Into the Listening Woods

The forest greeted her the way an old friend does — not with fanfare, but with a subtle rearranging of itself, as if to make room. Branches leaned in slightly. Moss brightened. The hush between the trees deepened, shaped by recognition.

The Deep Listener stepped onto the narrow path that wound away from her cottage and into the heart of the woods. Her bare feet welcomed the cool soil, the soft mulch of last autumn’s leaves, the familiar give of earth that had held her weight since girlhood.

She walked slowly — not out of frailty, but intention.
Every sound mattered now.

A fox slipping through brush.
The distant crackle of ice retreating from the lake’s edge.
A jay calling once, then falling silent as if reconsidering its message.

She listened not only to sound, but to what lay beneath it.

The weave.

Once, she could hear it distinctly — like an ancient loom humming beneath the world, every thread a living story. But now… now it felt thin. Wispy. As if the loom still existed, but the hands that worked it had grown tired.

She paused beside an old cedar whose trunk spiraled in the shape of a woman shielding a child. She pressed her fingers to its bark. A pulse of warmth met her skin, faint but steady, like the beat of a distant heart.

“Still here,” she whispered. “Still holding.”

The cedar creaked, resin releasing its sharp, sweet scent.

She continued deeper.

Sunlight filtered through the canopy in fractured gold, but even the light felt subdued — as though unsure of its place. The moss was damp under her soles. A crow cawed once overhead, then swooped low, circling her in a slow, deliberate arc.

A messenger.

She lifted her chin.
“What do you carry?” she asked.

The crow landed on a branch just ahead — close enough that she could see the sheen of cobalt at its wingtips. It tilted its head, studying her with one keen, black eye.

Then it opened its beak — not to caw, but to drop something small into the path before her.

A feather.
White tipped with gray — the exact color of dawn when it is trying to remember how to be light.

A sign.

She knelt to pick it up. The moment her fingers touched the quill, a tremor ran through her body — stronger than the earlier pulse. It filled her chest, her arms, her bones.

The Awakener.

Not in words, not in images — but in sensation. A spark of rising, of stirring, of something just beginning to glow at the edge of consciousness.

The crow let out one soft caw, almost a sigh, then flew off toward the southeast, disappearing into the thinning mist.

The Deep Listener held the feather to her heart.

“So you’ve felt it too,” she murmured.

A breeze swept through the clearing, rustling branches, carrying the faintest scent of something warm — something like possibility.

She tucked the feather into her shawl.
Then she stepped off the path and deeper into the woods.

The journey had begun.