A Walk in the Forest
The house I was renting backed onto a forest. On days when my melancholy was particularly bad, I sometimes took a walk into the trees to try and turn my mood around.
The forest was lovely. Cool and damp, with trees of all ages. The air was fresh, and it smelled of moss and old leaves. I usually let my feet find their own path while my mind wandered, or while it worried away at whatever was bothering me.
One afternoon, when I had wandered perhaps a bit further than usual, I came upon a tree that had a partial hollow in the trunk. The hollow was fairly roomy, and there was something inside it.
A small stone statue, vaguely human, was standing upright inside the tree. It seemed to have no features and no limbs, and it was half-buried in leaves and duff.
Curious, I began to clear away the moist leaves with my hands. It took perhaps ten minutes to uncover the statue, and then perhaps a few more to smooth the floor of the hollow a bit to make it look a little tidier.
Now that I could see the little figure more clearly, it was fairly crudely shaped, nothing more than a head on a torso. It seemed to have been worked by hand, but I couldn't see any obvious tool marks. It was an altogether odd thing to find in the woods.
I got up off my knees with a grunt, and started brushing myself off. My hands were now dirty, and cold. And I rubbed them together to try and warm them, and to dislodge some of the bits of litter that clung to them.
As I turned to leave and make my way back home, I heard a small but clear voice:
thank you.