I'm a forest. And the forest is me.
Was there anything before the forest stood here?
+Rustles and rustles, the sound of a pond gently rolled up to the gentle and swampy shore of the water, the crunching of the forest bedding under the feet of a drunk deer... The screams of birds, the bustle of birds, the bustle of rabbits, the happy grunting of wild boars... All these sounds, all these manifestations of life are part of my being, part of the being of the forest.
In a way, they are me.
And I am a deer too.
And a wild boar. And every bush, every tree.
But only my tree is me...
Mixed with the forest, you can sleep forever, but it is not a meaningless and useless existence. The life that lurks in us - in me - in the forest is much more curious than it seems at first glance. The predator and the victim are engaged in a constant dialogue here, and who will become who is going to be who is not an easy question.
And I hear a deer rushing from a wolf, a mouse slowing down, a fox coming after it, a moth pretending to be a leaf so that its bird wouldn't catch it... But that's an interesting but unattractive everyday experience. It's a life of contentment that we all like but doesn't take our blood, our ancient tree blood.
Only one of us is endlessly glad we are all, we are all forest.
Only one thing makes us truly tremble with delight.
A careless traveler.
He comes to us strange, strange, strange. I want to play with him. He imagines himself to be a hunter, he places snares and traps, worries the bowstring, sharpens the dagger, naively believing that each instrument will be able to make it higher than the forest.
He rejoices when he manages to catch a living creature trembling with fear, but hopes in vain that this creature is a forest. Even though it was a forest a couple of seconds ago, the moment a careless, even rough hand interrupts his life, the creature becomes an empty shell in which there is nothing from the forest at all.
***
I'm watching with a thousand eyes, pulling hundreds of hands, whispering lullabies and frightening birds screaming. Sleep and don't sleep, worry and worry, calm down at my feet, which you take for roots. In the end, you'll be drowsy, and when you move your eyelids so tightly that it's not the forest around you, it's - I'm - we'll get into you.
So you can take root too.
He became us.
Became a forest.
***
A new hunter came under the shadow of our common home today. He came inside us, inside me. He settled down on the bank of a stream, made a fire.
I was watching.
I didn't like him. I thought there was something too familiar about it. But it wasn't because he looked like thousands of thousands of hunters who had once died in these places to stand next to me shoulder to shoulder, soak up the flesh of the earth with me, and read the language of the clouds with me. There was something else in it, and the longer I stared at it, the more I realized that there was something else going on up to the forest.
It may be strange not to talk about what you see. But why talk to us? We are a forest. All knowledge is multiplied, all thoughts are united. But still, I distinguish myself in the gust of wind, in the scream of a bird, and in the sound of a drop falling from the leaf of the same tree, which, in fact, is my body.
Or... became my body?
I like the idea, but I follow the hunter by the fire.
I can't sleep with him, got up, walked by. He feels that he will soon turn to the victim, and we will hunt him.
The forest knows how to wait for its own, how to entice, suppress, swaddle the roots, bark, in order to eventually be the winner.
And I wait, lure, suppress, swaddle.
What kind of person are you, why did you come here, what are you looking for?
***
Night comes, the snares are empty, the water splashes in the creek. The hunter stands on the border of the circle, drawn by the fire, his face is pale, old scars, traces of fatigue and sorrow are clearly visible, but his eyes look sharp. Beautiful face, but the forest has thousands more beautiful.
I look into his eyes, stretch out and bow. I'm so close, I forget even for a moment that intimacy is just a game, because the hunter literally stands inside me. In the forest, in my womb, in the womb of the forest.
I cling to it before my brothers and sisters, who grow from the same root with me, breakthrough his body, open his ribs with a monstrous flower, but only to look into the wonderfully widened eyes, to embrace and squeeze his trembling heart. And to see...
***
The last time a hunter breathed in a wheezing rat, spitting blood. His eyes were extinguished, and he could not see any more of the past in them. The body immediately gave birth to new shoots, and the moment his juices flowed into our hungry bodies, I heard a single name and knew it was mine. My brother brought it to me, my brother, that he had followed me in search. Someone we never got along with, but now... we're getting along. Now the brotherhood is hundreds of times stronger, thousands of times stronger, now he's fed me, and I've given him a second life. Now all the past resentments are forgotten, and there will never be new ones...
Because we're one thing.
We are a forest. I am a forest.
He who once had a different body and face put snares on the hares, wandered from house to house, from village to village...