21 - Extend

21- Extend

I started life as a small, sapling. Barely any leaves, my main branch just a twig. I was born from the ground, a new being, just opposite a large mound covered in grass.

As time progressed, I started to grow. My main spine becoming much stronger and taller, standing straight above the grasses. I felt much more powerful, but I envied a large oak tree that stood just a few meters away from me, right at the top of the hill. She had been growing long before I was just a seed. Her arms outstretched, pulling in all directions.

When the wind blew, she stood her ground, the ability to not back down was strong. Her spine was beefy, even her extendable branches were older than mine. She had been here for decades and she knew all there was of the world. She had seen it pass year after year.

I know to saw I was jealous was wrong, I should have been grateful for my own branches, but there was something about just seeing her larger than life that I needed for myself.

Years past and as time travelled on, I twisted and turned. Every year, a new arm would appear, an extension of my own trunk, which had always widened, my hips bursting at the seams.

Everything seemed to happen all at once. One spring when every plant woke from their nap, I felt the most powerful I had ever been. I towered above the rest of the plants, trees, and flowers, bending down to peek at their newly grow bodies. I had accomplished my dream. I was beautiful. My branches outstretched, the leaves around me glowing in the sun’s rays.

I looked upon my old neighbour just across from where I was. She was lifeless, as if she hadn’t woken yet from the winter. Her own branches had turned limp and cracked. As I started, one of her earliest branches broke, shaking and falling to the ground landing with a large thump. I cried out, but the winds voice overpowered my call.

The noise must have alarmed her because she woke in panic, her feelings then turned to sadness as she just watched her old branch alone on the ground. There was a part of me that felt sorry for her, but she was old and her time was gradually coming to an end.

It appeared that I was now the most powerful and largest tree around. Every corner I looked, none of the others had grown that many branches extending outwards. I basked in my new glory until children began racing to the old tree weathering away.

“Don’t climb that one! It looks to dangerous!” An adult voice shouted from down the hill.

The old tree looked saddened by this statement, watching the children running away and into my direction. It was the first time we both saw trunk to trunk with each other. I could sense she knew her time was ending, that I was now the new her.

Horror struck. Watching people all this time climbing her branches and her trunk made me envy all she had, that was until it happened to me. The pain of being climbed on, I couldn’t take it. The movement of my branches being pressed down and played with made me feel sick. How could she manage all these years and like it?

As they left and my arms began jumping back into place, the agony still lingered. One of my right-handed branches felt more painful than the rest and as I gingerly looked to the side of me, part of the branch had snapped off.

I sat in constant pain for the rest of the summer, peering over at old oak tree weeping in the corner. I just wanted everything to end.

And that is exactly what happened. The earth was waiting for my call, my mutters in the wind. The breeze became stronger, the newer plants began drifting back and forth until the weaklings blew around the breeze.

A storm. I dreaded this would happen. I held on for dear life, holding my roots in the ground that felt as though they were about to attach. I thought I was unstoppable, that I was large enough to cope, but as I began to fall to fall, my branches extended, like long fingernails growing faster than I could see. They resembled ropes, chocking my trunk and pulling me to the ground.

I was left on my side, my branches wrapped around me, like they had become detached from me. Her own extendable branches tickled my trunk.

“It’s not so good is it, being Queen?”