Legend CII – He Who Fed at the Borderst

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No one knew when he had first appeared, for he was not one of those beings who arrived. He had always been there, at that indistinct line where the forest ceased to be forest and something else began. The ancients did not call him by name; they spoke of him only as He Who Fed at the Border. Not out of hunger, they said, but out of habit. His body was small and crooked, yet full of power that did not reveal itself but lurked. His pale skin stretched over muscles that resembled roots more than flesh, and from his back grew tattered wings, too weak for flight, too strong to be useless. Moss and lichen had taken root in his folds, as if they had realized that he was not an enemy, but a place. His eyes were milky and wide open, not blind, but overflowing, as if they saw too much at once. Teeth jutted from his mouth, crooked and numerous, yet it wasn't meat he sought. He devoured memories. Where people cut the forest, where they drew boundaries and forgot why they had drawn them, there he knelt and dug his hands into the earth. With every bite, something vanished that should never have remained: guilt no one wanted to bear, nameless fear, decisions that had been too difficult. The forest tolerated him, not out of mercy, but out of necessity. For where nothing rots, decay begins. Hikers who came too close to the boundary felt a tug in their chest, as if something within them were being recognized. Some turned back, others continued on and later forgot entire days of their lives. Few ever truly saw him, crouching on a stone, his long fingers buried in the earth, chewing on something unseen, while the surrounding forest remained still. It was said he had once been different, a guardian perhaps, or a messenger between places, but no one remembered that time. Perhaps he had devoured it himself. The border where he lived was not a place on maps, but a state of being. There, things lost their clarity. Paths led back to themselves, trees stood closer together than space allowed, and words suddenly meant more than they could bear. He who fed on the border held this ambiguity together by taking what had become too much. He was neither a judge nor a monster, but a balancer. Sometimes he sat motionless for long periods, his head tilted, as if listening for footsteps yet to be made. When children approached the forest, without fear and without claim, he withdrew, made room, and softened the border. But if someone came with the intention of taking, without listening, he was there. Not attacking, not hunting, but simply present.