Neth's story

BACKGROUND STORY~ bear with me I fail at writing.


Meet Nethtaurvantian (Nehth-towr-vahn-tee-ahn), a dryad who lives in a willow tree. His story begins 60 years back, when he was first planted as a little sapling near a pond in the backyard of a large house. As he was carefully planted in the ground, a woman holding a toddler with dark brown curls and a blue frilly dress walked up and stood in front of him. She pointed down at the little sapling and said to her toddler, "Look, Becca, that's your tree." And so he was. Every day little Becca would toddle over and water him, often spilling a lot from her watering can on the way, but he didn't mind. And every day Becca and her mother would sit near him, and her mother would teach the little girl to walk and talk, and later on how to read. Neth listened and learned right along with her.
As the years passed and Becca got older, and Neth grew taller. She was now seven years old, with long curls and bright blue eyes. And Nethtaurvantian was no longer a little sapling, but a healthy twelve foot tall tree. Instead of learning how to walk and talk, Becca had imaginary tea parties, read stories, and made daisy chains under his long sweeping boughs.
The first time Neth left his tree was on a Summer day when Becca was outside by herself, sitting at the pond's edge watching the fish and frogs swim about. As she leaned over to see them better through the pond's reflective surface, her hand slipped off the wet rocks she was perched on, and she fell in. Neth panicked. Becca was flailing around in the water, struggling to keep her head above the suface and crying for help, but there was no one around. As he watched in horror, she slipped under the surface again and again. The fifth time she didn't come back up. Neth was terrified. Without thinking, he pulled away from his tree, and fell into the pond after her. A few moments later, Becca was being pulled ashore by a rather strange looking boy. As she coughed up water, she looked at him and asked, "Who are you?" He stared at her, then looked down at himself. He still had a trunk, but it split into two with odd roots, and instead of several branches stretching upwards he only had two, which spread out into five smaller, thinner branches on each, with no leaves. He looked over at his tree; it still stood there where it had always been, it didn't look any different. He saw it's bark, which was grey and ridged; the leaves, which were long and thin. He looked back down at himself. He had the same bark, but it didn't completely cover him, and he had the same leaves, but they only grew straight out of the top of his odd trunk. He looked back at Becca, who was still staring at him, and said to her, "I'm your tree."
A few days passed, and Becca and Neth spent more time together. He found that he could leave and reenter his tree whenever he wanted. He could control the branches and roots to make them move and change positions. He also discovered that he could move around just as much as Becca could. But not right away, she had to help him get used to his new form, teaching him how to walk, which he did slowly as his feet rooted to the ground with every step. She had tea parties with him, sometimes even with real tea and honey cakes, which is where he got his taste for them, and they would talk about what had happened that day, or about what it was like to be a tree, or a human.
This went on for a long while, well past the rest of the Summer, and on through the fall and winter. She kept looking after him, raking up his leaves in the fall, and in the winter she would bundle up and come out to visit him, even wrap a thick blanket around his trunk. And in Spring, she would play with his catkins, batting at them and watching the pollen float off in a yellow cloud. She taught him how to read, as well as make chains with daisies and other flowers, how to feed the fish in the pond, and how to catch the frogs.
Becca's mother would often look out the window, and would see her daughter playing with another child, but when she went out to check, Neth was always back in his tree. He wasn't sure what would happen if she knew, so he always hid. Becca's mom would ask her who she had been playing with, and Becca would always reply, "I'm playing with my tree!" or, "I'm having a tea party with Neth!" When asked who Neth was, she said that was her tree's nickname, that she couldn't pronounce his full name because it was too long. Her mother figured her daughter just had a good imagination, and that she must have been imagining things when she saw another child with her through the windows. However her father spotted him a few times too, and they began to worry.
A year or two passed like this, and Becca was now nine. Neth was taller and had more branches and strands of leaves. And her parent's were more worried. At dinner thier daughter would talk about all she did today with her tree. What books they read, what games they played, how Neth fell in the pond while trying to catch a frog, and how she and her tree talked to each other. Her parents thought this was very odd. Trees don't read, or play. They don't drink tea or like honeycakes. They knew the tree hadn't fallen in the pond, it was still standing in the yard. And trees do "not" talk. They worried even more because Becca didn't have any friends, although she insisted that Neth was her friend. Her parents  worried that perhaps thier daughter couldn't tell imagination from reality. So they decided to remove Neth.
On a cold wet late Summer morning a little after the sun had risen and Becca was still sleeping, Becca's father was heading into the backyard. Neth watched him from inside his tree. Becca's father never came into the backyard, and he was never up this early. He had on a thick headset, and he was also carrying something, a long stick with a metal square on the end that had a sharpened edge. Neth had never seen anything like the object Becca's father was carrying, but he could tell it was dangeous, and he didn't like it. Her father came right up to Neth's trunk, ran his hand along his bark for a moment, braced his legs a little apart, then swung the object at him. The axe cut deep into Neth's trunk; he was chopping him down! "What are you doing!?" Neth thought as he watched and felt the axe bite deeper and deeper into his wood. "What did I do!?" The axe kept biting and Neth began to bleed sap from the cut. Neth didn't know what to do! He didn't want to hurt him, he was Becca's father, the very same man who had planted him so many years ago. He "couldn't" hurt him!
Neth watch in terror as the axe kept cutting, right to his core, and then he heard a scream. "NO! STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY TREE!?" It was Becca, running towards them in her nightgown. The sound of wood being chopped had traveled to her room and woken her up. But her father couldn't hear her through his headset and he kept chopping. Becca ran right over and put herself between the axe and Neth and screamed again, "NO!!" The axe was already in midswing and couldn't stop. There was a loud crack. The next moment everything was frozen in place and there was silence.
Becca's father stared, eyes wide at the scene before him. His daughter was standing in front of him, her eyes also wide, and back up against the tree. But the axe had not cleaved her in two, it hadn't even touched her. Instead it lay embeded in the side of a human-shaped tree, kneeling over Becca. Neth had left his tree and moved to protect his owner from harm, letting himself almost be split in half. Becca's father kept staring, speechless. He had never seen anything like this before, and suddenly all Becca's stories made sense. She had been playing with a dryad.
Becca's mother came running out the back door. "BECCA!" she cried, and ran over to her. "What are you doing out here!? Are you alright?" She asked her daughter as she kneeled beside her. Becca replied, "I'm alright, mom. Neth protected me." and pointed to him. Her mother looked, and her gaze was met by a pair of bright green eyes, set in a bark-covered face. She stared, eyes wide as the creature reached back and removed the axe from his side, oozing sap, but it didn't seem to be in much pain. Becca stoop up, "Mom, Dad, this is Neth."
The next several days were spent talking to Becca's parents. Becca had to coax him out of his tree since he was still scared of them, expecially her father thanks to the incident with the axe, but he always came out. They asked him questions like, "Where did you come from?" and he would reply, "From the tree." "Well how long have you been there?" "I've always been there." "Who are you?" "I'm Nethtaurvantian. Becca's tree." "What do you mean by that?" "I mean I'm Becca's tree. You gave me to her when she was little." And more and more questions. They asked him what all he and Becca had done together, and he told them exactly what Becca had, tea parties, frog catching and all. They realized that he must have been the child they kept seeing playing with thier child, and yet when they went out there was only her and the tree.
More days passed, and Becca kept playing with Neth just like always, only now one of her parents would watch. Neth wasn't comfortable with this at first, but with Becca giggling and serving him tea he eventually got used to it. Later on as her parents got more used to him, they'd let him help plant flowers and tend the small garden they had. They even let him in the house once or twice, but he never stayed, he didn't like the cold hard flooring. Everything was going fine. He and Becca could play as much as they had before, he was getting along well with her parents, and nobody was trying to cut him down. But Becca started to have frequent headaches.
Two years pass, and Becca is no longer playing outside with Neth. There are no tea parties or story readings. There is no frog catching or gardening. There are no more honeycakes. There is only a heavy silence. A grave now lies among the willow tree's roots, which twine and curl around it like a oval frame, decorated by flowers and marked by a cold smooth stone which reads, " Beccalynn Dawn 1947-1958 Beloved daughter and friend". Young Becca has died, killed by a cancer that did not yet have a cure. The household is silent, and remains that way.
Years pass. Seasons come and go. The garden shrivels up and is overgrown with weeds. The pond becomes dark and murky. The willow has stopped growing, not because it has reached full height, it has just stopped, as though it has no reason for it to grow any more. The dryad living there hasn't come out in years. And so the yard remains empty.
More years pass and soon the entire yard is filled with weeds and tall grass, the pond has dried up, and the frogs and fish are long gone. Eventually the once were parents move to a different house, and the heavy silence settles across the entire household.
It is now 2005. The house is overgrown with weeds and brush. There are spiders nesting in every corner, and mice in a few cracks. Moths eat away at the curtains hanging over the windows, and a raccoon lives in the mailbox. An old car is pulling into the grass covered driveway. It stops in front of the ivy encrusted door, and a few people get out. It's the mother and father, now in thier late seventies. They've come back, along with thier new son and his wife and thier toddler. They've come to show them the house. The house that they've told thier son about in his youth. The stories of thier first child, and the time they spent here with her. The stories of the garden and the pond with the frogs and fish. The stories of the dryad who lives in the willow tree.
After they take thier luggage inside, they venture into the backyard. They look around at the changes. The weeds growing everywhere, tall and wild. The grass waving in the wind, taller than the weeds. The dry pit where the pond was, grown over with moss and mushrooms. The grave, now hidden by the weeds and grass. But something is missing. The old willow is gone. In it's place are two young willow saplings on either side of the grave. The big willow hasn't fallen over, it's just disappeared. As though it had gotten up and walked away. The old couple makes thier way over to where the tree stood. Here they find an old book on the ground. They pick it up. Inside the pages are yellow and molded over in places. But they can still read the message scrawled there in ink.
"If you have returned and are reading this message, i'm sorry. The years after her death were quiet and lonely, i'm not even sure how many have passed. As they passed, it seemed to grow quieter, and quieter. The scenery changed, and the yard no longer appears as it once did. I was sad. I have kept watch over Becca since I was first planted so many years ago. I watched her water and care for me. I watched her learn how to talk and how to walk. I watched her mother read her books. I watched her learn how to read, and I watched her have tea and make chains out of flowers. I watched her play with the fish and the frogs in the pond. I watched her fall in, and almost drown. Then I stopped watching. I jumped in and pulled her out. I talked with her. I had tea with her. She taught me how to walk and run. She taught me how to read and write. She read me stories. She kept me active in the Spring and Summer. She kept my roots clear of leaves in the fall. She kept me warm in the winter. She kept me from being lonely. We looked after each other. Now that she's gone I resumed watching. I watched the flowers grow next to her grave. I watched the garden shrivel and the pond grow dark. I watched the weeds grow tall and thick and the grass long and wild. I watched the ivy grow up the house and the pond dry up. I watched the yard turn from a warm happy place with laughter and joy, to a dreary realm of silence. And it was very lonely. So I am leaving. I don't know where i'll go, and I don't know if it shall be any less lonely there. But I am not leaving her alone to let the weeds and grass have her. I am leaving her with two more young watchers. Two young willow trees to grow and look after her so that she'll never be alone. Forever guarded. Never forgotten."
The elderly couple look up from the book and down at thier child's grave. The old willow has gone. Thier child's long-time guardian. Leaving in it's place, two new guardians to look after thier child. Two new saplings to live on in her memory.