In the moonlit sky, them distant sounds of clattering wheels bring back the thought of wagons-din of oxen and of sheep, a horse's loud neigh, and then the creaking wood again-

The Wood-the Ghost, then unknown, but not unfelt. An unspent hunger, or so it seemed, gnawing, craving all we got. We, half-eaten all, clutched at each other strong, and memory, like a rabid beast, snapped always at our heels with poisoned teeth.

Its bite was every whack of word and fist, every sodden trumpeting of guilt-my parents', ours, the world's, the dreikathi's. Every nightmare born of silent ire and grief. Of the bitter teachings of the tongue that served as headstone for a grave we did not know existed.

And so we leave, by starts and fits. In ones and twos, those few of us who can still hear the wide world sing. We leave to scatter amidst the wilds, we slip away in the lull between the drawing and the swing of yet another war.

Shadows spill like ink, drowning all beneath a mire of black. The song we seek reverberates in the nooks of trunks and between the trees, but what we find is the echo of a wail long gone.

And with a sudden lurch it all makes sense.

Even as the Aalen dies its second death, it all makes sense.

What we heard too is memory, the song of what once was and could yet be. A song too soft and bittersweet for those that witnessed it wilt, but for us... For us it is a hope, the ghost transfigured into dream.

The Aalen's gone but it's song yet lives. It plays across the veins of every Tsol. And one day the young and the elder will both sing, and grief - not gone - will make space for better things. Home, and joy, and a family that the redwoods will once more cherish.

Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 5th of Slyphian, in the year 511 MA.