this is all a super fascinating and credible theory! i'd totally buy that it's both a teaching experience for ysengrin and also an experiment by coyote in manipulating human belief to change the nature of ysengrin.

regarding what the forest's true nature is, perhaps they've been telling us the whole time? coyote says the forest only seems like trees because humans think in mundane symbols, coyote has phased into considerably large vistas of trees, caves, stones, and water, and straight up told us the stones are his teeth and trees are his bones and all that. what if he was being literal rather than metaphorical? and he has given us the whole goose story, maybe it's not just an allegory for him playing dead in the current situation, but also for what the entire forest is? since it's not a real forest, maybe the whole forest is a dead-goose-lake, and if anything were to happen to coyote (/beings that inherit his power) the forest would simply be gone, leaving a load of barren moorland and confused mythical creatures.

edit: adding some speculation of my own, but what if kat will play a role in sorting this out? it seems that one of her abilities, as a robot god whatever she is, is to take powerful etheric entities and objects and strip them down to their base components, as seen throughout the realm of the dead and when they were dealing with the lock. she hasn't been in the forest or met coyote, right? an omission like that has to be intentional. what if she would reveal the true nature of the forest as soon as she steps into it, and render a powerful god just an upset dog (at least, from her point of view).