps the old hobbit was right, the one he met at the forest’s edge. A sickness may here, and if his story of a horrible, blighted tree were true, and if the Old Forest was indeed the last resting place of an Entwife, then he must see this blight routed, and this flower safe. By spear and claw, he would seek to cleanse this forest of its sickness.
