The Jade Forest

It was hot, as always in Nār. A heat that clung to the skin. In the Jade Forest, silence was never complete.
The Grave Trees, whose leaves shone with a sapphire light in the sun, breathed secrets continuously. By the wind, or by their own will.

In the middle of the path, facing the sepulchre tree where her mother had once been buried, ZA Nãla walked barefoot, her dress stained with earth, her hands full of ink.
She wasn't ready. No one ever was. Her father, the Shaman King, was dead. Leaving a gaping chasm and a kingdom on the verge of implosion.

More than a hundred cycles had passed since then. She hadn't cried. Not yet. The tears would come later, with time, or perhaps never. For in those days, tribal wars were commonplace. Her son, her nephew, her brother, her friends, her lover, all had perished at the hands of their enemies' spears or sabers.

On the battlefield, or by treachery, a dagger blade slipped into the back, between the ribs.

A pillow pressed against your face while you sleep. Or by the hand of the one who swore loyalty and protection to you.

The trunk of his mother's Grave Tree seemed to be alive. Its heart seemed to beat gently, in time with his own.

She moved closer, brushed it with her fingertips, then pressed one of her ears against the tree trunk, hoping to hear her mother's voice one last time.

But the wood remained silent.

She knew her hours were counting. Further away, she felt the Mamake approaching.

They were coming, that was certain. The war had begun, long before she even took her first steps. She didn't have the words to stop them, so one last time, she shimmered.

She closed her eyes, placed her other hand on the trunk of her mother's tomb-tree, and released her endokã, which she made run all over the tree. Her warm, gentle energy took root in the earth, rising up on each branch and leaf, which immediately took on an electric bluish colour upon contact with her endokã.

Her irises turning blue, she smiled, letting a tear trickle down her cheek as she finally recognized a thin remnant of her mother's endokã in one of the roots of the tomb-tree.

- Ah... You're still the mom... She breathed.

She then stepped back, breaking her connection with the tree, the foliage returning to its matte blue color at the same time.

She spun around. Once. A second time. A third time. Her steps were smooth, slow, and true.

She made her shimmer, no longer on the tree-sepulchre, but let it fly away with the wind.

ZA Nãla continued to spin around. Her movements became broader, more delicate. The vines and branches around her began to mimic her movements.

Her endokã gleamed on the leaves and ground around her.
And she danced for hours... Maybe even for an entire orb. Without knowing the steps, without being able to stop.

The whole forest seemed to have come to life.

When the Mamake arrived at the palace of Zanjarāra and set foot in the Jade Forest, their men discovered, abandoned in front of the Tree-Sepulchre of ZA Fëana Orun, the mother of ZA Nãla, the latter's clothes in the colours of her clan.

And some, among the most superstitious of the wamūjis and the soldiers, swore that for a whole moon, the wind itself refused to blow straight, that the vines twisted in the air as if possessed, whipping the faces of everyone who approached the sepulchre-tree of ZA Fëana, drawing grotesque and frightening shapes.

Some say that Aziza ZA Nãla never left this forest.

What diviner Will, from the Jade Forest... But one thing remains certain: the forest never forgets.