Legend LXXXVIII – The Leaf-Born

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There were once beings born not of flesh, dream, or manifest magic, but of transitions, of the tiny crack between rain and light, between the first rustle of a leaf and the last breath of summer. The Leaf-Born was one of them. It was found only in forests old enough to no longer fully remember themselves, where paths disappear into moss, stones bear names no one speaks anymore, and the air tastes of damp bark and forgotten mushrooms. Its body was small, scaly, yet soft in appearance, as if the forest had molded it from water and bark: scales like wet pebbles, above them a shimmer that flickered sometimes moss green, sometimes pond blue, depending on whether light filtered through the canopy or shadows fell upon it. From its head sprouted delicate shoots like young oak leaves, and at their tips often hung dew, not as drops, but like tiny glass beads that reflected every sound twice. Its eyes were large, but not childlike; they seemed as if they had listened too long, as if they carried within them the patience of ancient tribes. The Leaf-Born had no den, no territory, no possessions. It sat upon a leaf as if it were a throne, and rose as if each step were a decision not to be taken lightly. The elders said its kind had once been numerous, silentr than deer, lighter than mist, and their task had not been to guard or hunt, but to remember: not of humans, not of wars, not of names, but of growth itself. Where a Leaf-Born lingered, the soil did not forget, like roots groping; where it settled, seeds still knew that darkness is not the end, but the beginning. But when humans began to measure forests instead of listening to them, the stories grew thin. First the sentence disappeared from songs, then the verse from fairy tales, and finally the word from mouths. With each missing name, the leaf-born grew lighter, as if the world were loosening the thread that held it. It didn't become invisible like a thief, but like a thought one had almost had. Only those who had lost something themselves could still see it: a person, the sound of a voice, a dream that was gone in the morning. And even they never saw it for long; one blinked, and it was just a leaf again, rising in the wind. Yet it continued to work. It gathered acorns, not out of hunger, but out of concern, carrying them in the small hollows between roots, to where the soil had become exhausted and hard, and placing them as if they were coins for a future no one paid for anymore. Sometimes it pushed an acorn into a crack in the stone, as if it knew that even stone can yield if one believes in hope long enough. At night, when the forest was still, one could hear a soft clicking, as if tiny scales were rubbing against each other; then it sat motionless and listened to the trees dreaming.