3rd Night of the Falling Mist, where the forests whisper

I heard of her in a dream.

Or was it the wind that whispered it to me?

There, where the trees murmur and the mist lies heavy on the paths, where shadows tangle in the roots and no light dares enter the forest without fear, she lives. The Old Mother.

A whisper in the trunks.

A breath, barely perceptible, on the skin.

She sees you.

And she knows.

The Legend

No one knows exactly how long she has been there. Some say she is as old as the roots of the trees themselves, born from the breath of the forest, a mother of moss and shadow. Others swear she was once a woman, a wise one who knew too much, betrayed by humans and cast into the darkness.

But she did not vanish. She became more.

The Old Mother is not an evil spirit. But she is no gentle being either. She is the forest, the balance, the judgment that is spoken when no one is watching.

She helps the lost, the wounded, those who enter the woods with respect. A whisper in the leaves, an invisible gesture, an unassuming trace in the moss—and suddenly, the saving path appears before them.

But those who come with dark hearts, who destroy, who take without giving, who walk through her realm with greed in their eyes—they will come to know the Old Mother.

She does not speak. She does not need to. The guilty feel it in their bones. A breath on their neck.

A shadow moving with the mist.

A tingling beneath the skin.

No one sees her coming.

But when she leaves, not everyone leaves with her.

The Idea

I did not just want to tell her story.

I wanted to let her breathe.

Not the sudden horror of a demon.

Not the relentless terror of a vengeful spirit.

No —the Old Mother is different.

She is the cold that slowly seeps through the fabric.

She is the silence that becomes too loud.

The certainty that you are not alone—and never truly were.

She does not move quickly. She does not need to.

She knows she will find you.

The Costume

I layered fabric upon fabric over my skin.

A skirt that whispered with every movement like leaves in the wind. A second layer, rough like tree bark. Textures, wrinkled, marked by age, colors that were once vibrant but had now faded like ash.

A dark veil over my head, like a shroud between worlds. It did not conceal me—it made me her.

Then, the face.

Deep wrinkles, like stories carved into the skin. Shadows in the cheeks, furrows on the forehead. And the eyes—black, deep, bottomless. No pupils, no light, only emptiness.

When I looked into the mirror, something else looked back.

The Performance

There was no music.

Only the sound of the trees, the creaking of branches, the breath of the earth.I heard it. I felt it.

The Old Mother does not move like others. She glides, slowly, deliberately, as if time has long since lost its meaning for her.

One foot placed silently before the other.A hand lifting—bony, measured.

A twitch in the shoulder. A tremor, inhuman, a fracture in movement, an echo of those who came before me.

I tilted my head, let my gaze rest heavily on a point, on someone, on no one—knowing, waiting.

There is no haste. No sudden motion.Only the unstoppable certainty that the Old Mother never forgets.

I was no longer myself.

I was the forests.

I was the breath of the trees.I was the shadow that crept over the ground.

I was her.

And somewhere, deep in the darkness, I heard the forest whisper.

"She sees you."