There are forces that do not belong here. Not wind, nor rain, nor time—but something quieter, hungrier. A thinning. A forgetting.
The Hollowing.
It creeps not with claws, but with absence. It hollows the moss from memory, the song from the stream, the fox from the path. It is the silence that follows machinery, the ache beneath the roots when the land is no longer listened to. It does not roar—it recedes. And in its wake, the forest begins to unremember itself.
But not all is lost.
There are those who remain—not as myth, but as memory made flesh. Guardians. Mammals of fur and claw and quiet knowing. They do not fight with fire. They hold the line with presence. With watching. With walking the old paths between the Wye and the Severn, where the rivers still speak and the trees still lean in to listen.
The fox who waits at each compass edge. They know what the Hollowing cannot: that story is stronger than silence.
They are not saviors. They are reminders.
They do not ask for belief. They ask for noticing.
This woodland—this enchanted realm—is not protected by spells or walls. It is held by those who walk it with care. By those who remember the names of the trees. By those who leave offerings of attention, not ritual. By those who see the guardians not as symbols, but as kin.
You are invited to walk beside them. To witness the quiet resistance. To feel the pulse of the land that still remembers.
And together, perhaps, the forest will remain.