Phoenix Maplewood li pale [m]

Totoro imagined these woods looked particularly splendid in full bloom. They wandered along forest paths beneath boughs just now sprouting pinkish blossoms framed in tender green buds. The air smelled clean following an earlier rain shower, though now the sun shone down through the branches, dappling the forest floor. All of it made them slightly nostalgic for the place where they had grown up, a distant holt Totoro hadn’t seen since dispersing the year previous.

They began to hum under their breath as they wended westward, unaware that they also had connections to this place through their mother. Sugar had never set in this particular forest. But had she been here with her child, she might have recognized the stretches of wilderness over yonder, where she had spent the first years of her life before quitting them for good and settling down with The Coven.

A new smell threaded into Totoro’s nose. It twitched and they paused, turning their head to scan the forest. They saw a bundle of red fur curled up near the roots of a towering maple, perhaps the grandest one in the whole woodland. It was a she-wolf, her head tilted upward to look at something. When Totoro followed her gaze, they saw a pair of finches hopping about among the maple blossoms.

Dropping their sky blue eyes, they waved their tail and called, Halloo!