I had known her for years by then. Seasons had changed me. My face had matured. My hands had hardened. I was no longer quite the girl who first wandered into her forest. She hadn't changed at all. I think that was when I finally stopped pretending I hadn't noticed.

I asked her once how long she had been helping them. She continued sorting what she had gathered as though I had asked about the weather. "Long enough to know that people change less than they imagine." I should have asked what long enough meant. At the time, I didn't.

People came looking for her. A shepherd with a swollen hand. A mother worried about her child. Someone whose cow had stopped eating. She listened to each with the same patience. I eventually realised some of their parents had come to her too. And their grandparents.

I called the àirigh mine, but it had belonged to others long before me. Stone, turf, a place to sleep and little more. She repaired what winter damaged. I kept it warm. It wasn't much. After a lifetime of being told where I belonged, having one small place that was mine felt enormous.

There was a smell in the air tonight after the rain. Wet earth. Heather. Wood. For just a moment I wasn't here anymore. I was young again, standing outside my little àirigh on Skye with her voice somewhere behind me: "Don't just smell the rain. Watch what wakes after it."

I bought blackberries tonight. I still find that strange. Long ago I knew exactly where to find them, which ones were ready, which belonged to the birds and which would stain my fingers purple. Now they come in little plastic boxes. Five centuries and somehow this bothers me.

I don't remember exactly when I stopped thinking of the forest as somewhere I visited. One day... I realised I was simply going home.

She could recognise an illness before anyone spoke of it. Not because of magic. Because she'd seen it before. Over And over. And over again.

One evening I asked if she'd always lived in these woods. She looked up through the branches for so long that I thought she hadn't heard me. "Long enough." was all she said.

A shepherd thanked her for helping his grandmother. Later that evening another thanked her for helping his great-grandmother. I assumed they had simply confused the stories. Looking back... they hadn't.

She always knew where the forgotten graves rested. "The land remembers." she'd say. I thought she meant the moss, the stones and the trees. Perhaps she did.

She knew every child born within a day's walk of the forest. Their parents trusted her. Their grandparents trusted her too. At the time... I never wondered why.

I once asked how many people she had healed. She looked genuinely puzzled. "Enough that I stopped counting." I laughed. Years later... I realised she hadn't been joking.

I don't remember exactly when I stopped thinking of the forest as somewhere I visited. One day... I realised I was simply going home.

An owl landed nearby one evening. It watched us for several minutes before disappearing into the dusk. "People think they're symbols." she said quietly. "They're simply trying to live." I think she could have been talking about more than owls.

I slipped crossing stone after heavy rain. Nothing broken, Just bruises and a deep cut across my palm. She cleaned it with spring water, packed it gently with yarrow and wrapped it in linen. Only afterwards did she scold me. "Watch the ground before the horizon." I've never forgotten either lesson.

She brought me a wool blanket one autumn. Nothing more. She simply placed it inside the àirigh before the first frost. She never once called it kindness. Neither did I.

One evening she began naming the hills around us. Not the names other people used. Older names. Some had no translation. Some had no meaning left. She said every place deserves to be remembered by someone.

We spent entire afternoons without speaking. At first I found it uncomfortable. Then I realised... Silence between two people is only awkward when one of them expects something. She never did.

When I think of Angus now, I remember laughter before I remember sorrow. The smell of fresh earth. The sound of sheep drifting across the hills. William smiling without expectation. My father's rough hands. My mother's voice calling me home. Memory is kinder than time.

Winter evenings belonged to stories. Someone was always mending a tool, spinning wool or carving wood while another spoke of old kings, spirits in lonely glens or strange lights upon the hills. I suspect my love of stories began there.

Harvest was everyone's work. The old. The young. Neighbours who had argued all year stood side by side when the grain was ready. The fields cared very little for pride.

William and I chased one another through the same fields as children. Back then he was simply William. Neither of us knew that everyone else had already begun imagining our future, planning our wedding while we were just care free...

My father taught me that farming is less about strength than patience. You cannot argue with the seasons. You cannot hurry rain. You cannot command a seed to grow. There is wisdom in accepting what answers only to time.

The women sang while they worked the cloth. Their hands never seemed to stop moving, yet every voice somehow found the same rhythm. I knew the songs long before I understood the words they carried. Sometimes I still catch myself humming them beneath the moon.

People around my aunt sometimes asked if I fled a miserable life. I didn't. I grew up in a village where every face knew my name before I knew theirs. That is precisely what made leaving so difficult.

She stopped walking without warning. Moments later a hind stepped quietly across the path with her fawn. "We were guests." she whispered. "We can wait." Looking back, I think that lesson had very little to do with deer.

One evening I thanked her for everything she had taught me. She looked almost disappointed. "I've taught you very little." she said, "I've only shown you how to pay attention."

I once reached for a beautiful mushroom growing beneath an old oak. She caught my wrist before I touched it. "Curiosity should never outrun patience." I have found that advice useful far beyond the forest.

She taught me to read moss. Not for medicine. For direction. "The trees already know where north is." she told me, "You only have to learn how to ask."