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.