Creatures of FASA

FASA 365 Day 115, Stump Thumper. For 1879, Forest Spirt. Usually an angry one, or at the very least, disgruntled.
Artist Note: THIS is a memory.
As a kid, in Ohio, there was a patch of woods behind Helke Elementary that I would walk through to get to and from school. To tell the truth, I was often running through the woods, usually with a posse of bullies hot on my heels.
On one such escape attempt I tripped on the roots of a stump. The remains of broken off tree that had been knocked down during a windstorm from what looked like ages ago. This was in the fall, close to Halloween, and nearing dusk, with a thunderstorm looming… well, a kids imagination will go places.
Now the stump didn’t hinder my escape. In fact I was able to hide behind it as the bullies passed. However, I did not escape completely unharmed. When I leaned against the stump to stand, I got a huge splinter in my thumb.
Over the years, I would walk passed the stump, and noted that at the right time of day, and at the right angle, it always looked angry.
So, being the story teller that I am, I made up a story… in which I asked the stump what made him so angry, …and he answered.
He told me of how the wind challenged him one night with a boast that he could blow so hard that he could rip any tree from the ground. But the wind lost that bet. He said that he clung so hard to the ground, that in a huff, (no pun intended) the wind broke him off. Leaving him as a stump, and that doing so was robbery.
He’d been robbed of the joys that all trees should know. Robbed of growing large and old enough to have lovers carve their initials in him. Robbed of growing big and strong enough to have kids build a house in his limbs. Robbed of the joys of his leaves turning colors and spreading those colors all around him. Now the only things the leaves do is scratch his chin. Very annoying,
But, still, he takes solace in the notion that the wind didn’t win, and can never win. He’s still here, passing out splinters to rude little boy that kick him as they pass.
With that, the stump growled a warning. Telling me never to come near him again, or he’d give me another splinter for my other thumb. A matched set of scars to remember him by.
It’s been nearly 50 years, and I still have the scar in my thumb where my father had to dig the splinter out.
I live in New Hampshire now. But I often wonder, is the old stump still there? Passing out splinters.
Looking at my scar today, I remembered the stump and the story, and how fitting a creature he would be in a world where magic could make such a story…. a reality.