A Forest

They had been travelling for over a month, on foot and stealthily through the parched jungle and over dried up farmland. Sticking to whatever shade, shadows and cover they could find to remain hidden. They sometimes found small pools that the cracked mud and dead fish around suggested they had once been large lakes, nearly all gone. Once you ventured into a human town alone and used some of the gems and gold you had, from your time as a princess, to buy barrels of water and a mule to carry them. Once the barrels were empty, they re-filled them next time they came to a pool.

It was coming towards the next new moon, an indication that they would have travelled for two months when they came across a lush and thriving forest. The land around it was dry as a bone as it would seem that the drought had struck here before their homeland. Yet remarkably this forest was unaffected.

The Trolls settled down for the night in a gully close to the edge of the forest. “We will send scouts and hunters out to find a good place to live along with food and water, but I think we have found our new home” declared Xanfar. That night there was a party as the Trolls celebrated finding their salvation. The forest was not as diverse or dark as a Jungle. The shade was patchy, and you knew that most of the trees should lose their leaves in winter but if some magic kept this forest green in drought perhaps it kept it green in winter also. Maybe there was a Unicorn living in it. You had heard stories that a Unicorn’s forest was always in springtime. You enjoyed the party and went to bed full of food, happy and nuzzled into the soft fur of your shadow jaguar, Pax.