If you’ve read Fate’s Fables, you may have picked up on my fascination with trees. The more gnarled and knotty the better, as far as I’m concerned. Check out my Pinterest board on Trees for some gorgeous woodsy visuals. One of the main characters in my book is the oak tree. There’s so much mystique surrounding this particular tree, most notably the druids who considered the oak sacred. This gave me a strong spiritual foundation on which to build Finn’s profound connection to nature.
The dominant theme within Fate’s Fables is how words create reality. Whenever Fate travels from one fable to the next, the words lift off the pages of the Book of Fables and swirl around her, building into sights and sounds that match her imagination. She’s also given the power of the Words of Making, an ability she uses lightly at first, until she realizes her own written words manifest into the physical world instantaneously. And with great consequence. She had to learn to search her heart for the truth and write her Words of Making from that wise, inner place, rather than deciding what was best for everyone by coming from the place of ego and mind.
With all this in mind, you’ll see why I found this TEDEd video by Gina Cooke and Brad Purnell to be very interesting indeed. This video “describes the poetic relationship between ‘tree’ and ‘true. Trees have been metaphors for steadfastness and faithfulness for as long as the word true has defined the same qualities”.
Plus the animation is excellent!
