"Few axes had ever swung in that black wood, where even the moonlight could not penetrate the ancient tangle of root and thorn and grasping limb. Out there the trees grew huge, and the rangers said they seemed to brood and knew not men. It was small wonder the Night's Watch named it the haunted forest."
Sarah Brown was not altogether unfamiliar with the Parish of Faery, but she never failed to be surprised by the enchantment of the Enchanted Forest. The Green Ride runs straight through it, so incredibly straight that as you walk along it the end of it is at the end of your sight, and is like a star in a green sky. There is a dream that binds your mind as you cross the forest; it is like an imitation of eternity, so that, as you pass into the forest's shade, time passes from before you, and, as you pass out of it, you seem to have lived a thousand quiet and utterly forgotten lives. Clocks and calendars have no meaning in the forest; the seasons and the hours haunt it at their will, and abide by no law.
—Stella Benson, Living Alone
In every forest of the world, there lies the possibility of losing one's way. Trees don't have markers; trails don't follow any kind of logic. In every darkling wood lives something primeval, a hidden heart that beats with ancient blood. This primordial place exists outside the scope of our perceptions, always beyond the borders of civilization. Few people ever see this place, but those who enter the woods with questions in their hearts may find themselves turned around: trees grow thick, thorns bite at clothes and nip skin, and every rotten log is another false landmark. Those who have forgotten their principles or are otherwise troubled hear a soft voice on the wind, whispering for them to come closer. Those who follow arrive at a clearing where others have come before. And then they are truly lost, never to be seen again.
— "The Whispering Wood," Mysterious Places
Athel Loren is more alive than any normal forest, and landmarks and glades shift and move. What was open clearing one night may be heavily wooded the next morning, and pathways often disappear turn back on themselves within hours.
Most that try to enter Athel Loren find themselves constantly returning to where they started despite their best efforts to make headway. Even if they try to walk a straight path, they invariably find themselves turn around and facing out of the forest. Most travellers that persist in entering Athel Loren are found on its outskirts as little more than gibbering wrecks, their sanity shredded by whatever they witnessed in the magical forest.
That is, if they ever return.
Most that try to enter Athel Loren find themselves constantly returning to where they started despite their best efforts to make headway. Even if they try to walk a straight path, they invariably find themselves turn around and facing out of the forest. Most travellers that persist in entering Athel Loren are found on its outskirts as little more than gibbering wrecks, their sanity shredded by whatever they witnessed in the magical forest.
That is, if they ever return.
— Warhammer: Wood Elves Army Book (6th edition)
She presses on fissures of bark and her fingers sink in knuckle-deep. A bit of bushwhacking reveals the extend of the prodigious rot. Crumbling, creature-riddled boles, decaying for centuries. Snags gothic and twisted, silvery as inverted icicles. She has never inhaled such fenced putrefaction. The sheer mass of ever-dying life packed into each single cubic foot, woven together with fungal filaments and dew-betrayed spiderweb leaves her woozy. Mushrooms ladder up the sides of trunks in terraced ledges. Dead salmon feed the trees. Soaked by fog all winter long, spongy green stuff she can't name covers every wooden pillar in thick baize reaching higher than her head.
Death is everywhere, oppressive and beautiful. She sees the source of that forestry doctrine she so resisted in school. Looking at all this glorious decay, a person might be forgiven for thinking that old mean decadent, that such thick mats of decomposition were cellulose cemeteries in need of the rejuvenating ax. She sees why her kind will always dread these close, choked thickets, where the beauty of solo trees gives way to something massed, scary, and crazed. Where the fable turns dark, where the slasher film builds to primal horror, this is where the doomed children and wayward adolescents must wander. There are things in here worse than wolves and witches, primal fears that no amount of civilizing will ever tame.
Death is everywhere, oppressive and beautiful. She sees the source of that forestry doctrine she so resisted in school. Looking at all this glorious decay, a person might be forgiven for thinking that old mean decadent, that such thick mats of decomposition were cellulose cemeteries in need of the rejuvenating ax. She sees why her kind will always dread these close, choked thickets, where the beauty of solo trees gives way to something massed, scary, and crazed. Where the fable turns dark, where the slasher film builds to primal horror, this is where the doomed children and wayward adolescents must wander. There are things in here worse than wolves and witches, primal fears that no amount of civilizing will ever tame.
...I'm plunged deeply into a Black Forest fantasy, where I imagine myself parting sticky pine boughs and stumbling upon a cottage made of gingerbread and candied fruit. Where the perfume adds wisps of incense smoke and dry woods, I fill in the blanks, imagining sweet smoke rising from the chimney and a promise of warmth and welcome inside. Yet, these somber touches hint at something darker too, not unlike the ominous turn the fairy tale takes as soon as Hansel and Gretel enter the old woman's candied cottage.
— Andy Gerber, Scents of Fantasy
