084: Evanescent - Mushishi - A Forest's Soul

[elidelio]

Title: A Forest's Soul

Fandom: Mushishi

Author: timegoesby 

Rating: Gen

Word Count: 415

Characters: Ginko

Summary: All forests have life, that is an undeniable fact about them, but not all forests have souls.

All forests have life, that is an undeniable fact about them, but not all forests have souls. 

 

Not that one kind is superior to another —Ginko has been to plenty of beautiful forests both with and without souls— but there is certainly something special about a stretch of wild land being tended to and given life by something that could easily be called a ‘soul’, a centre of power and prosperity that is both separate from and a part of all the million other living beings that inhabit its territory.

 

Calling a forest’s Nushi the soul of the place, as far as Ginko is concerned, is the most apt way to describe it. After all, a Nushi is the embodiment of the Koumyaku’s presence on the land, the evidence of its abundance and growth, and a symbol of its protection. A forest without a Nushi, while not dead by any means, is certainly destined to struggle more than one that does benefit from their masterful supervision.

 

Ginko can usually feel a forest’s soul within a few minutes of stepping inside; it’s present in the probing breeze that extends around him, cautious but not unwelcoming, in the evanescent mugura mushi that peek from the ground to examine his presence, in the lush plants that grow vibrant and sturdy regardless of the weather, and in the well-fed animals that occasionally cross his path as he makes his way through.

 

In the rare occasions that he has had the privilege of meeting with the Nushi themselves, he is always awed by their presence, by that sense that the creature in front of him is both as giant as the forest itself yet just as small as whatever vessel they are currently embodying, a simple animal with the generational wisdom of the land itself encapsulated in its eyes as they stare back at him and evaluate his being. Not all of his encounters with Nushi have been pleasant, but the thing about nature is that it neither shows mercy nor retaliates, it simply does what it needs to do to ensure its continued survival, and Ginko could never fault it for that.

 

That being said, despite Ginko’s belief that a Nushi is the closest thing the land can get to having what a human would understand as a ‘soul’, he also supposes that, in the end, all of nature has one soul in common, one that exists deep beneath the earth, flowing as a river made of pure light.