Spirit of the Forest

In one exam room of my local hospital facility hangs a piece of art drawn by a freshman of the nearby public school. Such works tend to adorn the walls of various public buildings, and it can be interesting to observe them as you wait or pass by; but usually they do not hold my attention for long, if they even succeed in catching my eye as worthwhile curiosities. This picture in particular was no different as a decoration in the background, but when my attention focused on it, I was strangely captivated by a single element. The central feature of a wildly colored and populated image had been hiding from me in plain sight, its calm masked by the energy of the surrounding environment.

It was the face of a girl, plain and simple, blending into all the ruckus of summer nature. Fish and butterflies surrounded her in a disorderly halo of romanticism, and her hair was of thick, green foliage. Beneath this, forking off across either side of her slender neck, was apparently a yellow shirt with a diamond pattern, curving downward and narrowing into a fish wish its broad tail at her throat. From her ears (one exposed, the other unseen behind the leafy hair) hung brown, fuzzy objects of irregular shape: upon close inspection they appear to be monkeys clinging with half their limbs. All this composed a queer picture which I would have acknowledged and dismissed, had it not been for her face.

Her features were rather ordinary but extremely steady; the nose and mouth lacked expertise, but they were not clunky or obscenely misrepresented. Her eyes sat stark and uniform above the sheer vertical lines of the nose-bridge, and they were topped with eyebrows of perfect length and a sleek, even arch. She might have been mundane if not for nestling within the exotic livelihood that clothed her and buzzed with color. She herself was pale, accented with pink-red lips and a precise flush through her high cheeks; her eyes were a light, grayish blue and the eyebrows had the dark-gray tinge of thin carbon. Altogether she was sharply symmetrical, save for the modest erraticism of nose and mouth---and a slight, rightward shift of the eyes.

What became so mystical to me was not how the environment changed her, but how she transformed her surroundings. She absorbed the leaves and they became a soft blanket; the animals were drawn into her simplicity almost until they ceased to exist. And there, clad in shades of green bright and dark, brushed with reserves of red upon the lightness of cold skin, this silent dryad came to life.

Now I saw a youth, mysteriously composed, hiding such secrets that one would dared not have spoken to her. Her eyes were calm and softly keen, holding the most pure innocence and wonder at once with an unknown wisdom veiled in gray-blue mist. The nose and lips made her organic while she maintained an elven sharpness beyond the flesh. The many shades of green gave an indescribable fullness to her hair, which was as human as it was plantlike. Some leaves were veined among the smooth and solidly colored majority, giving extra character to the nymphish drapery as it flowed down to where her shoulders would have been. A carbon imprint, perhaps a shadow, of a leaf wrapped across one cheekbone in spry but calculated audacity, and the edges of more disrupted her light skin at the side and bottom of her head. The odd string hung curled from her hair, one resting upon her forehead, another flanking her chin.

She might have been a tree-spirit of Greek lore, but such a thought somehow contrasts with how familiar she seemed. As strange as she was, she was normal; and yet she was fascinating. She was plain but beautiful, and she was real though preternatural. The girl was a child gazing with internal wistfulness and understanding, waiting and watching behind a face of the most simple and relaxed sort of energy. With the lights off, her face seemed to glow beneath the dark, amorphous cover of her own foliage, under which she had withdrawn; her features played as mere ghosts except for the eyes, whose gaze was indiscernable but somehow more fierce, all the while full of innocence and quiet excitement.

I eventually disregarded all the wildlife around her, totally enraptured by this spirit of the forest. She was quite original, and therefore hard to place. Yet I think I know where I could find her. I know what fantastical place would fittingly be her home.

Kokiri Forest.