Chadwick Rye

Eldara Thornroot settled into the ancient oak’s embrace, her weathered body finding the perfect hollow where root met earth. The morning ritual had become more challenging with each passing season—joints protesting what once had been effortless, bones creaking like wind-touched branches. Still, for nine decades she had greeted the dawn from this exact spot, and neither winter’s bite nor summer’s swelter would break this sacred communion.

The forest awakened around her in layers of sound—first the soft pattering of creatures in underbrush, then the cascading chorus of birdsong, and finally the subtle symphony of leaves unfurling toward newborn light. Eldara closed her eyes, her breathing synchronizing with the ancient oak’s subtle respiration, the exchange of air becoming a wordless conversation between elder beings.

“Archdruid,” came a hesitant voice, interrupting her meditation.

Opening one eye, Eldara found her youngest apprentice, Thorne, hovering at the clearing’s edge. The boy clutched his journal—pages already filled with meticulous observations of plant cycles and migration patterns, though he’d been among the Circle for barely two seasons.

“The Circle asked me to bring you this,” he said, extending a wooden cup containing steaming liquid. “Cloudberry tea with honey from the southern hives.”

Eldara accepted the offering with gnarled fingers more reminiscent of roots than hands, noticing the boy’s uncertainty. The Circle’s youngest members often approached her with trepidation, as if her nine decades of communion with the Green had transformed her into something other than human. Perhaps they weren’t entirely wrong.

“Join me,” she said, patting the moss beside her. “Unless the morning lessons await?”

“Elder Moonshadow said I should stay until you finish your tea.” Thorne settled beside her, his gangly limbs folding awkwardly. “She’s teaching metamorphosis principles to the others.”

“Ah.” Eldara smiled, recognizing Moonshadow’s transparent attempt to create this moment. “And she mentioned something about today’s contemplation question, I imagine?”

The apprentice nodded, producing a small piece of birchbark with flowing script etched upon its surface. “She said it’s your turn to answer the Circle’s inquiry.”

Eldara sipped her tea, the warmth spreading through her chest as she read the elegantly carved question: *What brings laughter to the Archdruid?*

A chuckle escaped her lips, causing Thorne to look up in surprise.

“Does the question itself amuse you?” he asked, earnestly pulling out his quill, ready to transcribe her wisdom.

“Put away your writing tools, young one,” she said gently. “Some answers aren’t meant to be recorded but experienced.”

She set her tea aside and placed both palms against the earth, feeling the countless tiny lives moving beneath the surface—beetles navigating between root systems, worms transforming decay into renewal, fungal networks carrying messages across vast distances.

“The Circle expects profound wisdom, I suspect,” she mused. “Perhaps they imagine I find humor in cosmic ironies or ancient druidic riddles?”

Thorne nodded, his expression revealing he’d expected precisely that.

“The truth is both simpler and more complex.” Eldara’s eyes crinkled at the corners, memories dancing within their amber depths. “What makes me laugh is the same thing that has brought me joy since I was younger than you—the small, perfect absurdities of growing things.”

She gestured toward a nearby cluster of ferns, their fronds unfurling in tight spirals. “Watch those fiddleheads emerging. Tell me you don’t see dancers preparing for some grand performance, uncurling with such dramatic flourish?”

The apprentice followed her gaze, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Or there,” she continued, pointing to where morning sunlight illuminated a spider’s web jeweled with dew. “A master artist spending hours creating perfect geometric precision, only to have a confused beetle blunder through and connect all the wrong strands—like a child scribbling across a perfect drawing.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Thorne’s mouth as they watched a beetle indeed stumble into the web, causing the spider to rush out in apparent exasperation.

“Nature is filled with comedy for those who know how to witness it,” Eldara continued. “Squirrels that forget their hoards and seem genuinely surprised when new trees sprout. Saplings that grow determinedly through impossible cracks in stone, as if making a point about persistence. Mushrooms that appear overnight in perfect circles, like evidence of faerie revelry too wild to clean up properly.”

She reached into a pouch at her belt, producing a peculiarly shaped acorn with what appeared to be a tiny face formed by natural ridges and coloration. “I’ve kept this for sixty-three years. Found it during my first vision quest. Doesn’t it look perpetually surprised? As if it just heard the most shocking gossip among the leaf litter?”

Thorne accepted the acorn, turning it in his fingers. A reluctant smile bloomed into genuine amusement. “It does! Like it’s witnessed something scandalous among the squirrels.”

“Exactly!” Eldara’s laughter rang out, startling a nearby raven who gave them what could only be described as a disapproving glance before taking flight. This only increased her mirth. “You see? Even the raven judges our immaturity.”

The apprentice’s shoulders relaxed as he handed back the acorn, his earlier reverence softening into something more genuine. “I didn’t expect… I mean, the other elders speak of you with such solemnity.”

“As well they should,” Eldara replied with mock seriousness before breaking into another smile. “But nine decades of communion with nature has taught me that life never takes itself as seriously as we do. The most ancient trees still dance in strong winds. The oldest stones still tumble down mountains with childlike abandon.”

She reached for her walking staff—a twisted length of lightning-struck oak that had accompanied her through forest and field for longer than most human lifespans. With its support, she rose to her feet, bones protesting but spirit buoyant.

“Come,” she said, gesturing toward a hidden path leading deeper into the forest. “Your morning lessons can wait. I want to show you the clearing where mushrooms grow in shapes so suggestive they’d make a tavern bard blush. Or perhaps the pond where frogs gather on lilypads but frequently misjudge the distance between them, leading to the most undignified splashes.”

Thorne hesitated, glancing back toward the direction of the Circle’s encampment.

“Unless you prefer metamorphosis principles?” Eldara raised an eyebrow.

The boy’s choice was immediate, his face lighting with curiosity. “Elder Moonshadow did say I should stay with you until you finished your tea…” He glanced meaningfully at the still half-full cup nestled among the roots.

“Clever boy.” Eldara winked conspiratorially. “We might make a druid of you yet.”

As they ventured into the forest’s embrace, the ancient oak seemed to sigh behind them—perhaps with contentment, perhaps with amusement at these fleeting human lives that moved like mayflies through its centuries-long existence. Eldara felt its whispered farewell brush against her consciousness, carrying the tree’s own particular humor—patient, measured, yet no less genuine than her own.

For what the Circle rarely understood about their Archdruid was this: her deepest wisdom came not from solemn communion with nature’s grandeur, but from recognizing the divine comedy playing out in its smallest details. The mushroom that grew in the perfect shape of a disgruntled face. The sapling that, having fallen over, simply grew sideways with undiminished enthusiasm. The careful symmetry of a pinecone disrupted by one rebellious scale.

These were her teachers, her companions, her endless sources of delight. And as she led her youngest apprentice toward new discoveries, Eldara Thornroot, Archdruid of the Nine Circles, protector of the Ancient Groves, knew with absolute certainty that the greatest gift she could pass to the next generation wasn’t solemnity or even power—but the ability to hear the laughter of growing things, and to joyfully laugh alongside them.