Wisteria sighed as she lugged around her pack. While she was a dryad and needed sunlight to survive, she could feel her leaves wither under the blistering heat. The elder scanned her surroundings before her eyes settled on a tree; while she hadn't visited the area for decades, it felt familiar in a way, and she decided to rest beneath it as she waited out the heat and planned her next move.
Wisteria threw down her satchel, plopped down on the ground, and leaned against the tree. She felt like she was finally able to breathe as she drank water and reveled in the shade. She drifted her head back and stared up at the leaves fanning out in the humid wind...
What was that feeling of familiarity?
She pondered for a moment before realization hit her.
The last time she was here, the tree had been nothing more than a mere sapling. She merely smiled at this revelation, but that quickly turned to worry as she began to count the years...
Thirty.
Thirty years for something she once cared for to become unrecognizable. It made sense, in a sad way - as a dryad with an incredibly long life span, thirty years didn't seem like a long time until it passed by. But what had she done with it?
She began to think...
Well, she had spent most of her time in the Rising Winds. Coin Port was another place of interest. Wisteria walked slowly since her roots tugged at the ground with each step, so she'd often travel to one place and stay there for an extended period of a year or so before traveling again. She was also the kind of person to get lost in her work, reading for days on end and studying the wildlife that appeared in the places she worked in. Between that and her time as a Headmaster in Coin Port's academy, it was no wonder that time had slipped through her fingers so easily.
She sighed and took another drink of water, and for a moment the heat snapped her out of her thoughts. She was on the way to River's Edge to study the way their wildlife behaved during heatwaves and droughts - why was she thinking back on her past when she had so much to learn?
She glanced over at her pack again. The old bag was filled with useful herbs and items from her travels and books that had notes on every page, cover to cover. She smiled a bit as she thought ahead to the rest of her journey and the discoveries she'd make about the local ecosystems.
Wisteria stood up, thanked the tree, picked up her pack, and continued on her way. She had studied several different habitats throughout her life, and her passion for learning drove her to study more and tutor anyone who'd listen about different forms of natural magic - and the importance of the natural world around them.
This is a great scene. The flow of the prose is especially well executed. The one thing that would have liked is a conflict and resolution. It's flash fiction, there isn't room for a whole lot of anything. "Add this" and "add that" don't really work out when you've only got a page and a half to work with.
Very nice. I like it.