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by The Federated Bailiwicks of Verdant Haven. . 58 reads.

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Excerpt from the recently published travelogue
A Walk in the Forest

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After encountering engine troubles on the 11th day of our cruise, it was announced over dinner that our ship would be using its back-up systems to make for Haventia, capital of Verdant Haven, to seek repairs and allow the passengers an unexpected shore excursion. There was the usual grumbling from the elderly, annoyed at the interruption of their previously planned itinerary, but being more of a professional wanderer myself, the prospect of a surprise visit to a new country filled me with excitement. Our ship was barely capable of 3 knots, but favorable weather permitted us to make headway, and I spent an impatient afternoon on deck, watching the slowly growing landmass on the horizon creep towards us. It was near evening of the following day before we arrived, escorted by swift cutters and ponderous tug boats of the Havenian Coast Guard, at a massive pier clearly designed from the ground up for our sort of vessel.

We were welcomed ashore in the growing twilight with a hearty buffet served in the main hall of the arrivals center, while our cruise director and local tourism officials worked out the details of our unanticipated itinerary. Though there was never any sign of customs officials, we did receive a welcome from a bubbly and smiling local staffer who spent several minutes impressing upon us the critical importance of not getting separated from our groups if we chose to visit the surrounding forests. The wilds are truly wild here, she explained cheerfully, and as best they can tell nearly half of the folks who enter the woods alone manage to die in the woods alone. Not to worry though, she said. Larger groups like ours almost always came back.

Though most passengers seemed content to return to their cabins for the night to await the promised tours and activities the next day, I felt compelled to set out in to the evening twilight and begin my explorations at once. Though I'd not expected to stop here, I had read about Haventia in my guidebooks, and knew it had a reputation as a safe city. Armed with that knowledge and little else, I departed the docks and found myself soon walking down the broad, clean streets of a city that felt like it didn't quite fit in this world. The twisting trunks of enormous trees sprouted from courtyards and roundabouts, their mighty canopies challenging even the tallest buildings for control of the sky, and the sidewalks wound snake-like around the roots and burls of gnarled hedges that seemed so entrenched in their locations that no bulldozer would dare for shame touch them. Even so, there was a sort of modernity to it all, almost self-conscious in its intensity. Structures of steel and glass that practically screamed their recency, despite every effort to make them feel a part of the land they inhabit.

The more I was exposed to this sense of artificial nature, the more my mind focused on finding something familiar – a cobbled stone wall, or worn paint on a faηade, or just some square edge that accepted itself and made no attempt to hide the form of the building it served. Nowhere. Nowhere could I see any sign of time gone past, of old ideas, or of previous styles. It was as if this whole mighty city was at once designed, developed, and constructed to fill the gaps between the trees as inconspicuously as possible, and it was this very inconspicuousness that rent at my mind. I decided that perhaps the wine from the night's buffet, and the long hot day standing on deck, had simply begun to work against me, so I resolved to join my fellow passengers aboard ship, and set out the following morning with renewed vigor to see what the light of day would reveal.

§

The next day dawned pleasantly cool, and I emerged early in to the refreshing mist that hung along the coastline. I made my way presently to the arrivals center, where I inquired of another fresh-faced and oh-so-cheerful tourism assistant if there was a part of town I might visit in order to see older architecture or something of whatever came before the new veneer that clad everything I had readily found the night before. Only my polite insistence that I was an amateur historian on a sort of research trip overcame his confused reluctance to provide the requested information, and I was eventually advised to visit a certain neighborhood in the northeast, though not until after deflecting a number of suggestions about the recently built museums that filled the city center. Armed with a map of the light rail system and a bottle of water, I set out on my adventure to see what elements of the past might lie beneath the surface.

As the train glided along its curving path, near-silently picking up and dropping off commuters and shoppers, I took the opportunity to gaze again upon the structures I had previously seen, and assess them in the daylight. Without the cold glow of a thousand LED lights setting them apart from the darkness, they seemed much warmer and more comforting. The black shadows that had seemed to provide such stark terror now offered cooling shade against the warmth of the rising sun, now piercing through the morning fog. The details of flowers, tinted windows, and burbling fountains now emerged more clearly, but still there was something I could not put my finger on that didn't feel quite right. Maybe it wasn't the buildings, but the trees. These towering behemoths proclaimed an age that just could not be in this place. As preposterous as it seems, I became convinced that they had been moved here from elsewhere – transplanted – to bring a sort of moral authority that such recent construction might otherwise lack. I became obsessed with the thought of how such a thing might be accomplished, and was preparing to pose some very pointed questions to the conductor when the gentle chime of the door and automated voice announcing my stop broke my trance, and spurred me to hurry out on to the platform.

Taking my bearings, I found that a dramatic change had occurred. The glass and steel and modern architecture remained visible a short distance away, but where I stood had the hallmarks of familiarity; straight sidewalks past well-kept square homes, streets with cracks in the pavement, and to my surprise, an old disused stone church rising above a small gated yard. This in particular caught my attention, for my guidebook had warned me firmly that religion was a taboo subject in Verdant Haven, persecuted and exterminated despite the otherwise liberal attitudes of its citizens. Some forgotten civics lesson about a none-too-distant civil war tickled my memory, but the moment was fleeting, and I excitedly moved up the street, which seemed to lead directly from this neighborhood on the outskirts to the monolithic forest beyond.

I noticed as I walked that the populace mirrored the construction. Whereas downtown had been full of polo-shirted young men and women furiously typing on their tablets and communicating through their headsets, even as late as I had been there, here I found an older population moving at a slower pace. Though they still evinced heavy consumption of technology (what would I expect in Jade Corp's global headquarters?), there was something more personal in their manner. Perhaps it was the eye contact, which they gave willingly, and without the sort of pasted-on smile of the tourism office. Emboldened by their looks, and feeling somewhat rebellious after skipping the cruise director's planned group activities in order to make my own way, I queried the locals about their past, and about what lay beyond the city limits in the mighty woods beyond.

Yes, they agreed, there had been a civil war. No, they didn't really want to talk about it, but the folks from before were definitely bad and had needed to go. Yes, most of the city was new – an improvement they reckoned over the unpleasant things that were before, and besides that, most of what was old had been destroyed in the bombing and street fighting. Better that it was gone. This neighborhood had been spared, it was rumored, only because the mother of a rebel commander once lived here. On the woods beyond they were more forthcoming. Ancient I was told, and full of mystery. It was a coniferous forest that stretched from the coast all the way to the mountains, 500 miles north, and was as wide as the nation itself. Roads existed, connecting Haventia to the regional capitals of the bailiwicks, and the district seats beyond, but most of the woods were as wild as the day man first set foot in this land, inhabited by every manner of bird and beast, and undisturbed by civilization or progress.

§

I hurried to the edge of the neighborhood, and there found myself standing at the edge of a forest unlike any other. Gazing upward at the trees I felt myself grow dizzy, and even peering straight in to the spaces between their monumental trunks felt like gazing in to the abyss, so little sunlight penetrated to reach the ground. Overcome by feelings of immense age and natural splendor, I forgot all words of caution and found myself striding forward, my feet padding quietly on the deep bed of pine needles as I passed first one tree, then two, then another and another, deeper in to the forest. In a remarkably short period of time, all urban sound had been drowned out by the quiet whisper of the breeze, the calls of the birds, and the sound of the water sloshing in my bottle.

By the time I came to my senses and recalled that it was dangerous to enter the woods alone, I was hopelessly lost. I had rounded so many house-sized trunks that I had no certainty of my direction of travel, and the mighty trees blotted out any view of the sun from which to gain my bearings. The pine needle carpet on the forest floor, so soft and pleasant to walk upon, yielded no foot prints to mark my passing. Around me, I felt again the strange discomfort I felt in the city – the ominousness of great age. In judgmental silence, these arboreal giants surrounded me and forced me to question what I was doing there. What had made me presume to enter their presence, so unprepared and uncertain? How had I, a mere human who had seen some 30 summers, earned the right to come before them, who had seen a thousand? The vastness of time overwhelmed me, and in tears and panic I found myself running, without guidance or thought, running from the judgement of the trees.

Suddenly, humanity. I found myself stumbling out from the trees in a bright clearing, desecrated by the shattered remains of some dark cyclopean masonry. Craters filled with bits of twisted metal bespoke a violent conflict – some remnant of the war best forgotten – which lay once in this place. Groundcover had spread, and the walls of whatever hurried construction this was now sprouted roots and leaves of the first volunteers come to reclaim this land for the forest, but beneath it all one could still see the blackened soil of some fire – righteous or villainous, all forgotten now. Nearby, a shattered stump revealed the final resting place of one of the giants, for all its wisdom and experience, felled in some transient human conflict.

A pause to consider my options with a clearer head proved my salvation, for through the uncaring hush I caught the sound of moving water. A river, perhaps? Follow a river in the wilderness, and it will lead to civilization – a rule recalled from some obscure survival guide, but as valuable as gold in this moment. I followed my ears for long enough that I began to think I was going mad, but as I was preparing to give up and try another tack, I spotted a glint through the shadowy trees that soon resolved itself in to a waterfall, where a stream burst over a narrow cliff and roared in to the pool below. Eagerly I followed this rushing stream, knowing that I could not have made it more than a few miles in the short time I had been gone, and was rewarded within hours by first the sound, then the sight of Haventia's outskirts again before me.

Hungry, but eager not to reveal my foolishness, I hurried to the nearest light rail station and rode back to the safety of downtown. There, I found a cafι in the shade of a mighty tree, and gratefully consumed my meal. I considered the tree for a time. It was not so old as those I had been amongst before, but still it had seen centuries pass. This tree took root before the oldest of us was born – it was already a veteran by then. It had seen the rise and fall of nations, of leaders, of cities, and of ideas, yet it said nothing. Though we may choose to forget, it will carry its memories, uncomplaining, for all its days. As the aeons slip past, it remains a guardian of knowledge it will never share – that we are all but blinks of an eye to the trees.

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