Liora's Moss

Liora doesn’t leave footprints, not the kind you can follow. Only a soft shift in the moss where she has stepped, pressed down and then lifted again, as if it chooses to rise back up the moment she moves on. Once, someone tried to track her and found instead a cluster of green crystals at the base of a fallen tree, five small forms where moss should have been, caught mid-growth and stilled before it could spread any further.

She remembers taking them. Not all at once, one after the other, each time the forest grew a little too fast, a little too far. The moss listens to her, but not without limit. When it begins to creep where it shouldn’t, Liora stills it, draws it out of the ground and fixes it into something that can no longer take root. Five pieces now, light and dark pressed close together, each one holding back what it once was.

She wears them so the forest behaves. And if it doesn’t, she knows exactly which one to loosen first.