Alien Harvest

On this planet, farmers and astronomers were one in the same. They planted the sand-seeds for the glass trees to grow, watering them with nourishing liquids and fires to make them sprout up to the heavens. Once the crystalline growth tangled and blossomed up to its appropriate height, the farmer could peer through its myriad mirrors within, acting as lenses to view the great beyond.

Nature did a good job growing the foundation of the telescope-tree, but it was up to the farmer to prune it. They would pluck sharp blades of clear glass that grew nearby and scrape off the natural violet sap that gunked up the inside, plopping it into their flesh-sacs for fertilizer.

Then came the stripping, removing the reflective branches that refracted the light away from its focus point. The farmer would bite down on them, removing them from the translucent trunk, burying them into the ground. But they had to be careful: biting down too hard, or breaking off the wrong branch, could potentially shatter an entire crop.

The farmers scrubbed leftover nubs and buildups of sand until they faded into the air with whispers. Several cycles spent honing and nibbling away at the tree's tiny overgrowths to shave it down smooth, ringing in the air as sand pollen swirled around its new sleek body.

At last stood a forest of trees scraped and stripped clean, sparkling in the crimson light of the sky and the glow of the giant gas ball that towered over the planet as parent to child. If the farmer did a good job, and the branches were cut just right, the wind whistled as it passed through the fields, and the trees spoke to each other.

Then they could finally enjoy the fruits of their labors.

The farmers invited their families to the harvest, each one digging underneath their own shimmering trunk, just deep enough to lodge their heads below so they could look straight up through the latticework to the infinite above. With their eyes and their minds focused as one, the astronomers scoured the obsidian oblivion.

As they combed through planet after planet, the astronomers were in a trance, not unconscious yet not aware of anything outside their vision. Their bodies floated in a blissful fluid dream, pleasure seeping through every nerve ending.

So much so that they didn't even notice when the trees devoured them.

The hundreds of farmers were sucked up into the glass bodies of the trees, shredded to liquidy bits in an instant. Gurgling, gargling, swishes and spills. Digestion quick and reproduction quicker. From the tips of the trees, violet wombs started out the size of pebbles and expanded to bursting. They drizzled the ground with innumerable slimy embryos that burrowed into the cool soil, feeding off the fallen branches their ancestors planted.

Eventually they too would grow trees of their own.

This prompt was written with the help of chat at the ScottWritesStuff Twitch stream.