Reena’s Exploration Challenge – Week 72 2-5-2018

  Reena’s Exploration Challenge

I found this illustration rather quaint and curious. It is an illustration done for Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I don’t know the story, but why is the tree male and the human female? Is the mobility or immobility an illusion? Is it a scene of love, magic or revenge? What do the projections denote?

I invite you to ponder over it, and write whatever it generates within you.

On with the quill, and the thinking cap ….

PROMPT

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She heard him coming, but didn’t slow, running swiftly down the forest pathway, slippered feet barely making a sound.  She wasn’t afraid of the forest, but she was afraid of him. How grotesque he looked, gnarled with branches sprouting from his back. His face so smooth and young, but his limbs like branches grown wrong way round.

In the depths of the forest, she heard the cries of the animals and they seemed to be urging her on, warning her as he thumped closer and closer and closer. His voice wind through the leaves, carried in ripples tree to tree.

Papa was waiting on the edge of the forest, catching her in his arms as he had so many times before; carrying her, exhausted and trembling, into the house and to her bed.

Once she slept, he grabbed up a bucket and set out through the forest. It took him hours to find the tree, but he did.  The funny looking tree that looked like a running man.

She’d been afraid of this tree since she was a baby though he’d never understood why. Still, it was enough. He was done.

Pouring kerosene around the tree, he stepped back; tossed in a match. Walked away.

No one heard the screams.