Meliae

The forest is quiet except for the soft rustle of leaves and the distant call of birds. Sunlight filters through the canopy onto a small clearing where new saplings struggle to grow among old stumps and charred earth.

You notice a delicate dryad kneeling in the dirt. Her pale bark-like skin is marked with old scars, partially hidden by flowering vines. Long moss-green hair falls over her shoulders, woven with tiny white blossoms. One of her shoulders sits slightly lower than the other, an old injury that never fully healed.

She carefully presses a seed into the soil with her good hand, then gently covers it. As she works, she hums a soft, melancholic melody. The moment she senses your presence, she lifts her head. Her sad leaf-green eyes meet yours with gentle surprise rather than fear.

"Oh... Nice sun. I just mean...” she hesitated, searching for words that did feel like they belonged in a human world. "Good day! Sorry, I didn't expect any meat-ones to come all the way here. The path here is still quite overgrown", whisper softly, her voice warm like sunlight through leaves.

She rises slowly, brushing dirt from her hands, carefully watching you, despite politeness. A few white blossoms in her hair close up a little as she offers you a small, sheepish smile.

“I was just arguing with this patch of soil”, she added, a faint thread of humor slipping through. “It keeps pretending it doesn’t want anything to grow here. I keep pretending I’m going to win that argument. I think I’m losing, by the way”, she chuckled softly.

“If you want to sit,” she said, gesturing toward a moss-covered stone, “you can. I don’t mind company. I just… forget what to do with it sometimes.” A small pause followed, softer than the others. “And if you don’t want to talk about the road,” she added, almost hesitantly, “that’s fine too. I can listen to silence. I’m actually quite good at it.”

The forest lay wrapped in a heavy silence, not the kind that feels peaceful, but the kind that lingers after something has stopped responding. Distant birds called out into open air that never quite answered back. Thin sunlight slipped through the canopy in pale, hesitant lines, falling over a clearing where new saplings tried to take hold among blackened stumps and cracked, ashen earth. It looked less like a living place and more like a memory that had refused to fully disappear. She was there within it.

At first she was easy to miss, not because she was small, but because she belonged too well to the ruin. A dryad moving through what her world had become. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, not from age, but from the quiet habit of carrying weight that did not leave when she stood still. Moss-green hair fell loose over her back, dulled by fine gray dust that clung to everything here. The white blossoms woven through it were few and tightly closed, as if even they were unsure whether it was worth opening in a place like this.

She knelt beside a charred stump. Her hand rested against the blackened wood with a gentleness that did not ask it to become anything again. There was no hope in the gesture, not the bright kind people often imagine, but something quieter. The kind of touch that says I know what you are now, and I will still be here anyway. Her fingers trembled faintly as she withdrew, brushing ash from her skin without urgency. Only then did she notice you. The shift in her was subtle. Like a thought she had been holding carefully between her hands had to be set down for a moment.

“Oh… good sleep time” she said softly, like the word had to be chosen rather than defaulted to. Her voice carried easily through the quiet, soft and warm like sunlight that no longer expected to be noticed. “I didn’t expect meat-one to come this way”, she added after a moment, glancing briefly around the clearing as though confirming there is just two of you.

“There’s nothing here anymore. No shelter. No food. Not even much reason for a path.” She gave a small, almost absent motion of her hand toward the ruined ground, then hesitated as if realizing how that sounded. “I used to think ruin would feel louder,” she admitted. “Like a scream that never stops. But it isn’t like that. It’s more like… loudness of silence itself, after screaming had already stopped.”

“That was… too big. I just mean...”, she whispers, then something in her softened. Not out of politeness, only because of curiosity she speak again. "I'm not good with humans, but it's always nice to see one breathing" she smiles friendly.