The god of the forest had no pity for the weak. His realm was never meant to be without pain and when his prey creatures were hunted down or his trees were felled by storms he would mourn those who were lost instead of saving them. There was a violent balance contained within the forest borders and it had never been his way to try to overcome it.

The arrival of the child was the first thing that could be seen as a change in that.

The forest lord never learned why the child was abandoned. Humans would sometimes walk in the land which was rightfully his and he either regarded them with contempt or did not regard them at all. The child had been lost for some time when he finally noticed her and she was cold, thirsty and afraid. All of these things can kill and if the child was to be left to her own devices then she would be dead before tomorrow's dawn.

He could have left her alone and he considered doing so but something gave him pause. This child would be going to die only because she wasn't in her own realm. The god of the forest knew of the kingdom of the humans and despised its greyness and smoothed edges but he hated it at least in part because of how unthinkingly it would destroy his own subjects who strayed too far. Wild plants seen as weeds and killed, wild animals quite unprepared for the mechanical dangers humans had created.

The god could choose to be different to the humans. And so, he did.

The first night was easy. Before darkness the forest god moved brambles aside so the child could more easily find a stream of safe water. He allowed tempting berries to coax her towards an old den that the child was smart enough to climb inside to face the chilled air of night. He did all these things to care for her and waited for the humans that the child had arrived with to come and collect her.

He didn't expect that they simply wouldn't come back.

Days turned to weeks and the god decided to lead her outside of the forest with the same gentle suggestion as before. She followed his subtle prompting and reached the edge of the trees without issue. She realised where she was and looked at the field ahead of her, even able to see the town in the distance.

And then she turned around.

It was only at this point, the point at which the small and determined child walked back into the cold forest where she had been abandoned, that the god began to love her. He would stop leaving hints occasionally, just to see which lessons she'd truly learned. He accepted her as one of his own and even though part of him expected her to change her mind and leave one day, he was still pleased that he had chosen to stay for now.

As months turned to years though, he realised that the child had no intention on leaving. At first he wasn't sure what this meant - she was not a native animal but he didn't see her as an intruder anymore either. She was the only one of her kind and it took him awhile to decide exactly what that meant.

Eventually, he decided that the creature in the forest that she was most like was himself. Instead of a subject, he began to see her as a daughter, a potential successor. She wasn't a god yet, but these things can change.

Even though she was almost an adult now, the god have her suggestions in much the same way he had when she'd first been lost. He moved brambles and left tempting berries and coaxed her into performing a ritual that humans had forgotten long ago and had never realised the full potential of anyway.

Carrying out ritual steps that had been enough to make witches out of her ancestors, the girl heard the forest god's voice for the first time. Fulfilling further steps that no human had learned, the girl developed powers that the forest god had kept for centuries.

She sat, she listened and she learned.

She would be a worthy successor.