Poem of the Woods

[Opti]

_{An eerie unrhyming poem-song is occasionally sung to children to warn them of the deeper parts of the woods. Several versions exist, many of them barely remembered throughout the ages, but one version is often cited as the original and written down to share with the next generation...}

Dearheart, learn you of the world
For beneath the sea of stun-leaved wonder
Tears a creature cloaked in candies
With a bite strong as the asp.

He'll tell you of the music
In a wishing well, tears full of gold
And ninefold past weave through the stake
Binding rock to heart of earth

Pinch of lemon, weed, and imp
And deafness lights upon your face
You'd reach your finger through the maw
Of the dragon, tongue aflame.

Fear not the songs of magic,
But the broken cries of beasts
As they teach the fey to wield
The sword of a dying king

And trust yourself the nightingale
Who writes a song of plains and right
Turn dandelions beneath the stone
And lead a lighthouse to shore.

The birds won't sing in dreaded place
Like skyfire silent in demise
They weep in caves alight with bones
And sing the weary traveler dead.

A man once listened not to birds:
Leaving their talons for the trees
And met him there a thousand beasts
Each a mirror of his name

The first begged him for time to stop
The second for a rose
And a million more dropped from the sky
Herbs encrusted in their manes

They weaved a tale of tomorrow's rain
And placed the dagger in his hands
A million years away from time
If you complete this task:

A nightingale bound through the heart
His body stains the wishing well
Alerting men to where they pass
And damaging the night within.

The bird a sign had now become
And the man, in turn, a boy
A thousand years or more he walked,
Head burnt to the sky.

A day came again he found the well,
And ignorant he climbed inside
Poisoned by the nightingale
And held forever bound by gold.

And in knowing they worked hand in hand,
The songs grew fainter still -
Melding one by one with shapes
As broken as the sky

And soon the clouds parted the day
Leaving blackbird gone from sight
No feather holds the dreadful place
But the barrier around

The songs crisscross the mirror-world
Reaching every piece undone
But no bird ever steps inside
Ever since the nightingale.

_{None have ever found the 'wishing well' described in the poem, although there is an area deep in the woods that birds refuse to go, instead forming a circle around the area with their nests. Some believe that the creature in the poem is a kitsune, others assume that it's either a metaphor - much like the 'well' - or another entity entirely.}