She pushed aside the stagnant air with her body as she passed off the walkway from the dwelling block, and turned to descend the narrow concrete stairway into the deserted square. It didn't take much. She was small for her nine years and moved like a jerky kitten, shining jet hair hanging straight to her shoulders. She began her aimless descent, and, when sure of her footing, looked up, wincing against the relentless midday sun.
Then she froze.
Ahead of her, on the blank, whitewashed side wall of the building, was a shape. An outline in black stretched from the hardscaped ground to the middle of the once blank canvas – two storeys high.
It was...a tree.
She stared and put out a hand to the solid balustrade. She felt the rough surface and gripped it without realising, transfixed by the apparition before her.
That had not been there yesterday.
Why was it there? How had it come to be there?
It was a visitor from another reality. There were no trees here.
With solemn, dark eyes devouring this strange addition to her world, she descended the remainder of the stairs and approached the wall.
She put out a tentative hand to the trunk depicted before her, a forefinger uncurling and touching the black.
She then withdrew it sharply, as if mistrusting the picture for a dimensional portal that would suck her away from all she knew.
In carefully inspecting the end of her digit she saw that there was a faint inky blackness imprinted over her swirling skin.
So, it was real, someone had made it. It had not simply appeared, fairy-like, from nothing. No magic. Or was there?
Often checking her finger, the child walked on, going about the obscure business that a nine-year-old feels no necessity to analyse or explain. On, through the sleepy deserted town that baked in its blistering dryness; adults lazed or slept, old people and other children lolled, but this little girl was on her meandering escape route from hard fists and heavy tongues.
As she turned the corner down into a narrow, a blind-sided alley, she gasped, for there...there grew a tree.
She ran down the rough dust slope and stopped herself gingerly with a hand on the treeless side of the built chasm, then tipped up her chin and squinted to see how far the tree had stretched. One tiny leaf touched the very eaves of the flat whitewashed facade.
She looked quickly about her, up to the alley entrance and down to where it met the brightness of another small and equally depressing concrete square. There was no-one about. Who had put this here? Grown this here, she corrected herself, gravitating to the base of the wall where the monochrome tree appeared to part the urine-scented dust and anchor its trunk. And, she just knew, its thirsty roots were even now burrowing deep, deep, deep, seeking just a drop of moisture to keep its sketchy leaves alive.
She backed up to the opposite side of the alley again, shoulders hitting the wall hard, and stared her fill.
She could hear something.
A pleasant whispering.
Were the shapes moving?
No.
After just one more moment, she dragged herself away and let her eyes fall to the stained, parched earth beneath her bare feet, listening hard, and wandered on down the slight incline to the square, following the strange muted hiss as the tree's roots grew and searched, grew and searched.
