The Winged

16- Pink

The Hollow was way closer than I had thought it was.
Humans moved so differently to us... I felt as though my mind was frazzled from all of the different ways I had been getting around recently. Flying was usually my default. That was quick, relatively easy so long as you were careful, and far nicer than walking. You didn't really have to stick to the trails either like you did when you were walking. It was quite safe in the sky below the canopy. Obviously, I hadn't used my wings for any travelling at all for the past few days. I hadn't even been walking. The only way I had been getting around was by being carried in some dark bag. Or someone's hands.

To say it felt strange to be walking again was an understatement. Not only that, but I was walking on a familiar trail, surrounded by familiar people, totally safe. Totally free. Could it be real?

As our small party trudged onwards, with Aspen and Ronnie leading the way, soft twangs of worry did their best to spoil my mood. Safe and free? I wasn't so sure about that yet. Because the reason we were so close to the Hollow was of course because Aspen and I had fled for our lives, sprinting without rest for what had seemed like an eternity. What we had been running from I didn't particularly want to think about... it was, however, an undeniable fact: humans were far bigger than us, and a singular footstep from them might be equal to a hundred of ours. It had taken but a few painful minutes for Sam to carry Micah and I halfway to my home. That journey usually took me twenty, and that was if I was flying. So even though Aspen and I had run and run and run...
My nerves only got worse the more I thought about it. I had seriously misjudged the distance between the tents and the tribe and how fast humans are able to walk. My awful human could either be very far away, or very, very close to our walking group. And whether he was near or far, it would only take a few well-directed steps for him to close any distance between himself and us.
I caught myself glancing upwards more than a few times.

The human didn't know which direction Az and me had run off in, I reminded myself. For him to catch up to us, he would have to be able to follow us. He couldn't follow us if he didn't know where we were... so I hoped to the gods this was the end of things.

It was frightening for me to realise that after a few minutes of our party walking further, the familiar sight of the great tree was coming into view. Too close, I thought with a shallow breath. I had allowed the human to come far too close. Perhaps five more minutes of his human walking and he would have come to that forest of multicoloured flowers where Aspen and I had caught our breath. Add barely any more time onto that, and the monstrous giant would have brought little Micah and I to where my brothers had leapt out of the birch tree. A dozen more of his steps, and I... my gods, I would have led him straight to home.

There was a small chance that he wouldn't have been able to tell which tree it was... but now, as I stared up at the homely sight, I wasn't sure that I would have been able to restrain myself from looking at the Hollow had the human brought me here.

I blinked a few times, taking it in. The depth of the old bark that stretched up into hundred of branches, branches that spilled into bunches and bundles of leaves, dwarfing the rest of the canopy. The little white catkins. Roots twisting and knotting with the dirt floor down below. The tree was intertwined with the ground, those roots both part of the Hollow and part of the earth, connecting the two with an unbreakable union.

And there it was. The Hollow, rising tall with all the might it had held for a hundred years. Longer, probably. Home.
A smile bloomed on my face as we grew nearer. Only a few days had passed with me being away, but it was enough to last me forever.

"That's it, isn't it?" The boy beside me chirped.
Micah's purple eyes were wide with an innocent excitement. Micah. It felt blissful to see him not cowering behind me.
"Yes, that's it," was all I smiled in response, "The Hollow. You can tell?"
He bobbed his head as if it was obvious, "Just look at it! Look at the size of it..."
He gawked upwards, amazed gaze skipping from blossoms to bark, leaves to roots.
"Bigger than the humans..."
How childish he looked now, cheeks all flushed pink and black locks messy on his ears. All the terror I was so used to seeing in his expression was gone. And I couldn't help but smile more. The great tree was quite a sight, I supposed... but his happiness was a far nicer one.
"Bigger than the humans." I echoed softly.