He set fire to the world, but never let a flame touch her.

She was invaluable. She was his secret.

He watched her play with the apple slices on the table. Her fingers were so... normal. It wasn't right, and that was just her magic. Everything about her was not quite right, and it was captivating.

"Aren't you going to eat any?" she asked. It took him a minute to decipher what she said through the accent of a thousand years of culture that had passed her by.

A smile exhaled out of him and disappeared just as quickly. She gave him an inquisitive look, which was really just a look because all her looks were inquisitive. A smile tugged the corner of his lips down again, and he swept a hand backward over the apples in an explanatory manner. "You touched them all."

Her eyes were always wide, but never with surprise. Just a full receptiveness. "So?"

Sometimes she was more deer than girl, soft-eyed and careful. Sometimes she was airy and golden and carved like a goddess. Right now, she was a small and lovely brown creature with great knots of black hair and vivid green eyes. He liked best whichever one she was at that moment.

"People don't do that," Will said. "You only touch the ones you're going to eat."

Her face gathered together darkly as she pondered this.

"Will, we need you in here," a voice inserted itself in the room before the person did.

"Coming," Will mumbled in the general direction of the senior editor who had just swung himself halfway into the doorway. Will had very little motivation for coming. He had little use for the halfwits the newspaper had collected as its chief staff members. He would much rather sit here and watch her.

She was frowning down at the apples, her wild hair spilling around her like an unassuming waterfall. She looked up like she had a new part to contribute to the conversation and said flatly, "So you're not going to eat any?"

He could have laughed. He loved her so much.

"Will!" someone boomed down the hall, and he went.

He stuffed himself in the tiny, dingy editorial meeting room and tried to look like he was halfway listening. It was the same story. Grizzled old men trying to make their mark on a world that was making them obsolete. Arrogant young university men, determined to renounce the old world and become legends. Will thought to himself that this wasn't news. The world had seen this all before, a thousand times over. Revolution was never new. But the Eddersdam Newspaper was determined to cover the Six-Day War no matter what Will said. His argument for moving on to more news-worthy topics was immediately dismissed on the perplexing grounds that he had been the one to incite revolution in the first place. It was his article that had set the world on fire with revolution. He had only been allowed to be proud of that fact for a week before he thoroughly regretted it.

He tuned out the excited droning of editors who still thought revolution was a good idea, and let his thoughts wander to wondering whether she had decided to eat the whole apple by herself. Since he had befriended her a decade ago, he had been pressed into accepting half of every meal she had, every gift she was given, every everything. She didn't understand how not to share.

He had found her in the Black Forest on the day his world was falling. The day his father walked out. He was nine. He raged out into the woods, feeling the heat, the fury in his chest threaten to tear out of him and burn the whole forest to the ground. He punched a tree and collapsed to his knees. She walked out of the tree and knelt in front of him and lifted his chin. She looked into his eyes and cried for him. After that she wouldn't leave his side.

She was a magical being. Or perhaps magic itself. She was the heart, the lifeblood of the forest. She was the forest personified.

He couldn't let the world find her. Because he knew people. The world would burn her. He knew she was the greatest story of all time, but the world did not deserve her, and so he would never let the flames of the newspaper touch her.

Will left the millisecond the meeting was over. He didn't go back to his office, just tumbled straight down the three flights of stairs of the rickety brick building to the bottom floor which housed a butcher shop. She joined him before he recognized her presence at his elbow and he jumped a little when she asked, "What will you do if the rebels come to you?"

They thrust out onto the bustling sidewalk together and he shrugged, not wanting to think about it. He knew they would want to recruit him, and there had been a time he thrilled at the prospect. Now he didn't care which side he was on. Or more accurately, he was on the side of the earth. He couldn't care less what the humans did, so long as they kept their sickly fire away from his forest.

They pushed through the dusty crowds of the city until roads thinned into dirt trails and sooty buildings morphed into dark pines. Will and the girl, whom he called Tree, lived in the cottage Will and his mother and father had once lived in together.

Will went straight to the bedroom and kissed his mother's forehead. She awoke and smiled up at him.

Will clasped her frail hand. "Hi Mama."

"Hi baby."

"Did you rest today?" Will asked doubtfully.

By way of answer, she tried to sit up. Will scolded her for this, so she pointed to a letter on the bedside table.

Will picked it up, bewildered. His eyes skipped to the name at the bottom and his heart dropped right out of him.

Tree came in and sat on the bed and pet Mama's head. She could always sense his distress.

Will met Tree's eyes and exposed his horror before her. Tree squinted in question as she studied Will's face.

His eyes ran over and over a sentence in the middle without absorbing it. Join me, son. Don't be caught on the wrong side of this war.

Tree's eyes waited patiently for him. "What does it say?"

"Father— ...They're coming. They want to make me a weapon of their war."

"Leave."

Tree and Will looked at Mama, startled at her voice.

"Leave," she whispered again, reaching out to Will. "You must go."

No, Mama, Will pleaded with his eyes. I can't leave you.

Her eyes smiled sadly back. Let me rest knowing my son is not a tool of war. You can do nothing more for me now.

A storm happened quickly inside of Will. Too many decisions happened in too little time. He remembered very little of it afterwards.

Embracing his mother.

A bag full of a knife, a flintstone, and apples.

Tree opening her palm and growing a flower and pressing it into Mama's hand with a kiss.

Running.

Finally falling asleep on the edge of a creek beside Tree, thinking, at least the forest is safe.