Drabble Cascade #23 : tree --- Ruing Past Decisions

FB3X Drabble Cascade #23 - Tree

Title: Ruing Past Decisions (G, m/either)
Author: charisstoma
Word count: 100
Prompt: tree
Sweet Laurel or Bay is the same tree; the name Bay is generally male.


Laurel or Bay, depending on the mood, considered the lovers trysting beneath. There were times when thoughts of what if Apollo had had his way caused aching within. Times like now when lovers met, moaned, and filled the fragrant night with passionate cries.

‘If I’d only known of the delights to be had,’ was sighed as Zephyrus, the losing wooer of Hyacinth, caressed the tree’s lithe limbs. Knowledge and wisdom, like lust and love, didn’t have to be dissimilar. Who’d care when in the throes of ardent embraces, be they from Sun or Wind, as both caused feelings of burning.

Family Matters - a collaboration between Mee-eep and me

Titled: Family Matters
A Mee-eep and charisstoma collaboration that bloomed up and out of 'Family Tree', posted here for those that didn’t go past the initial posting.
Word count: 1137 ( Read more... )

Nemeton

Not my personal writing as these are quotes from Ancient Roman works but they fit with the Drabble Cascade #23 prompt of tree.

Tasha's "The Supplicant"
http://fantasyboysxxx.blogspot.com/2013/08/fb3x-drabble-cascade-23-supplicant-mm.html

and Beren's "Self Sacrifice (Part #1 The Sacrifice Arc) -Teen Wolf
http://beren-writes.livejournal.com/892537.html?utm_campaign=Listly&utm_medium=list&utm_source=listly

took me exploring 'cause what in the ... is a nemeton?


*******

The Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, known as Lucan, and Pliny wrote that druids did not meet in stone temples or other constructions, but in sacred groves of trees. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemeton


...Lucan described a sacred grove near modern-day Marseilles like this: no bird nested in the nemeton, nor did any animal lurk nearby; the leaves constantly shivered though no breeze stirred. Altars stood in its midst, and the images of the gods. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. the very earth groaned, dead yews revived; unconsumed trees were surrounded with flame, and huge serpents twined round the oaks. The people feared to approach the grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight lest he should then meet its divine guardian.

According to Pliny the Elder in Historia naturalis: Book XII, the trees formed the first temples of the gods, and even at the present day, the country people, preserving in all their simplicity their ancient rites, consecrate the finest among their trees to some divinity….each kind of tree remains immutably consecrated to its own peculiar divinity, the beech to Jupiter, the laurel to Apollo, the olive to Minerva, the myrtle to Venus, and the poplar to Hercules: besides which, it is our belief that the Sylvans, the Fauns, and various kinds of goddess Nymphs, have the tutelage of the woods, and we look upon those deities as especially appointed to preside over them by the will of heaven.
http://pirottablog.com/2012/09/