The Forest of Sleepers (Nowhere Book 2)

f o r t y - f i v e : r e l e a s e

Birdie Penny had learned many things in the past several months. She had learned that it was often the best things in life that were subject to change. And that change, in and of itself, was not always a bad thing.

She had once hated Wyatt and, in the end, she had loved him.

She had once been so terrified of her sisters moving on without her that she did everything in her power to keep them close. Now, she saw how each of their hearts were knitted together differently and destined for their own paths in life.

She had once succumbed herself to writing obituaries because writing her own stories felt too much like releasing parts of herself into the world.

Birdie Penny had learned how to let go.

There was a certain peace in holding life with an open hand. To allow things to be given and taken away.

Some things that were given were the most wonderful things she'd had in her life. And when they'd been taken away, it had stolen pieces of her soul with them.

But Birdie, for all her nostalgia and whims, was planted firmly where she knew she would grow. And so she did.

She loved more gently, more kindly than before. There was a type of graciousness that followed the loss she had endured.

Ophelia saw it first in the way Birdie welcomed Silas and Marshall into their home. They'd never had a family, so she had decided to give them one.

Birdie began talking about things she'd never shared with Ophelia before, even under the covers when they were supposed to be asleep.

Birdie cried and she grieved and she got angry and she cursed. But she was not alone. She allowed herself not to be.

And, slowly, she healed.

It was all of this that Gwydyr saw. What Gwydyr had yet to learn.

Gwydyr had two hearts at one point in time that were the only things keeping it alive.

The forest existed like a breath only half-exhaled (or half-inhaled, depending on where you were standing).

It hung on the edge of nothing and something, existence and extinction. The whole of it only took shallow breaths, barely hanging on by a thread.

The demons had torn it apart in both their coming and their going and most of the forest was destroyed beyond repair.

But its hearts kept beating.

One heart was restless, the other steady. It was this rhythm that thrummed through the mangled roots, beating out what energy was left in the great ancient forest.

In time perhaps, like Birdie, it would heal, but what was greatness if it was so easy to undo?

Gwydyr realized, for the first time, that it was fading just like everything else; like the forest child it had raised, like the trees it tried to save, and like the two heartbeats currently living inside of it.

Maybe it was time for it to end, to relinquish its power on those that it now knew it could trust. The world was blacker than it had been before and its ground was made of dust and ash and there was no place for life to grow.

Maybe it was time Gwydyr learned from a human like Birdie.

If Gwydyr could only exist as a faint pulse in the expanse of the universe, then perhaps it was time to let go..

The heartbeats had sacrificed themselves for those they loved, including the forest itself. Did Gwydyr not believe in honor? In penance?

For its entire lifespan, Gwydyr had survived against all odds. But at what cost? It knew that if you held onto a good thing for too long, it began to twist against the strain.

So it was with Gwydyr.

Yes, it thought, the time has come.

So, as Gwydyr closed its eyes for the last time, its final breath gave the one thing it had always given: life.