Flash Fiction Friday - better late than never

Every Monday Dottie over at Tink's Place posts a picture and then on Friday (Flash Fiction Friday) we post a story to go along with the picture. The story has to be about 350 words, give or take. 


(pic has been removed: dryad in tree)

The Dryad and the Lumberjack

by Blodeuedd

Trees could be cruel, especially in the Forest of Shadow and Light. But men still ventured there, men with their axes and they tried to bleed the trees who screamed in pain. But men could not hear it; they could not feel the trees grow angry, big and vengeful.

As a dryad Zora felt it all and she did her best to soothe the trees and make them sing as they should. But lately that did not work either and she slept in her tree and tried to forget the world outside. Only when she grew restless she went outside and saw that the trees still fought but that men came in greater numbers. With sorrow in her eyes she watched fallen sisters and knew that to change the world they had to change with it. So she went back to her tree and watched the leaves fall around her, she watched the seasons change until he came. With his axe whistling a tune. The first cut was the deepest and she screamed in pain and the trees shook its roots and dragged him under. But this was the chance so she jumped out and dragged him out. When he lay on the moss, bruised and broken she just watched. Her thigh was bleeding from where the axe had cut and she sang to the tree until it calmed down. Then she cut her horns and trimmed her nails. Her clothes she could not change so she came down from the tree and dragged the man to the shadow of the tree. There she waited.

With a scream in his lips he awoke and she did her best to soothe him and gave him water to drink. He was a good man; she saw it in his eyes as he accepted her help and later how he worried over the wound in her thigh. So she told him that bandits had killed her family and how she had been lost in the woods and mountains for weeks. He took her home with her and later he made her his wife. And she was a good wife, very nurturing and kind. They had a big loving family, a family who all loved trees. He did not think much of that, neither did he think of the strange bald patches they all had at the side of their heads, covered under hairs. Bald patches where horns used to be, horns she taught her kids to file down. Just as she taught them to go out in the world and teach man to love nature.

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Hm, what kind of story did this turn out to be? A message, oh well, that happens.