"I will!" Clara chirped back, already trying to dry Molly off by the fire.
By morning, the awful storm had passed. Although it had continued until early in the morning. Adella's mother had returned, and cleaned and redressed Adella's knee again despite Adella trying to convince her mother that she had taken care of her knee in the same fashion. But, by morning, even though Adella should have been exhausted, with the combination of having to be saved by Jeremiah, and staying up practically all night, Adella was awake and alert. Before everyone else. She quietly got herself dressed, and snuck out of her small house. And thankfully, like normal, her knee didn't hurt as much as it had last night and she was able to walk without too bad of a limp.
The morning was quiet. No one was awake yet in the early morning hours. Branches and leaves were scattered all over the fort from last nights storm. Some windows were even broken. There was going to be a lot of clean up needing to be done around here. Dew sparkled on the blades of grass, and the fallen leaves as she quietly exited the fort. She hadn't told her father of the people she saw in the woods. She wasn't sure if she wanted to. The last time she told him of people in the woods, a few months later, he had found them a boat to take them to the New World. And, here they were.
It didn't take long for her to find her way back to the clearing where Peter and Clara were happily playing and her and Jeremiah were talking and laughing like normal just yesterday. But, the large oak tree, the one where Adella and Jeremiah, and even Peter and Clara had first met, where everything started for them, was severly damaged by a lightning strike during last nights storm. The bark was blackened, and the tree was broken and hanging at painful angles. This tree, the one that has always provided them shade, and a place to rest, when their youngest siblings were playing, was dying.
Adella felt a pang of sadness at the state of this tree. She never knew a tree could ever have meaning in her life, but, seeing it now, she realized this tree had become more than just a tree to her. She was silent as she rested her hand on the burned, broken trunk of the tree. She didn't even realize it, but her green eyes closed and she let the sounds of the forest surround her. Rabbits scurrying through the bushes, birds chirping, the leaves rustling in the early morning wind. And... It seemed that even this tree, so badly damaged, had a voice. A life of it's own. A spark that she could see. Feel. Maybe even touch. Before she even realized it, she was trying to touch that spark with her minds eye. It felt so warm. Like it was an old friend, calling out to her.