Hunter's Woods Writing Prompts

   When it comes to the Wayfarers, initially, nobody in the group assigned much of any meaning to... well, anything. That's not to say they had nothing meaningful in their lives, mind you! Beatrix, of course, cared for her companions, and cared deeply for her old human to the point that she would travel to the ends of the earth in search of her. Mitko and Ragin had each other, hunting and wandering together when the world had left them both to their own devices. Sophie found meaning in her youth with helping herself and her family get by, and though their bond wasn't of blood, she took pride in helping to do the same with the one she traveled with now. And Kat... well, he may have been on his own for so long that he'd never even had a name, but Beatrix was such a sweet young cat, how could he possibly leave her to her own devices?
   But assigning meaning to physical things, beyond what they simply were? Reverence, spirituality, symbolism? That wasn't anything that any of them had had before they found themselves in the other realm, standing before the gods themselves. The gods... and their trees.
   The journey Beatrix, Mitko, and Ragin experienced in that world changed them, in some ways. For if a tree could carry the spirit of a god, well, it would only make sense for them to recognize them for the power they might hold. One of the cats that followed them back through the portal held that reverence even closer, to little surprise - In that other world she cared not only for the tree, but all the plants beneath it, after all. The arboreal goddess was their home, their protector, and it was their duty to care for and protect her tree and its plants in turn. It was only right.
   Still, not all the cats of the Wayfarers understood their feelings towards the flora. Kat and Sophie, of course, hadn't followed the trio through the portal before it had closed behind them, and so had no point of reference for their newfound reverence, and even Mitko, who had been there himself, denounced the whole affair as, in his words, "an absolute mess." Why would he hold reverence for the trees and plants when their gods had dragged them unknowingly into their affairs, threatened their lives and all they'd even known, only to ultimately kill each other and leave them and all the felines they'd summoned with, at the time, no hope of getting home, and their worshipers mourning their losses?
   Virva held a similar disdain for the thought of trees and plants as anything more than just that. The goddess and her tree, all her life it had been, "The goddess and her tree," "Stay beneath the goddess and her tree," "The goddess and her tree will watch over and protect you." Never a choice of her own, trapped there, always being watched, whether by the other felines or the goddess herself... and some protector she had turned out to be, stirring them to war until life and decay both burned themselves to ash. Ridiculous. If there were gods within the trees of this realm, she would be glad to turn up her nose to them.
   And, perhaps the most unusual, Berkeley? A god themselves, part of the new generation, meant to balance out the two trees and their deities who were to take the lost gods' places? The deity of rebirth, their true form a little sapling, one of a triad forming into a grove somewhere far away? Well, truthfully, Berkeley simply decided not to think about it. It was too much to process, far too much. With all the memories that now held within them, more than any being should have thrust upon them so suddenly, they had more than enough on their mind without the thought of their new form and new responsibilities. If there were gods within the trees, even if they were one of them, they wanted no part in it.