Mother Nature Waits
You Cannot Change the Outcome Without Changing What Produces It
Inspired by the Sunday Scaries writing prompt from Conor MacCormack, Labyrinthia Mythweaver, and Mathew C. Bryant • Horror Poet
Mother Nature Waits
They named her Willow before she understood what it meant to hold.
As a child, she moved toward edges. Grass thinned into root. Water slowed before turning. Trees inclined as if responding to something unseen. She listened with her whole attention, tracing patterns others passed by. Once, she found a tree cut at the base, its rings exposed in quiet precision. She knelt and followed them with her finger, counting slowly, tracing time made visible, trying to understand how something so alive could be reduced to measure. The question stayed with her long after she stood.
The day she wandered, the sky stretched thin under pale gray light. In her pocket was a small brass compass, more charm than tool. Its glass was scratched. Its needle trembled without settling. She followed a line of trees whose branches leaned the same way. One step beyond the trail marker became several. Voices receded. Leaves softened beneath her shoes, then dampened, then went nearly silent. She turned once, trying to fix her origin in memory.
Near the marker, the soil darkened in a small, irregular patch, too black for shade, too still for mud. The air held a faint, sharp sweetness, like something once burned and then covered. Willow noticed, then moved on.
The forest offered no orientation.
“Okay,” she said, steadying herself. She continued.
Time loosened. Air cooled. Light thinned. Trees gathered closer, rising in quiet columns. Willow slowed. “Hello?”
Her voice softened as it moved outward, absorbed into the trees and returned diminished.
Fern fronds trembled.
Deliberate. Measured.
From the undergrowth, a figure lifted. It was shaped from branch and reed, hair threaded with dried grass. Its hands carried the tone of earth. The space adjusted around it, as if the forest made room.
Willow held still. Her breath shortened, then steadied.
“Why am I here?”
The figure inclined its head. Branches nearby followed the same angle. “You followed what leaned.”
“I’ve lost my way.”
The figure stepped forward once. The ground beneath Willow’s feet settled. “You have begun to notice.”
“That doesn’t help me get out.”
The air was still. The figure lifted its hand and traced a small circle in the air. “You seek an exit. This place offers orientation.”
Willow exhaled, tension rising. “Those are different.”
“Only when attention fragments.”
“Then tell me where to go.”
The figure extended a hand. Grasses parted faintly ahead. “Stay, listen, and then move.”
Silence gathered.
Willow drew a slower breath.
“I am listening.”
The figure remained still. “For direction.” The distinction settled, incomplete yet present.
Willow closed her eyes briefly.
In that moment she felt it:
a current beneath the soil
a shift in air where water moved unseen
branches orienting toward light
The forest carried pattern and beneath it: something buried without leaving.
The words surfaced through her, uninvited, and exact:
Her spirit remains
where tar melted hair and flesh
hungry for lost souls
Willow’s breath caught. “That isn’t mine.”
The figure held still. “Nothing here belongs to one.”
Willow’s gaze moved through the trees, unsettled. “What is it?”
The figure stepped forward once. The ground beneath her feet compressed, dense with memory. “Pressure.”
The air thickened. Willow swallowed. “It feels wrong.”
“It is recorded.” The figure lifted its hand and traced a vertical line through the air, slow, deliberate. “Bearing the marks of neither God nor man, it keeps its primeval vigil.”
Willow’s shoulders tightened.
“You carry that?”
“I carry what remains after decision.” There was something ancient and sad in the figure’s voice.
Willow felt a shiver down her spine. The thought settled into something sharper. “Who are you?”
The forest shifted. The figure straightened slightly. Its form was distinct, yet inseparable from what surrounded it. Leaves stirred, then stilled. “I am what persists without permission.”
Willow’s breath caught.
The figure stepped once, closer. “System and source, constraint and continuity,
growth and correction.”
The figure paused, then continued. “You stand within me. You move because of me. You forget me. Then return.”
Willow absorbed that slowly. “You’re the forest?”
“The forest is expression.” The words felt final.
“You’re… everything?”
The figure remained still. “Pattern... You are within pattern.”
Willow stood quietly. Something aligned. “Where do I go?”
The figure angled aside. “Toward what opens.”
Willow moved with care. She sensed each step before placing it. The ground shifted beneath her, firm in one place and hollow in another. She adjusted.
Midway through, she stopped. Her shoulders tightened. “What if I choose wrong?”
Behind her, the brush stirred.
The figure stood at a distance now. “You will.”
Willow turned sharply. “That’s supposed to help?”
A slight tilt. “You will adjust.”
Willow held that, then exhaled. “Will I make it out?”
The figure lifted its arm, tracing a downward line. “You will learn how to move through.”
Willow lowered her gaze. The ground revealed subtle variations, texture, tone, compression.
She nodded once.
And continued.
***
Morning spread across the trees. The forest thinned and released her into open ground.
She turned once more.
The figure stood at a distance, then stilled, dissolving back into the brush.
***
Willow grew with that moment embedded in her.
She studied ecosystems, learning how balance sustains continuity and how disruption travels outward over time. She studied governance, watching policy try to hold complexity, then fracture under pressure. In windowless rooms, she learned the smell of warm toner on fresh packets, the thin buzz of fluorescent lights, the way a coffee ring could outlast a decision.
She entered rooms where outcomes were determined before they appeared.
She listened first, then spoke with precision.
Over time, she became known for clarity. She identified downstream impact before it surfaced. She translated complexity into shared understanding. She aligned competing priorities without diminishing consequence.
Yet understanding alone proved insufficient.
***
The pivotal moment came in a room built for efficiency. A proposal lay before them: development that would drain a wetland and redirect the river’s edge.
Willow leaned forward, tracing the proposal with her finger.
“This alters filtration capacity. It shifts flood patterns. The cost appears later.”
Heads nodded.
Pens moved.
The agenda advanced.
The vote followed.
It passed.
Willow sat back, still.
Accuracy alone had not altered the outcome.
***
Within a year, the river carried sediment where it once ran clear. Flooding extended further inland. Heat intensified where water had once moderated it.
The system responded exactly as it had been designed to.
***
Willow returned to the forest.
Her hand went, without thinking, to her coat pocket. The old compass was there, still unreliable, still insisting on a direction even when she didn’t trust it.
The brush moved.
She stopped.
“Still listening?” The figure emerged. Something waited between them. “What did you bring with you?”
Willow exhaled slowly. “Frustration and the need to convince.”
The figure traced a short line in the air, then extended it outward into a wider arc. “You focused on the moment.”
Branches around them followed, widening. “Build what shapes it. Riverbanks are decided upstream.”
Willow’s gaze sharpened. “I spoke clearly.”
A slight inclination.
“You spoke within the decision.” The figure waited a moment and then, “Shape what informs it.”
Willow’s posture shifted. “How?”
The figure stepped back, then gestured beyond her, farther than the clearing. “Begin earlier. Before the agenda advances. Before funding hardens commitment. Before language narrows what’s possible. Align before pressure defines direction. Make it visible before it becomes urgent.”
Willow nodded slowly. She was finally beginning to understand.
***
She returned to her work with a different approach.
She built coalitions early. She aligned stakeholders before pressure defined outcomes. She translated environmental impact into language that held across disciplines. She integrated community presence into decision-making structures.
She shaped conditions.
Over time, outcomes changed. Projects adapted. Some halted. Others were redesigned with ecological continuity in mind.
She stopped entering rooms to argue outcomes and began shaping the conditions that produced them.
***
When the work intensified, Willow returned to the forest.
The brush would shift.
“Still listening?”
A subtle movement in the branches.
Direction.
“Then continue.”
***
In moments of uncertainty, when direction thinned and pressure gathered again, Willow moved slower.
She returned.
Past the trail marker. Past the place where voices dissolved. Into the quiet that required her full attention.
The forest received her. The understory made room. She sat.
Beside her, the figure settled. Its form rose and dissolved with the movement of the land. No words moved between them. They remained there in quiet alignment.
Waiting.
For the next shift.
For the next signal.
For the next person to wander far enough to begin listening.
***
Nothing disappears it settles, records and waits.
And when someone finally listens, it rises again, layered like rings in living wood,
unchanged, until something chooses to change it.
***
© Monica A Leyva 2026 All rights reserved
Even when everything seems to settle into a form that can finally be understood, something continues to remain before any decision, as if what orients never fully coincides with what is chosen, and it is precisely in that earlier point, where nothing is yet defined but everything has already begun to move, that the passage cannot be guided but only recognized as it happens, each time without being held.
Hey Monica
Such a thoughtful article ☺️☺️
☮️💜☮️💜☮️
You write so well that it is interesting to read 👌🏽