What Lies Ahead

We rest atop an arching hill, our tree its crowning glory. Standing alone in our surroundings, our branches outstretch into a spiral of seductivity. We can no longer recall when we first sprouted, that first instance of a seedling life fighting to survive, but as many years pass, here we now find ourselves. Despite our apparent silence, our tree allows for much deeper connections between us, it blesses us with never being alone. This constant murmur of life runs deep with the bark, and the branches, and the leaves. Every aspect of us is connected to the other and it allows us to attain what some perceive as the impossible. It allows us to feel.

We feel the clouding of the sun on our flesh, gripping us with its cooling shade. More often than not these darkened clouds bring with them a prickling sensation as they cry unto us. These sweet tears provide us with rejuvenation and quench our never satisfying thirst. As soon as these moments arrive, they seamlessly dissipate to the horizon beyond our view, and so we wait until they come once more.

We feel the tender caresses of the breeze as it dances between our outstretched arms, swaying us with the most gentle of movements, allowing us in a small way to dance with it. We move in unison, as our forms become one, yet there are times where it can be a source of fear. On the rarest of occasions a ferocity is bought along, it whips at us and throws us around as though we were weightless entities. Some of us are not so lucky as to survive these encounters, our fallen brethren having snapped from their hanging perch at a single command from the gale. Once disconnected we no longer feel the otherwise everpresent link. To fall into that type of darkness is what we all fear in the end, yet its inevitability renders our dread wasted. What lies ahead in that great beyond, we often wonder.

On the brightest of days we feel how the sun’s light pierces through our peel, its warmth bringing the sense of hospitality with it. Our leaves become illuminated and absorb all they can to help us grow further in the coming years. Some days this light can be more harsh than helpful, the heat leaving our roots begging for moisture in any form. The earth around us becomes dry and lifeless, making these days some of our most troublesome for the year. Thankfully the rains always come in time to save us, but there is tangible unease for the day where our luck will run out.

Today’s crimson dawn brings with it a new day for us. Just as every day, we turn ourselves to the light of the sun and soak up its kind, life-giving gleam. As we rest and bathe in its radiance, a figure approaches from the west. It comes up over the hills, holding something to its side. Our collective murmur of curiosity turns to trepidation as the figure comes closer to our tree, stopping in front of us, scouting us. We realise in horror the meaning of its presence as it reaches a hand to us, and one by one, plucks us away from the tree. One by one our shared connection is lost, and one by one we are left lonelier and lonelier. After a period of time picking and choosing which of our brethren to take away, the figure readies themselves to leave… but not before one last pluck of a particular pear.

Me.

Its hand grasps my body firmly and tugs me away from my branch, leaving me in a devastating state of darkness and isolation. I have never felt this way in my life of simply being. I’ve known my brethren to be unlinked in the past, and their losses never become easier with time, but to actually feel no link of my own to the Mother Tree is something which I will never part with. The figure puts me in what I now know to be a woven basket, and whilst being physically aside my siblings, I have never felt further away. I’m sure they too feel the same coldness, yet without the tree there is no means of communication. We are completely and utterly alone. Through the holes in the basket, I see the pear tree I called home getting farther and farther, soon disappearing into the hills which surround it, blurring into the horizon that now seems so far from me. What lies ahead for me now? For all of us whose fates lay in this cruel silence? We have all been thrust into the unknown, all left to think about what is to come, all left forsaken in the murkiness of what the future holds.