Remember the dryads and naiads? In ancient Greek mythology, these are some of the names used for the spirits that they believed lived in and protected the trees and the small streams, respectively.
I was given a challenge today: to sing a song that could serve as a theme song to a horror movie. Not my strong suit.
But I do like Monsters [https://soundcloud.com/amadoohland/monsters]. So I wondered: what's my favorite monster? This song doesn't answer that question, but as I was singing it, I did start to imagine monsters of this kind:
For millennia, humankind has been decimating the forests and defiling the creeks and streams. In most places, the dryads and naiads are too weak to act, but if you go deep in the woods...
How they get you is, you hear noises that seem lovely, seem to draw you on. Maybe they've learned the trick from the Sirens. But as you go farther and deeper into the wood, an inexplicable anxiety grows and grows. The peculiar trick of it is, you THINK the thing you need to flee is outside the wood, and so the deeper you get, the more desperate you are to get away, and the deeper you go.
Only when it is too late, when there is no chance of escape, do they reveal themselves to you. They are beyond pity. They don't know that you, personally, have done nothing to harm them. You are human. You must be defiled, and cut down. As they have been.
Beware the caryatids, the nereids, the epimeliads, the oceanids, the meliai, the naiads, the dryads. There is dread in the wood.
