I will give you the short version to the story behind this, and so I quote *Gwenthyr:
"I love to see life and there's certainly more life in forest then in the middle of the city..."

To which i answered:
"I don't know... I just see a dull lifelessness and boredom in any forest or natural landscape[...] A city, though, is to me full of life."

And then I thought. What would a forest (I have, after all, lived my entire life either by or IN those bloody forests so I've seen quite a lot of them) need to become interesting to me too?

Well... the answer, considering the discussion between me and *Gwenthyr, was pretty easy: A city, of course!

And of course, since the theme for this here illustration is LIFE (Forest Life and City Life combined, even!) I figured I might have a little fun too, since, well, life is fun. The girls walking in the foreground are random people, but they do seem like a happy couple indeed, and the blonde in the background is also a random person I just conjured up. The redhead talking with the blonde, though, is none other than our own ~Lienwyn, and keeping the front porch clean from pine needles with a broom made from the same stuff is ~Wursu. Me, myself and my hat are looking out of the balcony up there, in the red shirt. Me and ~Wursu are in the same house (a special tree - it looks like some sort of leaf tree you don't find up here, but might well find down south) since we're planning on moving both south and to the same building, and... uh... yeah. I only figured I'd put me and people I know into this picture -after- I had already drawn everything but the details on the little people, so don't think it was my intentions from the start

For this I used watercolours and copic markers, and a little bit of white gel pen on ~Wursu's glasses. The original is a bit less... pinkish and more orange-like on the wood, but I guess you can't get everything. The scan is good enough, I think, but you'll have to take my word for that it's prettier in real life

Look what you made me do, *Gwenthyr! It's all your fault!

_{Also, this is the longest description I've written for quite a while, I think, if not longer then at least as long as the one for the 'Silence Please'-piece. Funny, when I set out to give you the short version of the story...}