Shorts

The Speaking Tree

This is of a time when the trees had stopped talking. This is of that time, when in the morning you could find them trees uprooted from their ground, dead, the beast named time clawing away at their being. And no, it wasn’t just one or so tree that was found this way, it was their entire tribe. It was as if they were committing harakiri. This is of that time.

The man had been walking for a long time; his feet hurt, but in a distant way, where in he was only remotely aware of his feet, and their motion. Walking had begun to seem as usual as breathing to him. That however did not mean that he did not stop. That would be stupid, and if he was anything it was - not stupid. He had stopped once while he was in that village, that village, which like everything else was but a dream. He had stopped there and had bought some cookies, drank some water, and some tea. He had done that, and then he had continued on.

He tried to remember why he was walking, then, soon he realized that he couldn't be bothered by something that stupid, and so he continued on, slightly irritated by himself.

The road he was walking on, changed ever so slightly. But over time, the more he had walked, the softer it became; the road. And then, one day he had started walking in the forests. Sort of forests. See, the trees had been dying, so it was not  like walking in the forests of old. He had heard the stories. But that was all he had. Stories.

He wrote stories. He heard stories, then he told stories. That was the only way he functioned. And so, once he'd had, or rather thought he'd had told all the stories he could've told staying there, in that place, they called home, but which had become a big bad jail for him, again, in time, he decided he would have to leave. There was, of course, a period of deliberation, for if there was one thing he was, he was- not stupid.

They had initially cared. When the trees were falling, dying. They had removed the corpses, using them judicially, something befitting, a glorious, marvelous creature, that a tree was. Then, in time, as more and more trees fell, and in groups, it was feared that this was a virus, a bacteria, some disease which was spreading through the masses, and so, if only to stop it from spreading, they continued removing the corpses. When nothing changed, the men stopped.

There were dead trees on both sides of the road. Dead corpses, rotting away. The man moved at the same pace, accustomed to it all. He had been interested once, in them, but nobody wants to read about dying corpses. There was no story; the dead seldom speak. And they had stopped talking even before! He was not affected by the sceneries around him. He was walking,  not even for the sake of walking. He was walking for at the end of the walk, he imagined a story. A story so glorious that it will fulfill the purpose, his purpose.

And so he walked.

It had to have been a sweet voice, and a beautiful song being sung melodiously for the man to notice it. And it was. The man stopped immediately. There was something about art, good art, art that spoke to you, that left you in awe. This was that for the man. He left the road, and walked guided, by the first time in years, not by the elusive, but rather by the present. He ran, then walked, then ran again. He did not notice again, where he was going. He was lost, again, in the symphony. He walked.

His surroundings had changed. Gone were the corpses. Long gone. Then there had been a plain, with tall grass, stretched across the horizon. Then the trees. Then the forest. Finally the forest. And in the forest, over and above all the noises, was the song. It was nearing completion, he knew, for it was a popular song, a traveller's song. And so he had begun running again. He hadn't noticed the surroundings yet. It was yet to come.

The tree was like any other. Any living one. It wasn't present in an enchanted piece of land. It did not have branches working as arms. It could not uproot itself and hope to survive. It did not have a face. It was completely, and utterly routine. Yet the man looked at it, as if it had all.