A Dream of a Land

The air was thick with a putrid smell and the sky wasn’t the crystal blue skies that I remembered so well. How did the world come to this as if overnight? I was surrounded by the corpses of trees that no longer held colour or leaves, the wood was stained grey as if they had absorbed as much of the smoky ashes that flew in the air.

The trees had been trying to save us, trying to tell us that something was wrong but we never noticed until it was too late.

There are memories of things I don’t remember seeing, it seems like a dream inside of a dream as I remember, as I watched from the classroom window at the cherry tree in the courtyard, it was the first tree that turned grey and lost its leaves one by one. It wasn’t quick, everyday I came to school I would look up at it and sigh then count the shrivelled up leaves at its trunk.

All of the other trees followed its leaves not long after, slowly dying but no one seemed to care.

It got to drastic levels when school was cancelled for the rest of the school year and the families in my town all started to move to more forested areas. The sky got so dark in the town that it looked like nighttime where the sun was meant to be at its highest point.

We got peeks of sunlight in the forests but as more people began to move into the forests the trees had to work harder, and they began to die faster.

They did what they could to clean the air but the ash seemed to know what they were doing and started to kill them like a disease in a body.

The ash was man made. It was spread about the panicking people fast that it was a new chemical that had been accidentally made and then released into the air. The purpose was unknown but the effect it was having was drastic on the ecosystem. It was destroying nature.

First the trees, the grass and the plants.

Then the animals that fed on the plants.

It was our turn next, everyone knew it. We couldn’t survive without plants or animals to eat. Everything that got planted wouldn’t emerge from the soil. Even the water was hard to keep clean.

I watched as everyone I knew and loved was slowly dying around me. Bottled water was a life line, canned foods were the only sustenance left.

I watched as people just walked away through the dead trees, fully given up on living.

That’s what I am doing now. I plan to walk as far as I can so I can almost forget what I was walking away from. My stomach growled, my mouth dry as sandpaper, my heart empty.

My time was coming to an end and in the last conscious part of my brain I realised I had made it back to my school. Right where the dead cherry tree sat.

My legs gave out underneath me and my eyes slammed shut. I don’t know how I managed to make it onto my back but I did.

I want to open my eyes, to take one final look at the cherry tree before I die and they open eventually, the effort tires me.

I see the dead grey branches and I want to shout in horror and misery but my dry throat doesn’t obey me. My eyes seem to slam shut again against my will.

I fight to get them back open and after a few moments they finally open and I stare in shock. The cherry tree is alive, full of life with its green leaves and red cherries. I feel like I am already in heaven at this point and I fight to keep my eyes open for as long as possible. I take a deep, raspy breath into my lungs staring until all my strength is gone and my eyes once again slam shut. My final thought is to look once again at the tree that is newly restored so I force my eyes open for the last time.

When I open my eyes I’m awake and staring at my bedroom ceiling.