Today something strange happened to me... I was angry after an incident in the head contest, walking through the forest, enraged, and  willing to take my anger out on anyone, when I lent up against a tree in anger.To my surprise , a tree branch brushed across my head, and I found myself, awakening as if a great fog had lifted from my head.Clarity replaced my anger, and a sense of home filled my heart. The negative energy dissipated like a cloud of dust, as it fled from me.

The veins of the leaf was in front of me, exposed by the beam of sunlight that shone down through the autumn air, and highlighted the intricate lines.I saw, no, rather felt the life flowing through the leaf, then the stem that attached it to the slender tip of the branch, and followed it up with my eyes till i saw the great gnarled ageless trunk of the tree.

I collapsed against the tree trunk, crying as i felt my anger and fears flow out of me, until i was laying on the ground, my arms holding onto the tree, feeling the life within, flowing up from the ground, spreading throughout the majestic canopy of leaves overhead , and back down the trunk into the earth itself. The life pulse spread through the roots, and i felt myself travel along with the life force of the forest, tracing out the ancient root system of the trees, traveling for what seemed to be forever, until I reached an ancient taproot, that speared down to the very core of life itself, depth less, ancient, and yet comforting.

I followed the life back up, like a drowning man, I reached the surface, to find myself beneath the most magnificent tree in the whole world, and a sense of calmness radiated out from the tree.There I slept, beneath the tree, safe and secure, going through the rebirth, that would make me a guardian, a changed being, at one with and existing in life itself in the forest.

Today I stand here, ready to defend the life force which saved my soul. My life means nothing to that I serve now.My armor I  lost, my shoes are not needed any more. A wooden staff replaced the dwarven forged metal weapons I once wore. As for the former priceless treasures I valued from the bowels of  the earth, I returned them to where they belong.

I am a defender, ready to lay down my life if needed.For the time will come again, when the forest must be saved once again, I will be ready...