Wilder has ended all his previous relationships feeling bored by his partners' conformity, but Thistle is an original. She lives her life prancing through the forest, paying attention to its' every detail, paying no mind to anything else. She has sleep paralysis, so Wilder was initially perturbed to see her sleeping like a dead log with her eyes open. But recently she'd been sleeping less and less with an elevated mood.

Wilder grows more and more uncomfortable as Thistle pushes ahead into the woods. He loses sight of her and begs to go home when he finds her. But Thistle says she wants to show him where she comes from. They fall into a marsh, and Wilder sees before him an enormous cypress tree, completely out of place in the region's ecology, sitting right in the water with tangled roots and swaying vines. The vines begin to rope around Wilder's feet. He asks for Thistle's help but she stays rooted, closing her eyes, ignoring his pleas. Suddenly her hair begins falling off, her skin turns waxen and bears the whorls of a willow tree. She picks seven blossoms from the cypress tree and puts them in Wilder's mouth. The nectar is sweet and fogs Wilder's mind, and she tells him not to struggle as the tree draws him closer. He feels himself sinking into the cypress, just as Thistle has become a willow tree, to die and be reborn.