The seasons passed around the First Tree, which stood tall and proud over the forest as it had for so many thousands of years, unchanged and strong.

Viktor and Yuuri remained too, creating a home together in the white heartwood of the tree, the always-warm air in the clearing bearing witness to the steady love that grew between them, expanding every day like the roots of the forest around them.

Viktor found a sense of peace, which was unlike anything he had ever known. Each morning, he would wake, not alone in the cold air of his old wooden hut, but warmed by the presence of Yuuri at his side. They spent their days wandering the forest, and Yuuri showed Viktor the secret paths, and the dens of shy animals, and introduced him to the raven that had saved his life.

Yuuri found that he finally had some purpose to his wanderings, knowing that they would always bring him back to Viktor.

As time passed, it became clearer and clearer that Yuuri was changing, his previously immutable and immortal body no longer free from time's constraints. Nothing dramatic occurred to make this clear; just a white hair here and there, and the occasional laugh line (for he and Viktor often laughed, sitting in their tree in the heart of their forest) wearing its way into the skin around his eyes.

So, he finally told Viktor of the night he had saved him, the sacrifice he had made; and Viktor held him close, and found that he could not be angry, not when the offering of his life had been given with so much love and such an unselfish heart.

So the seasons changed, and Yuuri changed with them, finding that the endless roll of the sun across the sky held a new meaning for him now. Nights were no longer lonely, and days were full of wonder as he saw the forest newly through Viktor's eyes. And they lived, and they loved, and they were happy.

There was only one secret that Yuuri kept from Viktor, and that was the fate of the village that had spurned him and cast him out to die in the snow. Yuuri, seeing his true love's body bloodless and cold as marble through the will of these people, had been possessed of a rage so strong that he bent the will of the forest with him, the trees becoming openly hostile to the dark haired villagers, dropping branches on a head or a limb that caused severe injuries, the animals fleeing as soon as they so much as crossed its threshold. The villagers began to murmur among themselves that the forest was cursed, that Viktor's sacrifice hadn't been enough to appease whatever spirits they had angered, and one day when the deep cold subsided, they packed up their belongings and left the tiny settlement, seeking better fortune across the hills. Yuuri watched them go from the treeline, his heart dark with hatred as he saw the burnt-out wreckage of Viktor's home, the only remnant of his life in that terrible place.

From that day onwards, they never spoke of Viktor's previous life in that hated village. Vines began to grow over the abandoned buildings, and the spring rains washed away the burnt timbers of Viktor's home, leaving the grass to grow again where the house had stood. A new beginning, thought Yuuri, for Viktor, and for the land.

Sixty years passed, and Yuuri and Viktor grew old together in the shade of the white pine, a new day never dawning without them both being amazed and grateful for their companion, and in awe of the beauty of the love they shared.

One evening, when the forest was still and silent in late summer, with just a hint of autumnal freshness on the air, Yuuri and Viktor lay down together in the heart of the First Tree that had been their home for so many years, and they did not wake again. The light that had always been so rich in the clearing dimmed; the animals fled, and roots of the First Tree began to shrivel.

Within ten years of that night, the tree had rotted almost entirely away, just a shell of its former grandeur. The animals spoke of that clearing as a desolate place, no longer the haven to them it had once been; the trees spoke no more, their silence an elegy to the spirit that had given them life.

Another fifty years passed, then another hundred, the ever rolling march of the seasons not ceasing even while the forest mourned. Trees grew over the old site of the settlement, roots lifting old paving slabs from the ground and tearing their way through wood and stone, leaving not even a trace of the people who had lived and died there. The pool in the stream, in which a pale, naked and beautiful man had once bathed observed by secret eyes, still stood beneath the trees, its clear water reflecting their branches in a steady, unblinking gaze.

On a wet and windy day in late autumn, in the clearing that used to be called blessed, a strong breeze blew, and the shell of the old white pine finally collapsed in on itself with a dull crash. The sound echoed in the clearing like a final breath, and startled birds took flight, fleeing the desolate sound.

As the old bark crumbled away, there was a flash of vibrant green, peeking through the old, dead wood like a single, brief note in a silent land. As the wind blew again, the dead wood blew away, revealing in what had been the shelter of its shell a strong, young pine sapling, which had been growing sheltered by the old tree from the wind and the frost.

Though no eyes but those of the birds that still ventured into the clearing observed it, the sapling grew, year on year, maturing into a tall pine that stood level with the tops of the forest.

A thousand years passed, and the animals began to speak of another tree, like the First Tree, that had grown up in the centre of the clearing that their distant ancestors had spoken of as a healing place. They returned, moving their small families across the forest that now covered uncountable miles as far as the eye could see, to witness the rebirth of the First Tree.

When they reached the clearing, they saw the sapling had grown into a white pine as tall and strong as the tree they held as a legend, and that the sunlight that streamed into the clearing was richer, warmer than elsewhere in the forest. The foxes made new dens in its roots, and the birds returned to its branches, their calls rejoicing in the return of the blessed white pine.

Another thousand years passed, and lichen grew thickly on the Second Tree, as countless generations of animals lived and died in its roots and branches. The frost never touched it, and the air of the clearing regained its clarity. No humans ever ventured near the forest again, and the animals' collective memory forgot the time that they were all subject to fear, hunted by that violent tribe.

One winter morning, when the ground glittered with frost and the needles of the white pine were heavy with snow, something in the clearing seemed to stir.

Another hundred years passed, and the spring arrived, bringing with it the singing of the sap in the veins of every tree in the forest.

And within the heart of the Second Tree, there was a thought, and the thought was 'We'.

Another season passed, and the summer arrived, hot and slow and languid, draping itself over the forest and winding into the strong young leaves and flowers, and the tree had a second thought, and the thought was 'We are…"

And, uncounted seasons after the thought deep in the heart of the Second Tree, the wood opened wide as its ancestor had done, so long ago now that it was not remembered in the oldest song, and two figures leapt forth.

Viktor and Yuuri looked up at each other, their pale bodies reborn from the heart of the tree in which they had died, and they laughed aloud at the new life in each other's eyes. The forest, so long silent, burst forth into life around them, the trees crooning their long, slow words of welcome after millennia of silence, the birds singing their joyful songs, and the howling of the wolves a salute to the spirit of the forest, finally returned to them after so long away.

Yuuri reached out his hand, and Viktor grasped it, and the two ran through their forest, immortal, joyful, and reunited.