The land has always been the foothold for society in wild places, but even stubborn crops grew sparse so close to the cold breath of the mountain. Silent trees spoked with sunlit beams stretched past a peaceful waterfall, but closer to the forest's edge the raucous fauna re-surged. An urchin hobbled up the path bearing a basket of beaten vegetables, and the tall traveler in tan vest raised an arm to halt the lad. Despite his distrust, the boy finally leaned on his cane and answered some questions.

"Farmin' ain't so good, but the huntin' is, so you should be able to get a meal. The animals don't run far, sometimes they're just layin' there. If you want a place to stay, go talk to...uhh, Ms. Dheren, I think."

The dark-haired man thanked the boy and they parted ways, but the lad stopped uncertain at the fork before choosing a path. The traveler soon walked into a small village surrounded by tough earth and paltry crops. Most of the townsfolk were on the western horizon with teams of mules all fighting to tear up a great big stump. The wooden home the wanderer was directed to sat in notable disrepair, but the woman within was a motherly sort. She agreed to lodging and food for a few chores done. The dusty afternoon was filled with replaced nails, cleaned nooks, and other minor tasks. It was late in the day when the young man heard a commotion, and dropped down from the roof with a few extra tiles. He walked down the dusty street and toward a group of villagers gathered around an argument. It was about the expansion of the farms, and centered around the waterfall he had passed on his way down the mountain.

"They only redirected it to flood the mine," a stocky younger man was saying. "There's no reason we can't use it now." A lot of nods followed this, but a middle-aged man with a wooden cane was shaking his head. He started droning on about upsetting the creatures that lived there, but the only heads to nod were as aged as his. Most of the older villagers stood propped on sticks and canes, and their eyes wandered inattentive. They were ignored, and politely shuffled away by their family when the argument died down. The traveler returned to the Dheren house, and the smell of stew was already wafting. As they ate, she told him that it had been going on for days, but they wouldn't decide until they finished pulling stumps from the western field; he had only seen the one.

After dinner the young man went for a walk to escape the wandering hands of the older woman, and soon he was headed to the waterfall. A kid hobbled back from one branch of the fork as the traveler approached, and took the other with an embarrassed hunch; he was carrying a basket. As the long-haired wanderer walked, the air grew quiet and still but for the soft roar of water down weathered rocks. The moon peeked through the canopy, and fell upon a tree frog. The creature was perched on a large spruce right at the foot of the basin, and it watched the young man as he stepped up to peer into the water.

"Would you stop them?"

Sharp eyes revealed only dark forest, and silent night. The frog moved, and when he looked at it the question repeated, in a soft and feminine voice. His confused gaze was met by a calm nod from the frog; instinct was the only thing that kept him from jumping back as from a ghost. When the traveler asked if she meant to stop them from diverting the waterfall basin, the frog nodded again. The skeptical lad responded with a simple "Why?" The tree-bound toad returned with a vague warning that the men of the village had all been sickly before they flooded the mine. The moonlight sank quite far beneath the rippling surface; no telling if anything was still down there, but it was hard to argue with a talking frog.

"I will try."

When the tall traveler looked back the creature was gone. He sat beneath the tree thinking for a while, and soon dozed off. When dawn broke through the canopy, his blue eyes fluttered open. The frog was nowhere to be seen near the quiet pool, so he dusted off his tan pants and trotted back toward the village. The birds finally started chirping once he neared the fields, and men were already toiling at the same stump. There were no others, and it looked like they would get it out today. Ms. Dheren was all a-flutter when he returned, but after a meager breakfast of leftover stew he was back to work. When the crowd gathered again he waited near the back. People were clearly in favor of funneling the water down for irrigation. A momentary doubt entered the wanderer's mind, whether he had the right to potentially alter their decision, their livelihood, based on the words of a frog. To be safe, he decided to be as impartial as he could, and if they went with it, then it would be their choice.

"The river folk lay fat with barley all year round," the young speaker was finishing, "They don't even know its value in sweat and toil. Once the irrigation system is finished, we will eat like lords!" A cheer rose, and some of the cane-wielding elderly confusedly joined in. After the commotion died down, the traveler finally piped up. With a cough to grab attention, he told them that he had heard a tale of sickness before the mine was flooded, and that uncovering it could lead to a relapse. A few of the elders eyed him suspiciously, and one asked who had told him that. He responded with a vague story of talking with someone who lived near the waterfall, but the younger ones immediately returned with cries that those near the fall just wanted the water for themselves.

The outsider got only sharp glances after that. As the sun set on a cleared western field, the wanderer walked back to the Dheren place. He tried to get some sleep after the meal, but laid so long thinking about the waterfall that he didn't wake until mid-afternoon. As he headed out the door, Ms. Dheren stopped him, and urged him to wait until dark. She feared some of the younger men would grow violent if he interfered. He relented, and finished up some yard-work as the hours stretched long. The whole time he thought of the frog's warning, and wondered if he should've tried harder to convince the villagers.

When dusk sank into deep purple, he finally bid farewell to his kind host. She insisted on handing him some coins, and his more pragmatic side accepted them with gratitude. The traveler felt the need to visit the waterfall one more time. As the path stretched and he neared the place, he noticed that all the chattering creatures of the night had fallen silent. There was already a ditch a few feet deep filled with water, and it crawled thirty paces out from the basin; they had done much in one day. The large tree that had housed the frog was freshly cut, still laying where it had fallen off to the side. They probably planned to pull the roots to widen the ditch. He stopped and sat on the stump, examining the many rocks covered in dark green moss that now lay exposed along the inner slope of the basin.

"After I saw it again, I remembered what they said about it."

The wanderer's head swiveled back to the spruce trunk, and perched on its sawed edge was the small frog. She still wouldn't leave that tree, but her soft voice continued. "Stone Carpet Moss, they called it. None of them could walk without canes by the time they flooded the mine. Many of them starved because too few could work the fields." He followed her eyes to the pool, and looked long at the moss covering those rocks; it was actually black. The mine must've been flooded long ago, though. "It can only release spores when the weather gets colder," she continued, "The water is already full of it, however. For years I watched the animals who drank it slowly begin to stumble and limp, before they finally laid down to starve, but I couldn't remember until I saw it." The tall traveler recalled the forgetful lad carrying a basket; the boy probably drank from here every day. He turned back to the tiny toad, and said "It causes memory loss, too. You're actually a spirit in the tree, aren't you?" She nodded, and he added "You've been absorbing it since the mine was flooded."

The young man thought about warning the villagers, but after his last attempt they probably wouldn't believe him, especially since the effects were so slow. It wasn't even the right season to produce spores. He thought of the stump, and looked back to the small frog. "What will you do?" he asked, and she responded with a sigh. "Once they pull up my roots, I will have to take physical form to survive," she said. "I will probably starve like the rest of them. Every time I've taken that form I can't even crawl without pain." Her voice quivered a little when she spoke of her fate; it seemed even spirits feared death. The weight of his indifference hung heavy on the traveler, and despite his usual policy of staying out of things, he wanted to mitigate it somehow. Selfish to save some small piece just for his own peace of mind, but there it was.

"Come with me."

It was a quiet stretch of night as the frog stared the man down, before she simply asked "Why?" It didn't take him long to return with "Because it's better than dying. It doesn't take much to feed a frog, and with enough time away from this place, you might even recover." She didn't respond immediately, but the wanderer felt the stump grow cold and dry below him, like it was aging years in seconds. When he looked back up to the frog, a hazy glow that he hadn't noticed before was starkly absent. She sat on the log in the dull green of any normal toad, and seemed at once much more real, and much more frail. A bare hand hovered close enough for her to climb onto it, and the dark-haired man pushed the flap of one vest pocket in so he could see into it once she was nestled within.

As he started walking the traveler said "My name is Nyadir, by the way." Her voice was much clearer, and more obviously in his head this time. "Mine is Lynelia...and thank you." He simply nodded, and headed south to the next village; it had to be better off than this one. It didn't take the villagers more than a month to finish diverting the mountain stream down to the fields, and by the time winter rolled around the storehouse was well stocked. The cold breath that blew down from the mountain brought more than snows that year, though. The villagers found patches of black moss covering the forest when winter melted away, but they thought little of it and praised their ingenuity when the crop that year was the biggest ever. It was the next thawing, when the moss had crept into the village, that they began to worry, but by that time not a single one of them could walk without a cane.

It wasn't long until spring fell silent at the foot of the mountain.