Luceras Letos and the Library of Shadows

CHAPTER 2: The Mother Tree

(Liliaga)

"Sisters!" I call out before ducking back down, bent like a grasshopper with the tall grass higher than my neck. My eyes scan the trees, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, waiting for movement. I accidentally make myself dizzy. Blink blink blink and now I'm not dizzy anymore. I scan again. Dizzy again. Blink blink bl-

"Liliaga! What is it?" Serissa is upon me. Her light green skin blending with the leaves and her brown hair pinned up with twigs and branches. "Have the sigils spoken to you too? Amara saw one in the sky!"

"In the sky?"

"In a cloud, to be precise," Amara's voice comes from above, as she is stretched along a tree branch. Her bark-like skin and purple hair make her seem like a tree herself. A tree lying upon a tree.

"Very peculiar... A sigil in the sky spoke to my sister and not to me..." I speak with my eyes narrowed.

"Do not be jealous that Shylios has given me a sign, sister," Amara peels from the branch sideways, hanging off by one hand for a moment before spinning gracefully through the sky and falling face-first into the dirt. She gets up and brushes herself off. "The Goddess of the Breeze has always liked me best. Even if you're meant to be the airhead." She is right. Although I have the mind full of wind, the quickest thinker among the three of us, Amara has always been the one to take to the sky. The Gods of the Woods play favorites just as readily as we do with them. It appears Shylios has favored Amara for now and I will have to regain her favor in the future.

I bring my hand to a nearby tree and trace my lavender finger on its bark. I draw a map to myself, not one anyone else can see, of where we've been and what we've seen. I draw the flowers from the Yuk'Ul Meadow. I draw the deer from the Glittering Lake. I draw my sisters, and I draw Amara extra ugly. I give her an upside down nose, one tiny eye, and one really big eye. She cannot see my drawings, since they are invisible, but I still peek to make sure she isn't looking.

"Well?" Amara crosses her twiggy arms.

"Well, what?"

"Well, what did you call us over for, Liliaga?!"

"Oh, right," I say because I had forgotten. "I did not forget," I say because I do not want them to know that I had forgotten. "But I also do not remember," I say because I am bad at lying.

"If you do not remember, perhaps one of my spells will do the trick," Serissa sneaks between my knees, coming back up on the other side of me and smearing some kind of berry juice on the back of my neck. She slaps the back of my neck and then shoots off into the bushes before returning with a large branch of wood. "Hmm, this should do the trick."

OW! She hits me in the back of my knee and I fall to the forest floor.

"Why did you hit me?!" I hiss.

"It's part of my spell," Serissa says, wiggling her fingers one by one like the waves of the ocean, her eyes now closed.

"Serissa is very good at her spells, sister. Let her do her spells," Amara is holding back a giggle as she passes Serissa an even larger branch of wood. "Here, this one should work well!"

"Thank you, sister!" Serissa lifts the branch like a club, but I stop her.

"SISTER! I have no need for spells. Keep your magic to yourself, for I have remembered."

"You've remembered because of my spell..."

"Serissa's magic is a gift to us all, sister..."

"SISTERS!" I shout, and the forest trembles beneath my fragile, wooden voice. "Look," I say, pointing to a sacred patch of leaves, no doubt blessed by an Elder.