SHORT STORY: THE POWER OF GRIEF
March, 2017
My feet padded atop the soft moss that littered the forest floor as I moved through the thick greenery without a sound. The damp ground squeezed through the tiny spaces between my toes like a loving caress, the sunlight filtering down between the boughs of the trees above. My gaze flickered over the tranquil atmosphere for a moment before darkening at the sound of whirring and groaning flashing through my mind. The memories of my sisters' wails assaulted my eardrums before the ever-lingering tears began to prick my eyes once more. The humans destroy all that they touch and I despise them for it.
Of my eight sisters, only three remain due to those foul beasts. They come in with their metal boxes and knives of death: chopping, splitting, breaking, killing, murdering everything I ever held dear.
Even the animals of the forest have begun to flee for fear of their life - fear of not knowing whether their homes will be intact tomorrow or not. The foxes have fear now placed in their heart, worrying that their den will cave in and bury them in their sleep. The squirrels fear being left with no nuts for winter and the owls fear receiving no rest or warmth. Even the mighty tigers and pythons have to move away, following their only source of nourishment.
The animals, insects, and trees alike all grieve for the lost forest guardians. Our time to perish has come...our time to protect is over. The humans have bigger and stronger machines that we alone are not able to fight. The sticks they carry slice through vines like claws through dirt and their hands bring forth fire that levels entire forests in a single night. They are too strong, and so my sisters fall. We will all fall...for none of us can defeat the beings that call themselves human.
They are foul, vile, evil, impure. Yet, they are a god's creation and we are rendered helpless against them. If we destroy them, the god will destroy us in blind rage. The only way we could ever defeat the humans is if the forest fought back of its own will, not ours. We have no choice but to fall. One by one, each of us tumble to the dirt with one last breath of agony.
The sound of metal cracking mercilessly against wood never leaves my mind now. I am plagued with the visions of my sisters falling to their knees, begging the gods for mercy - begging them to end this torture. In a way, they got their wish; Their mercy was given in death, for I know they have made their way into the pleasant realm of immortals.
Yet, still, I weep. I weep for the trees and for my sisters. I weep for the humans' ugly hearts and the deer's tucked tails. I weep in pity of myself and the fate that I know awaits me.
Soon...very soon...they will come for me.
They will pillage the land I love so much and ruin it with those brick boxes they seem so content to live in. I know that they will come and kill the elk I have hidden within my leafy embrace for so many thousands of years. I can see it now; The humans placing the animals that relied on me so much in metal cages and whipping them with strange vines, forcing them to do their will.
So many times, my sisters and I have made sacrifices for the humans. We have given them bulls and cows for milk and plowing their fields as well as roosters and hens for eggs and morning wake up calls, but none of this has been good enough. The greed of man shows that nothing will ever be good enough. They will continue to take and take and take and take...but never give. No, man never gives back, only swallows whole everything they are capable of and then destroys the rest.
They have come...I can see them in the distance, chopping away at the trees I've tried so hard to shield from the cruel beasts. With each tree that falls, my heart skips a beat in a mixture of anger, sadness, and pain, an intense, foreign hatred beginning to build within the pit of my stomach. I will go, but someone will avenge us someday. Someone must notice the injustice these beings are bringing upon the order of this once beautiful world. I move deeper into the forest until I reach the heart, my home tree; A grand spectacle standing proudly beside a gentle stream of crystal clear water. Mother had chosen this spot for me, claimed it was sacred ground and that it would always be the one place I could hear her voice, no matter how loud the world became.
She was wrong. I cannot hear her now for the roar of the metal boxes cuts off the wind from my ears, overpowering all other sounds but itself. With the whispers of love and promise that this place had always brought to me cut off, I broke. The grief and pain I had been holding within my wooden skin since the beginning - the first fallen tree - came rushing out of me in a painful wail, full of agony and dejection. I sobbed aloud my sorrows as the humans continued their destruction right before my eyes until the walls that kept me hidden from their gazes began to melt away. I was too weak to continue holding up the façade, too weak to shelter myself from their probing eyes, too weak to continue watching them take everything away.
One moment, the sound of their evil was all empowering and the next, there was silence besides my desperate pleas. With a note of confusion and terror seeping from my pores in waves of heat, my gaze swept around at the humans that stared at me, clearly stunned at my sudden appearance.
As the confusion faded, my horror began to mount, growing until my feet swiftly carried me across the small clearing, my lithe frame disappearing within the confines of the safest place I knew, my tree - my home. My heartbeat pulsed wildly, the great tree responding with a soft groan and the movement of the trunk curling more in upon itself. The sorrow of my soul had the leaves wilting and the branches drooping, crying tears of anguish into the stream, the water becoming tumultuous and beginning to thrash against the banks.
I wept and I wept and I wept until all that was harming me was washed away.
When I allowed myself to breathe once more, the world around me had seemingly changed, morphed into something new and foreign. I carefully took a step onto the soggy ground around my tree, noting how all of the branches had softened until their leaves almost touched the ground like vines hanging from a moose' antlers. Though different, it was beautiful in a saddening way. A strange, but perfect sense of peace filled the air as a familiar voice filtered along the stream to meet my waiting figure, whispering words of approval into my ears: "Well done, my Weeping Willow."