A lumberjack told me his work was a gentle art. I kept the sentence. Then I went to see if it was true.

The forest is loud in a soft way. Wind instead of drills. I found a tree and swung, and I was terrible. A level nineteen hacker flinching at his own axe, one slow log at a time.

Around the fourth swing I caught the edge of what he meant. You take one thing and leave the rest to grow.

I gave a log to a request the council had posted, the first thing I ever made that someone wanted. They gave me a forest ward inspection report for it.

Sore arms and a souvenir. Fair trade.