Scrapped Story
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(I scrapped this because I didn't like the way it held together plus searching up all the types of roots was annoying I will make another one similar longer I just don't know where to go with this so it's getting scrapped)
Shaun grew up where the map erased itself at the edge of a forest with its own silent laws: do not break roots, do not disrespect what respects you, do not bring fire beneath the green. The rules came from his parents; however, we all knew they were never made by them. Bram put a palm to bark, offering sanctuary. He learned to listen; the way others learned to live. After that he had a family, he taught them all the rules of the forest. Eira, his beautiful wife, and Shaun is his one and only child. They learned the rules of the forest to a tee respect what respects you. Once, those rules were held engraved into Shaun he lost everything. A night of smoke and destruction broke them. Bandits came running/ Shaun watched what made him human burn until his hands felt like they were frozen in time. He remembers boiled bitterroots. His father's tracking knife flashes uselessly in the dark. Years later he walks the land like a shadow, trading safety for sensation for anything. He sleeps in ruined porches and the streets anywhere that’s dry wakes to the market's noise in the morning. He keeps moving as if movement might rub the numbness off him or at least make him notice it's there. Eira's recipes are a saint in his mouth; he can taste thyme and feverfew and the way she folded hope into anything she wished. Bram taught him to read soft signs. A bent stalk, the slant of a footprint; a bird's wrong alarm was engraved into him by the time he was 8. Those lessons live in his muscles even if he wishes to forget. He knows Harkun's name, a name he'll never forget nor his face. The bandit leader's scarred face is something Shaun consults in memory, the only thing that keeps him going anger. The forest watches from the hollow he sits by a tree and waits for anything that can show him he isn’t worthless. That he still has meaning.
