genima_forrest As the sun rises, you close your eyes and listen to the rhythm of the woods. The forest hums with you, singing songs of another beautiful day of dappled sunlight and playful peals of rustling-leaf laughter. Yet beneath these tunes lies a rumble of fear. You know the forest because you are the forest.

You approach a tree in your grove and wait for it to speak. It tells you what you already know. There are people gathering tonight, in far larger numbers than people ought to gather. There are people gathering tonight, and they might hurt you and your friends.

Clearly, the tree is calling for help. Thankfully, you are powerful enough to answer that call. You spend the day weaving bandages out of fallen leaves and grasses, taking only what the forest is willing to give you. Sitting for too long makes you a bit restless, so you rush over to check on the bandages you’ve set on the trees Charis harmed. It seems the trees are healing as best they can with the help of your magic, but you feel their pain, and it hurts you. With a grave heart, you return to bandage-weaving.

After a light lunch of wild berries and chives, you shift from weaving to pebble-gathering. By the time the sun begins to set, you’re ready with a full arsenal of pebbles to hurl at all who aim to harm you. If Biddy was here, you know he’d smile at you. With the power of the forest, you move silently towards your watching post, until, along the way, you notice a strange, blinking machine hanging from a tree.

The machine doesn’t seem to want anything from you. You ask the tree if the machine is hurting it, and the tree says it’s okay. To it, the machine just feels like an upside-down bird. You assume one of the campers must have put the machine here, but you sprint past it just in case it might see you, leaving a few pebbles on the ground to ward off any evil energies the machine might project.

You make it to the hill overlooking the lake well before the first campers start strolling down to the lake. As you inch down to the lakeshore, you feel your feet fall silently on the ground, the forest guiding your every step. Pebbles and bandages in tow, you lie amongst the cattails in the marsh, prepared to protect your home.

First, three people arrive. Then, a few more. As you thought, this number of people is too many people. When the music starts blaring, you recognize the songs as the same ones that bothered the trees near the dining hall between eight and ten years ago. Similarly, the reeds don’t like the music. It’s bedtime for the reeds, and normally, it’d be bedtime for you, but the forest gives you the energy to stay awake, for you are its guardian.

The music stays loud as more people arrive. You plug your ears as you wait, trying to hear the forest and the marsh and the lake instead of whatever this sound is. The campers are sitting in a circle now, spinning a bottle and leaning towards one another. With them sitting down, however, you’re able to see some of the others…smoking cigarettes right over the marsh.

You are the guardian of the forest, and you will not let fire anywhere near your home. You open your arsenal of magic bullets and open fire. Guided by the wind itself, your aim is true, grazing the ear of a bottle-spinner. By weaving your bandages together, you manage to craft a small boat out of reeds, then float it over to where the smokers are sitting so it may catch any spare ash that falls as you knock the cigarette clean out of the offending camper’s hand. Quickly, the party erupts into screams:

IT’S BIGHAND!! RUN!!!!

You’re not sure what they’re talking about, but it’s clear that you have shown them the power of the forest. You imagine Biddy smiling proudly at you from his temporary home in the red-haired girl’s cabin. The red-haired girl was at the party earlier, but left in the middle of the bottle ritual. Around forty minutes after everyone runs away (everyone except for two boys that show up 20 minutes after the party ends, find nothing, and leave), the red-haired girl returns to the dock, meeting another person who seems to be gazing at the destruction left by the party. You know this person. They’ve been good to the forest, much like the red-haired girl. As such, it’s no surprise that the two of them pick up some trash once the red-haired girl, strangely, has taken photographs of everything.

Maybe she, too, deserves Biddy’s smile.

* You continue to follow the cat, which seems to leave the shop at odd hours of the night, but rarely during the day. The night after the campfire, you watch it stroll to the edge of the woods, walk in a perfect circle three times, boop a camera that one of the campers has set up, then return to the shop through its cat door.

• With a carefully woven garland of leaves, you bandage each of the trees Charis hit, conveying wordless apologies and sorrows as you do.
• You look into the Hedgehogs' cabin window, and Biddy smiles at you.
• You continue to check in on the red-haired girl, who seems to join another person every night at the dock for a quiet conversation. Since there's nowhere to hide, you don't dare go close enough to listen.
• You watch Juniper's campfire building activity and clean up a bit afterwards. He's not the best at keeping the fire controlled, but he seems to have good intentions towards the forest.
• You follow Brook and her campers to the lake, where the red-haired girl and some other campers stand awkwardly around the over-enthusiastic counselor. They're far away enough from the forest that you feel at ease without their disturbance.