I watch from the trees as you enter the forest and the light thins without announcement, you do not turn back, there is no reason you continue forward yet you do, deeper than you intend, deeper than you will admit to yourself. This is my forest.

Nothing moves for me, no branches snap, no leaves shift beneath me. I do not disturb what already belongs to me. The birch trees watch through me and when I require it the forest becomes my body.

Humans pass through this place often, most of them are irrelevant, some are useful. The Matheson family surfaces in my awareness, useless, all but the boy, Charlie Matheson Jr, then the girl, Kate Milens, instruments already shaped, already waiting. If I require them they will act, I will not.

You cross into Oakside Park and step into a space I occupy, and I watch.

You notice the page before you notice me, one of mine, one of hers, my image reduced to ink and paper, nailed to bark. You take it down and examine it and that is sufficient. I enter your mind without resistance.

My form manifests fifteen feet away between the trunks, present and unmoving, your eyes pass over me without recognition and continue on, understanding fails where it always does. You go deeper and find another page and hesitate, only briefly, long enough to matter, then you take it and look.

When you lift your head I am ten feet in front of you, close enough now that distance no longer protects you. You run.

You do not stop until the forest thins and your breathing breaks apart and at the treeline you turn back, and though I remain deep among the trees you see me clearly.

Then you do not. I withdraw into the shadows where I was before you entered, but i am now no longer bound to the forest. I am bound to you.