04/11/2026
𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 | 𝐃𝐈𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐀
My grandmother always says the forest had its own kind of silence—not the hush before rain, but something older. Something that listened.
"Never take anything from them without asking permission", she warned. There were things in this world that did not belong to us simply because our hands could reach them.
When my brother began slipping from the world, I let her warning fall silent.
Beyond the river stood a balete tree, its roots knotted like the fingers of something buried alive. The elders said a diwata watched over the forest. At dusk, I went to the tree and begged for my brother's life. I offered everything, though I had nothing worth giving.
By morning, his fever had broken.
My mother called it a miracle. The village called it a bargain.
Then the spring began to recede.
Fish floated belly-up in the shallows, leaves curled brown against their branches, and birds abandoned their nests. The elders whispered that the diwata was collecting her due.
They spoke as though the forest had suddenly become cruel.
Along the trail to the balete, I found freshly cut stumps. The markings on the fallen timber belonged to my father, who sold wood at the market. Farther ahead, a broken irrigation channel diverted what remained of the stream towards plantations owned by the wealthiest families.
The forest had been dying long before I prayed.
We had cut its trees, stolen its water, and called the destruction progress. We ignored our grandmothers' warnings and remembered only the monster.
At the balete, I found a woman standing beneath its branches. The earth around her feet was damp, though the ground beyond had cracked.
"Did you save my brother?" I asked.
She looked towards the village.
"Did you ask me to save the forest?"
I wanted an answer, a price, something I could understand. Instead, she touched one exposed root.
Somewhere beneath the earth, water stirred.
That night, rain fell.
The spring filled, and the villagers gave thanks. My father stopped cutting timber, but only for a time. By the next dry season, the axes returned. No one spoke of the broken channel. No one wanted to remember what laid beneath the earth when the rain came.
My brother began wandering towards the river. He said someone was calling him from beneath the water. Sometimes, he stood by the window long after sunset, listening to something I could not hear.
I told him it was the wind.
I did not tell my mother.
One afternoon, he left while the rice was cooking.
We searched until dusk. Beside the spring lay his slippers, dark with mud. His footprints led towards the balete and disappeared among its roots.
There were none leading home.
My mother kept his slippers beside the door, turning them towards the road each evening, as though grief could be given directions.
The villagers blamed the diwata. My father said nothing.
I returned to the tree carrying a bowl of rice. The roots had grown over the place where I knelt that first evening. I searched the shadows for the woman, though I could no longer remember her face.
Perhaps I had seen her. Perhaps grief had given shape to the silence.
I set down the offering and waited.
Nothing came.
On my way home, I passed the spring. Water slipped over stones that had once lain bare beneath the sun.
At our door, my brother's slippers still faced the road.
My grandmother said the forest had its own kind of silence. I understand now that she was not warning me about what lived among the trees.
She was warning me about what could be lost.
She had never told me what to do when it was too late to ask permission.
Written by 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐑. 𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐳
Illustration by 𝐉𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐂. 𝐀𝐛𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐚, Synapse Publication
