She felt it even before hearing it or seeing it. It was as if the tone of the earth under her feet had shifted somehow; not exactly a movement, not exactly a feeling, it was somewhere in between. Stefanie paused, looking away from Hope and over towards the shoreline again. She cocked her head to one side as if listening, and then her eyes were drawn to a particular, old tree sitting at the water's edge. In almost a trance-like state, the girl rose to her feet and crossed slowly through the clearing until she place her small hands on the trunk of the old tree. She had heard talk of Tree People from her mother; some legends spoke of the old ones; elder spirits living among them sight unseen. Every plant, animal, rock, or mountain had a voice. The water had a voice, the sky had a voice. Now, she was looking up with wide brown eyes and staring into the face of an elder that she had never seen before. It spoke quietly in her ears, but with a steady voice, and she listened in silence while her fingers traced the outlines of it's face as much as she could reach. She was, somewhere in the back of her mind, aware of Colt's sharp green eyes watching her, and watching what she was doing, but she wasn't paying attention to him, or Hope at the moment. Her focus was on the elder tree spirit in front of her - and she was listening. -------------------- Just for the record, I really despise the new gallery interface in regards to the tags, and the ability (or LACK thereof...) to actually credit more than one vendor... as if we'd not need to tag more than ONE vendor, of course. But that's all I will say. The gallery interface is now officially so clunky that I have very little motivation to add anything here with any kind of regularity. End of rant. :) Promise. Anyway - this image took me about a day or so to set up, and then I ran into issues with an old DS mouse pointer bug, combined with a constant LAMH problem, so I was not able to open the scene to correct a few things, or render at the resolution I wanted to. I would strongly, strongly advise that you click and look at the image in full view, as the smaller resolution completely destroys most of the details. Thanks for looking. :)