In a glade grows a tree whose bark is covered with ants and dappled with shadows cast by her own leaves. Whose sentiments slowly flow through sticky dripping sap. Feelings that a person could be conceive and discard in an afternoon, for her, took years of slow mulling.

Daphne was not always a tree. She was transformed while fleeing a man whose demanding, grasping arms she had to escape. She cried out in terror as his arms finally closed around her, and her salvation came from the gods who took pity on her soft flesh and allowed it to become bark and leaves.

Fear and abhorrence for her pursuer transformed with her. The instant of her transformation, the instant that his arms closed over her, a desperate horror was the last thing she knew in her old body and the first thing she experienced as a tree. Feelings that a person could be conceive and discard in an afternoon, for her, took years of slow mulling.

He abandoned his pursuit then; a tree could not satisfy his demands.

(Click to regrow)