What happened to the trees

They say the woods used to be everywhere. Thick and tall, like a sea of green that never ended. But that was before the Maelstrom bit the land, and Jack Frost answered back.

There are still trees in Owtdare, of course. You’ll find them tucked into the steeper folds of the hills, or holding ground in the shadowed dips of forgotten valleys.

But most of these old ones are gone now.

Long ago—though not so long that the grandmothers forget it—there were forests. Proper ones.

Whole swathes of the land covered in tallwood, with trunks you couldn’t reach around and branches full of song.

Woodland canopies so rich and full that the only thing to ever touch the fertile soil beneath them was the sunlight.

Then came the Year of Sorrow.

It began with the Maelstrom .

A hot, roaring storm that rolled in from the northern desert, dry as bones and filled with rage.

It peeled the bark from trees and cracked the soil like old crockery.

What the wind didn’t rip up and tear, the heat dried and withered.

Even Jack Frost, who is no friend to the Summer storm, came howling after, bitter and vengeful.

He froze what was left. He cast his ice deep into the heart of the earth.

Sap turned to crystal, roots shattered, and whole woods groaned into silence.

As with all life though, there were some places that were spared. Some areas the Maelstrom overlooked, Some saplings that avoided the cold touch of Frost's fingers.

Some trees clung on.

The @creepsurvived—though not unchanged.

And there are those who say they’ve walked under canopies still thick with leaves, out near the edge of the Face.

But mostly, trees are just a memory now.

Folk have had to find other ways to keep a fire fueled in their hearth.

They burn the gorse, when it lets them.

Turf, if the ground permits.

Dung, if they’ve beasts.

And mushrooms—big flat ones with hard stalks that dry well and crackle in the flame.

Wood, if it’s found, is treated like silver: crafted with care, never wasted, and passed down through the hands that need it most.

Younglings still learn the names of trees, even if they’ve never seen them grow.

Oak and Ash. Beech and Thorn.

The Ancient and the Wise tell the Tales of the Forests, the creak of bough, the sweetness of sap, the earthy loam of the root and the thick hide of the bark.

The Old Songs still carry the sound of wind in the leaves, even if it’s only gorse scratching at the door now.

The Land remembers.

And those who know, say the trees do too.