In a quiet corner of the Jadeleaf Forest, where the canopy filtered golden sunlight like lace and the wind whispered secrets through the reeds, there lived a tortoise named Rendall. Old as the moss on the stones and slow as the drifting clouds, Rendall was known for his measured gait and long silences. The younger animals of the forest found him amusing, sometimes frustrating.
“Oi, Rendall, you heading to the next season yet?” chuckled a sleek otter named Bramble as he zipped past on a current.
“Careful you don’t fossilise mid-step,” added Pip the squirrel, upside down on a branch, chittering with laughter.
Rendall never snapped back. He only blinked slowly, letting the laughter roll off his shell like morning dew. He knew what they didn’t: that rushing often led to missing out on wonders only patience could unveil.
One overcast afternoon, while following the scent of flowering ivy deep into the forest’s heart, Rendall came upon a narrow crevice he’d never noticed before. The path wove between gnarled roots like the coils of a sleeping serpent. He moved down it, slowly, deliberately, as he always did.
After what might have been an hour, or an entire day—Rendall did not measure time as others did—the trees opened up. Before him lay Mirror Lake.
The water was impossibly still, brushed to silver by shreds of cloud drifting above. Around its edge bloomed white blossoms with no name in any animal’s tongue. Birds were silent here. Even the wind held its breath.
Curious, Rendall lowered his head to the water. The lake showed his reflection—not with the muddy shimmer of a forest pond, but with astonishing clarity. But what he saw blinked back at him was not the same. This Rendall was ageless and vast. His shell gleamed with starlight. His eyes burned with time itself. It was not his body he beheld, but his essence.
“What are you…?” he murmured aloud.
The reflection moved its mouth in kind. “Your truest self.”
Days passed before Rendall returned to the other creatures. No one had noticed he’d gone, but something about him now made the birds fall silent mid-caw, the fox pause mid-step. He didn’t tell them what he’d seen. Instead, he began to walk the forest in new paths, unknowable to all but him.
Curiosity grew. Bramble, Pip, and even the aloof owls began to whisper. What had the old tortoise discovered in the woods?
Finally, a group of them followed him one dusk, trailing between thickets on unseen paws. Though they scampered and leapt, they often had to stop, for Rendall’s path wound through thorns and shallow streams, over slippery stones and hanging vines. Many turned back, impatient. Only a few, led by Pip and Bramble, pressed on with fur speckled in dew and dirt.
When at last they reached Mirror Lake, the animals gasped. The lake seemed to glow, untouched even by the dimming light of day. They crept forward—some cautiously, some eagerly—and peered into its waters.
One by one, they stepped back in stunned silence.
Bramble saw himself not as the sleek, swift river-dancer he thought he was, but as a ripple—ever moving, never dwelling, always skimming the surface but never truly diving deep.
Pip saw something different—hers was a whirlwind of leaves, flighty and bright, but lonely, barely brushing against those around her.
And then they understood why Rendall had never answered their jests, why he met their barbs with gentle blinks. They had seen only what moved fast and made noise. He had seen what lay beneath.
“What is this place?” asked Bramble, voice hushed.
Rendall took his time to answer. “A lake that shows not your face, but your being. Those who rush past see only their shadow; those who wait, see their soul.”
They sat by the lake for a long time. No one spoke, not even Pip. They listened—perhaps not with ears, but with the soft places in their hearts.
From that day on, animals in the Jadeleaf Forest began taking moments of stillness. Even the buzzing wasps lingered a second longer on petals. Pip no longer darted off midway through conversations, and Bramble spent mornings drifting in pools rather than racing rivers.
And though they still teased from time to time, it was gentler now, seasoned with respect. For all had seen the truth at Mirror Lake—and reflected upon what patience could reveal.
As for Rendall, he kept walking. Still slow. Still steady. But everywhere he went, wildflowers bloomed in his wake, and silence followed him, not out of disdain—but reverence.
