Letters from the Antagonist to the Protagonist, and the Response
Elara,
I stood at the edge of your forest yesterday. Not with fire, not with soldiers—just me. No one noticed. I doubt even your whispering vines sensed me.
And I listened.
I don’t know what I expected. The trees didn’t speak to me. The wind didn’t shift. But I stood there long enough to feel... something. Maybe it was silence. Maybe it was you watching me.
You believe I hate the forest. I don’t.
I fear what it makes of men. I’ve seen strong minds unravel at its edge. I’ve seen villages disappear into its hunger. You speak to it like it’s kin. I see it as a predator dressed in beauty.
I suppose that’s what we are to each other, too.
I write because I wonder—have we truly listened to each other? Or only to the stories we’ve built of one another?
You still have time to leave it behind. The trees do not need to burn, if you walk away.
—Caelen
Caelen, The forest knew you were there. It does not roar to be noticed. It remembers. It felt the weight of your boots in the moss and the ache in your chest that you pretend not to carry. And yes, I watched. Not with eyes, but through the pulse in the ground. You fear it, you say. But what you fear is not the forest—it is your powerlessness before something you cannot bend. I do not walk away because I am part of it. The roots you see as snares are the same ones that cradle me when I fall. The fog that confuses your men has guided me home. And yet… I do not hate you either. There are days I believe you once loved beauty—before war, before titles, before the iron in your hands hardened your heart. Maybe that part of you still lingers, like the last ember in a dead hearth. If you come again, come without weapons. Come with questions. The forest answers differently when it is not being threatened. I will meet you at the stone. —Elara
This assignment is not as easy for me as I thought it would be. I am still working on it this week too! I am writing a children's story and there is no need for a "bad guy" and it is a little more subtle as the antagonist is going to be found within the unknown with tension and worry while the family members serach their imaginative hopes that all build up around this conflict. How do I give a voice to that?