Thread by @QuietPineTrees

Tomorrow begins an annual holiday tradition for Quiet Pine Trees, one that I look forward to all year long. If you want to see all the previous incarnations, and other song lyrics I’ve written, you can pre-order the new Quiet Pine Trees book!
unbound.com/books/quiet-pi…

On the 12th day of Christmas, the pine trees gave to me,
12 golden matches, each capable of brightening words rather than shadows, to be used in moments when the need for eloquence is too great to be trusted to the feeble wits of mortal minds

11 figures chanting, their grey hooded robes difficult to spot as they dwelt on the far edge of my perception, their synchronized whispers almost lost in the noise of the modern world as they relayed information about me to something that lived in a colder, smaller universe

10 willow tears, delicacies of the Forest King himself, so full of the season of autumn they made my breath condense in the air and my fingers leave golden stains on the foliage, so the denizens of the woods would know me as a friend

9 bits and bobs, trinkets recovered from the wreckage of my own time machine, still somewhat recognizable despite the char, so that I could get some clues about my future, and know that the machine wouldn’t crash until I’d found each of them on my own

8 granite bowls, one of which would turn ordinary river water into an elixir to cure aging, so that I and seven others could play a single round of Immortality Roulette and see who will have to live long enough to see the forests wither and die

7 copper chains, each with one end affixed in the past and the other in the future, an old-fashioned and reckless form of time travel, to be held tightly to slow the passage of halcyon days, or traversed to reach future moments that are too good to wait for

6 hidden words, once reserved for poets whose skill left no challenge in ordinary vocabulary, to succinctly convey things that otherwise evade easy description, like the relief of knowing you’ve been snowed in, or fear at the realization of what you could accomplish

5 GOLD RINGS

4 violet birds, able to see the rising and ebbing tide of fate, that would sing their fearful song together as moments of destiny approached just as roosters crow before the dawn, so I would be forewarned when the Forest War had at last begun

3 jade teeth, found washed up on the shore of a spring-fed lake, hinting at the stone monsters that lurked below its waves, or perhaps deep underground in the heart of the spring, so I could warn the rest of humanity of their presence, if I so chose

2 vellum shoes, covered in gentle adjectives, made for traversing stories rather than roads, to be worn in the inhospitable land of dreams, so that even when the narrative becomes dark and frightful, I could find my way to a happy ending

And the words to a silent song, one I could sing to myself in the brightest or bleakest places to see myself back in the forest, to hear its sounds and feel its shadows, and never forget that my place, my true home, is among the quiet pine trees