On The Religion of the Trees

The tree gazed at the sun, reaching, as her mother before, had reached. 

Days,

to weeks,

to decades.

Lives spent trying so hard to touch. To grow tall enough to be warmed.

One day, a boy sat beneath her branches. Her gaze broke downward. So strange. This boy sat still, soaking in the sun.

But unlike her, he moved.

He smiled.

People approached him and he laughed.

The sunlight poured itself upon him, graciously, endlessly, and he needn't stretch to be welcomed by it. When he was warmed, he left.

She watched around her more from then on. Her friends around her lengthened. Their arms, ached. But they were ceaseless in their need of light and warmth.

Around them an entire world moved, and breathed. They could not see.

Her eyes, unused to a such variance, began to learn. The earth seemed closer now. Her friends looked only upward. She began to seem a mirage to them.

More days she spent observing the ground beneath her, while her friends and sisters grew up. They grew upwards, and eventually lost all sight of her.

But the world saw her. The people and animals began to recognize the glint in her eyes.

Her knowledge.

Her roots began to move in their dirt blankets. More loose by the day. She could see eye to eye with the boy when he came to sit beside her. Until one day, she lifted he legs from the dark, and sat herself.

Warm in the ever giving sun's embrace.