If you travel to the otherworld, the worlds that the Four Gods and Their kin inhabit, you may arrive in the glittering City. Cobblestone streets, pleasant neighborhoods, fog obscuring the twinkling lights that illuminate your path. The City is safe. As safe as any otherworld can be. The road are familiar. Keep your wits and you will keep your guts.
Walk outside the City, to the limits of the cobblestone roads, til the path turns to well-traveled mud. The scent of crushed grass and cold fills your nose. The sky, held in permanent twilight within the City, has faded into night. Your skin prickles. A breeze rolls through. The branches on the trees clatter against each other.
The forests belong to the Gods. Farther in, through the thickets, through the green, they belong to something even older and deeper and more dangerous. ‘Don’t stray too far,’ they tell you, ‘you’ll get eaten up.’
So you stay in the Orchard. The Clarene’s Orchard and fields are safe like the City. If you brush against a tree or two you will pull away with a bloodied hand, and perhaps some days you step in soil that feels too wet, too squishy under your boot, but it is safe. They will not eat you here. Not yet. Not without advanced warning and a contract signed and sealed and sent to court.
Here you can rest in the Orchard House. Every day is full of breads, and fruits, and stews, and soups. You work when you are needed and rest when you are not. There are books, and there is company, and there is drink. The Clarene spreads Her arms wide and offers everything. Stay close to the House and you want for nothing.
Wander far, a bit too far, a step too far, and the forests find you. A different one every time. You can walk to the same spot on the same day at the same time in the same weather and still the forests will have rearranged themselves in mockery of you. You control nothing here.
The Laetha’s forest is burnt. Immediately recognizable and immediately off-putting, the charred dead trees reach their arms up to the smoky sky in longing. Whatever grew here has long turned to ash. There is no blood underfoot. The bark leaves your hands charcoaled when you touch them. Ash drifts down like snow. The Laetha’s Court dance among the trees, flitting in red and gold against black and grey. There is nothing here but what has been burned away. All humanity incinerated, all life. Your own breath feels foreign.
The Ophelia’s forest is damp. Darkness hangs from the willows. The sun is obscured through leaves and mist. Air like petrichor, no trace of copper like haunts the Clarene’s fields. Her Rivers and streams bubble from everywhere. Moss, algae, and slime coat every surface. Droplets of water fall onto your skin. You could sleep for an eternity in one of Her caves carved near the River, listening to the water speak a million secrets. You could walk into the waters and submerge entirely, let the dark subsume you, let Her wash away every sin. Every thought and want would be eroded in Her. She will heal every ache. She will mend every wound. And when at last you have patched up your final scar She will raise you from the depths to the world again, and you will wonder why you ever left.
The Dierne’s forest is proper fairy. Drifting orbs of light falling from the always-blooming trees. A scent you can never place. Silver sun, iridescent leaves, pale buildings built into the bark itself. You can wander for longer than an eternity in these woods. You leave when He allows you, and no sooner. Spirits shining like stars, like gemstone, peer at you from their perfect houses. If the houses look like cages, if the windows look like bars, surely you do not see this. Surely you avert your eyes and continue on.
Until the dark settles in and mirrors strung from trees, hung on lines of silver, surround you.
Each reflect. One a portal to another forest. One a snapshot of another life. All of them reflections of somewhere else, someone else. Never your own face peering back at you. When was the last time your saw your face, your body? Have you taken stock? Have you known yourself? What shadows lay, waiting for the right light? What eyes will stare back at you?
Gaze with pure heart, with good intent, with knowledge of the self and love running like a vein of gold through your soul, and mystery reveals itself. Gaze half-heartedly, with hesitation or loathing, and the mirror cracks. A line traces down the silvery surface and your face cracks in perfect sync. The parts of yourself crack and fall apart. You hold the halves of yourself up with trembling hands, but bits of you fall out anyway.
The mirrors remain.
