Only here did she create trees. The deeper into the forest she ventured, the easier it became.
She breathed it all in, wrapping herself in the ancient growth, where new creations simply seemed natural, and they would spring forth around her. When she was
lost in the trance, new growth was easy. The deeper she immersed herself in the woodland, the more she could accumulate around her, the stronger the life force she could breathe into her creations.
Out on the edges of the forest, it was much more difficult. Small shrubs, and sometimes only grasses, were all she could realize. She would have to build slowly outward, inhale the forest at its center, and exhale it
slowly at its boundaries.
This did not mean she was limited to the woodlands. Her power shifted depending on her surroundings. By the ocean shore, she was able to reshape beaches, summon waves, and alter rock formations. When immersed in humanity, she was able
to bring forth new souls and rejuvenate old ones.
But when isolated from her creations, her magic did not hold well. Illusions materialized briefly, then dissolved into the breeze. It was too hard to concentrate
when what she was creating did not belong where she was.
Life did not spring from nothingness. It had to grow from an initial seed. In the desert, only sand and rock could be whipped into a frenzy, and
she would have to ride the windstorm to the edge of the grassland before she could easily change
where the boundaries of nature met.
The planet had been born of only molten rock, but through careful
direction of wind and water, she eventually grew it into the countless biomes we have today.
She still walks among us, sometimes aware of what she was doing, sometimes
lost in thought about a different life. There, just around the corner, that would be a good place for some shoppers and a convenience store. And as she turned the corner, sure enough, she would find what she expected to find.
Unfortunately, if she expected urban sprawl, she sometimes conjured that up too, often by accident. Only in moments of focus did she
move with intention, to the places she wanted to be, to recenter herself amongst the things she wanted to create, and from there, radiate her magic outwards. And her creations would reach out in all directions, centered around where she was standing.
And
when she decided it was enough, she would move on, find herself a new center, and plant herself there, extending her power outwards once more, pushing the boundaries of each location she found herself in.
Too often she found herself wandering her world, forgetting her role, and lost in thought. It was in those moments that her environment grew without intention, stretching out randomly in ways that were largely accidental. Often it wasn't until she noticed something wrong that she would snap out of her reverie, set herself back on track, and go where she had intended to go,
correcting the missteps she herself had made.
Fortunately few things were irreversible, unless she had gone so far that an entire environment was eliminated. Recovery from that kind of event took much more patience and careful planning. It didn't happen very often. Her planet was large, and
she was careful to rein in her power, even in the midst of creation.
She wandered from continent to continent, century to century, like a nomad. She belonged nowhere, yet everywhere belonged to her. Sometimes she would spend a great many years living as one of her own creatures. It was the memories of those lives that haunted her the most. It was those memories that most often made her lose track of what she was doing. But it was also those
memories that she treasured the most. The collected wisdom of countless millennia, seen from almost every point of view.
She knew her world was always changing. She knew everything was temporary. That was the world she herself created,
a soup of a thousand different ingredients, and she was the ladle stirring it into infinite whirlpools.
Other lives fell out of what she was doing. Plant, animal, intelligent, and less intelligent. At some point she would live through them all, observing them as both insider and outsider. Many were the ones she loved, but she knew
they would all eventually be consumed by time.
Perhaps
one day, she would go the same way they did, but she was still waiting for a sign of that happening. Though she changed everything around her, she herself was a constant, besides the ever accumulation of memories and dreams she lost herself in.
Even the memories could not always be counted on. They too faded away in the swirl of time, and she would have to resort to vague impressions and uncertain generalizations of large portions of her experiences. But she could always return there again, relive a similar life again, if not the same exact one.
That would have to be good enough. That would have to satisfy her, until she wanted to go back again.
And when she was not there, she would be wandering the woods, or the shore, or the mountains, as herself, soaking in everything around her, only to
release it back into the world she drew it from. The storm passed, the winds cycled, and she stirred. March on.