The Nourisher

One of the Old Hands

"They say she takes. Look closer: all she does is give back."In an ordinary forest, whatever dies rots, returns to the soil, and feeds what grows on top of it. This happens on its own. But the ancient forests shelter beings born of magic, and those do not rot. Their flesh stays firm, their bones stay hard, and the matter piles up instead of feeding anything at all. The Nourisher tends to that part. She does not touch what still has time ahead of it. She undoes what has finished, and gives it back to what is beginning. Her name fools no one: she feeds the forest with what she has taken from it.

Apparition

You will see her work before you see her. A clearing far too green for the forest around it, ferns as tall as a man, a thick smell of soil and mushroom. In the middle, something you can no longer recognize, covered in moss, slowly drawn down toward the ground by pale threads. And when you look up, she is there at the edge, motionless. She was already there when you walked in.
Or else she comes to you. She has taken the shape of a man or a woman, of your race or another, and she has left her face half finished. This is not her true form. It is a courtesy, so that you can look at her and listen to her. She waits only until you have seen her before she speaks.

Dangers

She has a hold only on what agrees to come undone. On the rest she can do nothing: the dead that still walk, the carcass that will not rot, the ground that has been made barren. She is powerful, but her domain is narrow, and that is why she sometimes needs you.
She means you no harm, but anything magical you carry sits badly in her presence. An enchanted blade dulls, an amulet goes lukewarm, a familiar refuses to walk on. She does not do it on purpose and does not notice it. She takes back, that is all, and you are standing too close.
What she asks for is always of the same kind: somewhere, a thing no longer comes undone. A body still fresh after a year. A beast that has been killed three times. A spring gone black. She cannot say what it is, only that her work stops there. Refusing costs you nothing at the time. But what is piling up will go on piling up.