The Willow's Awakening

The air grew thick, heavy with the scent of damp earth and something else… something ancient and humming. Each step Theron took crunched on fallen leaves, the sound unnervingly loud in the sudden hush. I perched on his shoulder, my claws digging ever so slightly into the velvet of his tunic, my one good eye scanning the dense undergrowth. The forest had changed. The usual chirping of birds had ceased, replaced by a profound silence that pressed in on us, a blanket woven from anticipation and dread.

“Are we close, Corvus?” Theron’s whisper was barely audible, a breath against my feathers.

“The earth remembers,” I croaked, the truth a familiar rasp in my throat. “It remembers the power that sleeps.” I couldn't say *where* it slept, not directly. The curse was a cage, but it also offered a strange kind of freedom, a freedom to speak only what *was*, not what *would be* or *could be*.