Part 3: The Human

I close my eyes. The sounds whir around my head, through my head. The rustle of leaves swoops down from somewhere behind. The soft, low hum of the wind swirls and dances around me, wrapping me in a cool cocoon. The cracking and snapping of twigs and sticks clambers up my legs, up my body, and writhes its way into my ears. I shudder. A bird chirps. Somewhere in the distance I hear the lonely drone of a car as it winds its way down the road. My heart skips, then stumbles. I listen carefully, but the rumbling sound of the engine seems to come from every direction. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter— listening, thinking, concentrating. I open my eyes again. I’m still lost.

It’s all my fault, of course. No one told me to go check out the new hiking trail, if you can even call it that, on my own. I’m sure if I even told anyone where I was going, they’d have told me not to go alone. But why would I want someone else to be co-explorer of MY trail? I found the thing. Besides, I like going on my own. It lets me think. I don’t have to listen to someone else blabber on about who cares what. It’s just me and my mind. I like it that way. I get along with myself, for the most part.

Now look where the stupid thing has gotten me. Well, actually, I have no idea where it’s gotten me. I’m lost. That’s the whole point of being lost. You don’t know where you are. I decide to run haphazardly around a bit. I see people doing it in the movies all the time when they’re lost in the forest. I think it must be some sort of reverse psychology tactic on the space time continuum; make it think you’re trying to get more lost, that it ends up letting you get un-lost. Of course, it never seems to work for those people in the movies. They usually run around randomly until they fall down a steep embankment, only to pull their faces out of the mud at the bottom to find that they’re even more screwed than before. But then again, I’ve already gotten my self lost in the forest alone, so you can’t be expecting any rational thought on my part at this point.

I sprint through the forest at full tilt. Actually, I’m pretty much upright with little tilt to my body, except the times when I need to duck under a low hanging tree branch, but only the big ones. Twigs and small branches whip my face. I squint my eyes as the branches claw and tear at my skin, stinging with an acute pain. But my mind is oblivious to it, focusing on one thing—nothing. I’m lost now in my own mind, unconsciously striding through the trees, the thick ferns brushing my bare legs.

My mind is dark. Nothing flows through it. All thought is gone. I’m running on pure instinct. The whole forest twists and sighs around me. My vision flashes between the empty darkness of my mind, and the incomprehensible greens and browns, and splashes of soft white streams, of my blurred vision. I feel the ground underneath growing soft, wet. I know what’s coming. I try to stop, but I’m no longer in control of my legs. I slip.

One moment, the world is racing around me; the next, I’m staring into the mud. I pull myself up, my legs trembling. I rub my hand on my shorts, smearing the remains of a beetle into them. My vision narrows as the trees around me slowly stop spinning. In front of me lies a great log.

The log stretches, for miles it seems, in either direction. It looks squished, sagging under its own weight, the remains of a once great tree, humbled by the invisible, the formless, gravity. Its once thick bark covering is now gone, long since rotted away. I lean against it to rest and it caves in under my weight, its soft inside crumpling into a powder of dusty wood. I pull my hand out of the stinking corpse of the tree.

Along its top, a little ways down from where I stand, I see a flash of bluish purple. I hobble over, my ankle still hurting from my fall. I hadn’t really noticed it until now. As I draw closer a myriad of colour bursts from the top of the fallen tree. Purple, blue and yellow flowers blossom forth, their roots digging deep in the trees great well of nutrients. The greens—some soft and pale, others vivid and bright, still others dark yet no less beautiful—of ferns, ivies, and other plants (I’m not a botanist, I’m doing the best I can here) clothe the rotting tree. Simply put, it’s beautiful. From the very top of the tree I see a new one growing. A small sapling has sprung up from the bruised and broken side of its fallen brother. And beyond this little tree I see it. A sign, it reads:

Lord Nebby The Giant: Worlds Tallest Tree.

And beyond the sign, lies a well marked trail.

Part Two: The Beetle

She squinted her eyes in the darkness, peering into the distance through the mist, towards it. The spire stretched upward, silhouetted, obscured, its shape shifting behind the veiled layers of fog as they lazily glided back and forth. Its top disappeared into the dark clouds, unimpeded by their oppressive weight as they hung low over the world; an occasional flash of light; a sudden, intense glow from within their depths and a low growl to remind all of their power.

She lurched sideways, caught by a sudden blast of wind. Another grabbed her, an invisible hand, crushing her in a fist of competing air pressures, and tossed her spiralling downward. Her mind reeled as she struggled to regain control. Below the sea of green seemed to rise, clawing its way up towards her, long fingers thrashing back and forth, grasping wildly at the air. The waves danced and undulated, one moment together, almost hypnotic, the next in unruly discord, choreographed by their temperamental conductor, sending up a green spray, needle like, that danced in his arms before being let loose, and dropping down beneath their swaying tips. Another gust caught her, heaving her upward. She looked down, the green fingers softly screaming in protest as she was pulled upward back into the sky, away from them.

A pocket of still air gave her a momentary chance to regain control, and she pressed forward again, flying toward the spire. She kept her eyes fixed on it. At this distance it seemed to stand motionless, unaffected by the tumultuous weather. It stood upright and proud, like a militant commander, above an endless mass of marching soldiers below, the winds carrying his command through the thick air. She faltered, she feared him, but knew she must take refuge from the weather. If she could reach the spire she knew the illusion would slip away, for that’s all she feared, and she could find respite there from the winds.

Something flashed by her, disappearing into the green mass below. Another hurtled down in front of her; another grazed her wing, sending up a cold mist, as it plunged downward. Suddenly, with a brilliant flash and a great shout, the clouds above exploded, sending out a burst of shimmering, transparent flak. She flung herself from side to side, diving then climbing sharply again, dodging the bits of falling cloud. They whizzed by, one after another, on top of another, encasing her, trapping her in a cage of shifting bars. Another flash of light from above— the plummeting crystal orbs surrounding her caught the light, spraying it outward again, blinding her. Her body shook violently as one struck her. Cold, wet, she spiralled downward. Her muscles tensed as her wings quickened their pace, beating with a more hurried thrumming. She regained control once again.

The spire loomed closer now, she was nearly there. Through the mist and rain she could make out his features better now. Like thousands of twisted, ugly arms, his branches jutted out in all directions, covered in needles like course hair. Water cascaded down his gnarled bark. She hurtled herself inward, taking refuge under a branch, huddled close against his trunk. He shook angrily, throwing her off. She tumbled downward, the wind violently shaking his branches all around her. They swung at her, grabbing, striking, and throwing her to the ground. She struck the dirt of the forest floor. Picking herself up, she crawled towards one of his roots, slipping underneath it as it burst from the ground, arching upward, before plunging back down into the muddied earth.

She dug, all six limbs ripping up dirt and rotting plant as she tunnelled beneath the root. Deeper and deeper she clawed her way into the earth, trying to escape the violent wind and rain. She heard him moan indifferently from above, insensitive to her plight. She felt a cold rush as rain water flooded her tunnel, engulfing her in a wet, soggy quagmire. The water seeped through the dirt all around her, softening it, loosening it.

He moaned louder now, staggering sideways. She could feel the earth around her opening up slightly. More rain rushed in, tearing apart his foot hold. Then, almost silently, he began to fall. The earth loosed its grip on his roots. Slowly the great beast stumbled, striking the ground with a deafening THUD!

Part One: The Tree

He stood in the middle of the forest. Well, generally speaking it was the middle. The borders of the forest traced a decidedly irregular shape, so geometrically (or would that be geographically?) speaking it would be near impossible to define the exact middle (or centre) of the forest without resorting to some nasty calculus and making some assumptions regarding the shape of the forest... but I digress... what I mean is that he was nowhere near any of the borders of the forest, of which technically there is only one, which encompasses the forest in an irregular shape as previously mentioned, but I thought I'd remind you anyway. He was The Tree. Not the Tree, with 'the' beginning with a lowercase 't,' but The Tree, with an upper case 'T' beginning the word 'The' (and the word 'Tree' for that matter). Kind of like how we call really cool people in our society, 'The Man," or, "The Woman (Okay that one's a bit awkward sounding... not that women can't be cool)." Yes he was The Tree (in case you missed its mention the first couple times, or for that matter didn't read the title); tall and powerful, he stood above the surrounding trees... and bushes, though I'm sure that's obvious to most people's immaginations (though the alternative might make for some pretty cool visuals... but I shant go there).

His (or her... but I won't get into discussions of tree sexuality here) roots stretched deep into the earth, penetrating the soft soil, clawing their way around the roots of the surrounding flora, and squeezed through the crevaces in the bedrock before anchoring themselves to said bedrock. Near his base-- which might cleverly be refered to as his butt in a bit of low-brow, messed up, metaphoric analogy funny making, but I'm not going to go there, oh wait I just did-- his immense trunk, with its thick knobly bark, made for a nice photo spot for someone wishing to show of the massiveness of the trunk by having herself attempt to hug the tree by unsuccessfulling wrapping her arms around it; it tappered gradually upward towards a blunted point at his peak, hundreds of feet above the forest floor. His boughs, some long and twisted, other short and the opposite of twisted, some medium length and somewhere in between twisted and not twisted in which it really comes down to a matter of personal judgment as to the degree of twistyness to define them as twisted or not, and others falling into some other category defining their dimensions and orientations jutted out from his trunk in all directions except one; given that his trunk could more or less be described as having a circular cross-section, there are in effect, an infinite number of directions from which his boughs could jutt out in, and thus it follows that there must be at least one direction in which the boughs do not jutt out since they can only jutt out in a finite number of directions.

Yes, he was a formidible tree. He looked just like all the other trees, and in fact was just like them in every way with regards to function and internal chemical processes. Yet, he was taller, bigger and wiser (metaphorically speaking, or so one might use that as a way to stereotype his prodigious grandeur) than all the other trees, and so was better than them for it. He was master of the forest-- watchtree and protector. If it were not for his presense, those nasty humans, with their blunt teeth, scrawny arms and manicured fingernails would have long ago invaded the forest and stripped it of its natural and percieved supernatural beauty to put up another shopping mall or some other waste of space and money. But thanks to his massive size, and some arbitrary human law derived from our own vanity that size does matter and thus we must protect things that are really big because they're somehow "special," the men were kept at bay, and so both himself and the surrounding forest were protected, not that he needed the other trees around; though they did make for nice, if slightly anemic, company.

Nothing could ruin him, destroy him, bring him down. He snickered as the wind rustled his needles (did I forget to mention, he's a coniferous tree), in its feeble attempt to blow him over. He was imovable, impenetrable, and immobile. He was the greatest tree in all the forest; he knew it, and all others did as well.