“Tell me a story,” said the girl to the sea, dangling her legs over the rock she sat on and letting the cool water wash over her childhood bruises. 

And in the language of the surf foaming over sand, the sea told her of the men and women who had sworn themselves to her waters, of how she took them as her own and carried their ships safely to distant shores, of how they rested on her beaches with lovers and friends, and she opened her arms to them, as well.

“Tell me a story,” called the girl into the woods, perched on a sap-sticky branch high above the ground. 

And in birdcalls and the rustle of bark, she heard it call back, telling her of its domain, of leaping deer and dancing nymphs, of the gentle rains that fed its ground like tears, of the quiet strength that came with growth and the thrum of life.

“Tell me a story,” laughed the girl to the wind, as he tossed her hair around her and made the world whirl. 

And in a whisper that she felt over her skin more than heard with her ears, he told her of honeyed words, of art, of castles built and tumbled, of the feeling of whistling through a flute and arching into poetry, showed her the beauty in the rebirth of broken societies.

The girl listened wonderingly, chin in hand as she gazed over the horizon. She ran their stories through her fingers like strands of pearls, wrapped them about her shoulders like a shawl, like a pair of wings. Finally, mournfully, and promising to return, she ran back to the world she had come from. 

When she staggered back, tears tracking through the grime on her face, things had changed. The sea sloshed, lukewarm, around her ankles, but could no longer reach her bruises, could not wash the blood from her knuckles. The forest’s branches were coated in ash, crumbling in her hands, too brittle to hold her weight. The wind was heavy in her lungs, too thick and sluggish to blow through her hair. The girl looked over the ruin with horror in her eyes. 

“Tell me the truth,” she choked out. 

So the sea coughed out another story, of blood winding through her water like bright ribbons. It told the girl of her children’s dreams festering and crawling from their throats like spiders, consuming them, sinking teeth into their own young. She cried for them to stop, tried to beckon her grandchildren to the safety of her arms, but they feared her angry, churning red waters and ran to those who would only hurt them further, found love in the sting of wounds.

The forest spoke now in the crack and groan of a falling tree, over the roar of machinery grinding through the background. It told her of the fires that spread through its dry, barren kingdom, choking the deer and scaring the nymphs into hiding. The sky held its tears, and once-rich earth crumbled to silt, gray and sandy soft as it trickled through the girl’s fingers.

Weak and smoggy, the wind wheezed his final tale into the girl’s ear. Words, he breathed, had soured into poison, new art was being muffled and old art sharpened, welded into a weapon. The minds that had once built cities from thin air now broke them, broke everything else and pushed it back together in a sick pantomime of the past. 

If she had stayed, thought the girl, would things have changed? Could she have protected her Eden, blocked off any corruption? She stood ankle-deep in saltwater and stared at the sickly pale horizon that had once shone like golden honey pouring from a comb. She couldn’t help but miserably wonder if her stories were just lies, if she had imagined all old glory. Then, perhaps foolishly, perhaps hopefully, perhaps only reaching back for the last embers of her childhood, she looked to the sea, the forest, the wind, and asked, “How will you fix it?”

“We cannot,” they breathed. “But you, you can make the water run clear and cold, can make the earth sit dark and rich, can make the air blow clean and sweet. Will you?”

From behind her, the people whispered. “Tell us a story.”

So she turned, the sun glowing in her eyes, and she spoke.