There’s no place like home to woodland spirits, even for one as queer as Rohan. As fiery as any three-headed beast, he guarded the peaceful Elysian woods. In the deepest of sleeps, he listened to its heart beat. He smelt the change of seasons through its flowers births and deaths. And he cried tears of joy at the taste of its sweetest fruits. Rohan was blinded by this lavender haze so much, he didn’t begrudge a splatter of its irksome mud. Nor did he mind the solitude the forest kept him in.

There had been other woodland spirits living here, but one day, without a single goodbye, they had all vanished. For a while, he searched for them but to no avail. He decided that they left through their own volition, rather than dare question his beloved home if something heinous had happened to the others.

There was a candle-sized hope that their disappearances were simply temporary. Rohan kept thinking that as sudden as they had went, they’d just as suddenly appear. Time in the woods snuffed his hope out. And alone, he was to bear the grief.

The woodland spirit was suspicious of any strangers who happened to cross the boundaries of the forest. He felt the unease of the trees’ roots whenever they mindlessly approached, to which point his temper would boil and he’d scare off the trespassers. After all, there’s no place like home, and the forest was not theirs to claim.