We learned the rituals from musk deer mystics, with their circles of carefully placed twigs and arcane patterns in the dirt.

They didn’t know we were watching, but we saw the powers they invoked and the meagre command over life and death they claimed. Musk deer keep their own company, and their hooves are wholly unsuited to crafting intricate iconography upon the forest floor, leaking energy from every poorly-sketched rune or ill-fit line.

We stick-folk are not wooden, but we spend enough of our lives in twig aspect that it suffices for ritual purposes.

At first we gathered in our hundreds, arrayed ourselves in pentacles to test the boundaries of our new-found magic, then in outstretched geometries of thousands to ward our forest against predators.

Now, we form arcs and splines in our millions: to regrow our lost homes and reclaim the world that was taken from us.