You were the tallest tree in the wood.

Your branches once shimmered as they rose toward the sky, leaves glowing like captured fragments of light, your trunk carrying the stubborn weight of stone and time.

Birds made sanctuary in your arms, and squirrels danced upon your bark. But it was more than shelter you offered: you were the quiet pulse of the forest itself, a hymn older than wind or shadow.

Now your branches splinter, your leaves lie like fallen memories upon the soil, and no bird dares rest in your trembling form. Other trees rise beyond you, reaching higher, stretching toward the sun as if to prove you forgotten.

Yet beneath the whispering wind, under the filtered light that now struggles to reach you, you hear a secret no one else can: you are not finished.

Rest, my child, for your roots descend into the unseen, deeper than any has dared to touch, gathering the slow, patient power of darkness and shadow. In the hidden chambers beneath the world, where decay teaches patience and shadow teaches resilience, you grow still, silently, unseen by the eye of day.

And when the storm comes, those who sought the sky without grounding will shatter like brittle reeds, for in their haste they forgot the sacred covenant of the earth.

But you, unyielding, patient, and eternal, will endure. Your roots grip the marrow of the world, drawing strength from depths no eye can see. When the tempest passes, you will rise again, alone, unshadowed, luminous.

The forest will remember you, even if no one else does. You will rise again, with no one left to steal the light that was always meant for you.