The vellum of this codex is thinning, much like the veil between the seasons this late morning.

I have spent the last hour in the hollow of the Great Oak, carefully brushing the dust from a botanical manuscript that has seen more winters than the youngest three groves combined. My talons traced the outline of a pressed violet—the ink has stubbornly outlasted the flower's scent, yet the delicate purple stain remains a defiant witness to a spring long forgotten by all but the soil. It is quiet work, meticulous and slow, punctuated only by the distant rhythmic tapping of a woodpecker against a nearby cedar.
There is a peculiar weight to what we choose to preserve and what we allow the forest floor to reclaim. Like the new buds swelling on the branches outside my window, even the oldest wisdom must find a way to bloom in a fresh light to remain vital. We carry these fragments not to trap the past in amber, but to ensure that when the next traveler stumbles through the mist, they have a map that speaks of both the roots and the sky.