She was so small when she was born. You might have missed her if you looked right at her. Her cry was as small as she was. Just a sigh. Communication was hard being so little. She tried once, and again, and yet again. Then her cry fell silent. She was tired.
A shadow fell over her. She fretted. She couldn't see the light! Another shadow joined the first. The light was everything to her at this point. She whimpered with frustration.
"She's so tiny."
"Yes. She's tiny. But I'm sure she'll fight. I'm sure of it."
A gigantic shadow came toward her. She wanted to shrink away. It was terrifying. It just hovered.
"She's too small to touch! I can't."
"We have to. If we don't she'll die."
Hands. Gigantic hands attached to shadows she didn't understand. They were scooping her up. She felt movement. Too fast, it was dizzying! Where they moved her, she did not know. She did not even know how far she had gone. The shadows retreated among sounds of distress. Again she tried to cry out, and emitted just one, tiny, sigh. Then she slept. Food came. The liquid was welcome. Soft and soothing. She felt strength begin to grow within her. She breathed a bit deeper and stretched. Growth seemed like almost a side effect next to how good the feeling of being fed was. She wanted to be full, all the time. She wasn't though. The food came at unexpected intervals. But it did help. She improved. Her sense of place improved. She felt the air. She was happy at the expressions of pleasure aimed at her. Most of all, she followed the light. The light was a warm pleasure she drank in and reached for.
Then came Fern.
Fern was older, but not much older. She was, however, much stronger. She could laugh. It was the first sound that She heard clearly as her sense of awareness improved.
"Hello!"
The newness itself was startling. A whole new individual. How bright her word was. How happy! She breathed in and for the first time, her voice was not a sigh.
"Hell...o."
"Hello!"
"Hello."
"My name is Fern!"
Fern didn't do anything by degrees, did she?
"Hello."
"Ok! This is good!"
There didn't seem to be much else to say at that moment. They enjoyed the light together. Fern would stretch herself. They would both stretch. The shadows returned. Food! A glorious river of soft liquid. The hands were still big, but not as big now. They were gentle, caressing her limbs with tiny touches, their voices touched her with small expressions of hope.
"Fern?"
"Yes?"
"Who are they?"
"Them? They are the ones who bring food. The ones who...love."
"Love?"
She knew she loved the light. Was that the same love? She had no time to answer the question. The sleepiness that came with being full comforted her.
After a number of days She could not express, She discovered, with some surprise, that She was bigger than Fern.
"Fern!"
"Yes?"
"I am big!"
Her friend laughed.
"Yes. you are big. And you will get bigger still. I am sure of it. I will never again be bigger than you."
There had been no food for an uncomfortable time. The voices of the shadows expressed anxiety. Yet She did not worry. She was no longer so tiny as to be almost invisible. She was not so delicate as to be destroyed by a single touch. The hands still came, the shadows looked sharper but indefinable. She realized she could hear the life within the bodies. It was a steady, rhythmic force. With great care, she listened to Fern. As she herself did, Fern was breathing. It was a steady sound. More sounds intruded upon her awareness and as she listened, she heard more breathing. She heard more words, intermittent laughter. She and Fern were not alone.
In the visual mish-mash that surrounded her, She could make out mostly green with spots and dots of other colors. A vast array of greens surrounded her. Blue-greens. Gray-greens. Light green and dark green. She could not see herself. She did not know what she looked like. Up above her, She saw pale blue where the light streamed down. Fern was a blob of bright green and gray-green. This new aspect fascinated her.
"Fern!"
"Yes?"
"You are beautiful."
Laughter. It was Fern's way.
It was another handful of days before it was apparent no more food was coming. Fern looked sad. The blurry shadows no longer spoke of anything happy or sad. Their touches were apologetic.
"Fern?"
Fern still breathed, but now she was no longer bright green at all. Her gray-green was now tipped with brown. All around her, greens of every shade were changing to shades of brown.
"Fern!"
Her friend took a shivery breath.
"I'm just tired. Just tired. That's all."
Sadness was something She did not recognize within herself. Her emotions were too new to understand them all. Even regret was something she only recognized in someone else's voice. She did, however, know that she was increasingly alone. Voices and breathing all around her dropped away one by one. Then came the moment Fern stopped talking, stopped laughing, stopped breathing.
"Fern?"
No answer answered her. All around her a deep quiet had formed rosettes of aloneness. Hands approached her. They were no longer massive and scary. A delicate finger caressed her. She still could not tell what the shadows were, but the hands were gentle. There was only one of them.
"I'm so sorry. We couldn't do it."
She was lifted. Her view of the home she'd known was tragic. Row upon row of brown surrounded her. Below her, Fern was nothing but a tiny ball of brown now that became smaller as they moved away. They stepped through what She could only describe as a big hole in the sky. Suddenly they were surrounded by a mass of sickly cloudy air. There was no blue here. And yet...and yet...it was familiar. Yes. Yes, She remembered this. It hadn't been this bad but it had been here when she was just born. So tiny she couldn't see past the particles surrounding her. How had they found her in this place? The question faded as the hands lowered her, back to the soil.
"Wait here, I'll get your friend."
Where would she go? She waited and the hands attached to the giant shadow came again, settling Fern gently next to her. Even Fern's most intimate parts were dry. Then it was her turn. The hands released her from the home she'd known and her intimate parts were exposed. And they were put together, into the native soil where she'd been found. The environment was not uncomfortable but was far different from that cool, quiet, blue-skied place where she'd lived with Fern.
The hands drew out a tiny vial. After unscrewing it, the hands upended the vial directly into the ground around her intimate parts. For a brief moment, not a long one, She looked up and saw herself, reflected in the shadow's mirror-finished face. She had oblong feathery green leaves along strong brown barked limbs. Although she was a bit pale, she did not have the brown, dying bits that so plagued Fern.
"I hope you make it. You're the only one left."
And then the shadow with gentle hands was gone walking away into the cloudy, sickly dust. What did the shadow mean? She was the only one left? She sensed the tiniest trickle of food surround one of her parts under the ground. With no hesitation, She stretched for it. The liquid was, as always, soft, soothing, comforting. But not enough. Nowhere near enough, to satisfy her.
With no food, she could not grow. She sat next to Fern as the clouds grew worse. She felt, rather than saw, lightning somewhere up above her in the swirling greyness. The lightning brought no relief from the heat. Day in, day out. Week in, week out. She waited. She sometimes saw bits of white tumble past her. When she thought she could no longer stand the wait, she would reach a little further down. She would use a bit of precious energy to stretch out. She snatched any hint of food she could find, even if it was from the dying bacteria she encountered. She was assaulted regularly by enemies. They wanted to use her for food too. She couldn't blame them, but they found little relief in her brown bark, toughened by the weather. They too became food for her when they finished chewing on her leaves and fell to the ground.
The process of life goes on. She was alone. No one to talk to, nothing to look at. Finally, She understood sadness and what Fern called love. The shadows had provided as much as they could until they couldn't anymore and even then they had put her back where she came from. Just in case. And when there were no more enemies, when nothing blew past but dust, the clouds began to part, just a little. Far up above she sensed something happening. She was nothing but a few ragged leaves on her limbs now. Creakily she stretched upward, craving what she sensed was coming.
It began as rumble, a crackle, a thickening of the air. A stifling heat pressed down upon her. Finally, she felt it. Drips splashed off the ground around her, bouncing away because the soil was so dry. Those that fell upon her poor leaves and limbs felt like tears. She did not know the moisture was rain, she only knew it felt good when it finally did penetrate down into the soil at her heart-stone, the pit that had kept her alive through it all.
One Hundred Years Later
They returned to find a failed science experiment, but a natural wonder. In one acre of land, a magnificent tree had taken hold. Her broad limbs reached for the sky, her beautiful oblong leaves glowed a waxy green. They removed their helmets to stare upwards at her in astonishment.
She remembered the shadows, so very long ago. She realized the mirrored face she had seen was no more than a shell for the creature inside. She'd just been too young to recognize it.
"Fern!"
A dozen voices answered her. They all chirped questions.
"Look! New friends."
With Fern's children all around her, she couldn't help but be happy. She felt a familiar pleasure as a tiny hand reached out to gently caress her giant trunk.
"She wasn't supposed to survive. She wasn't even part of the experiment, just a lucky find."
"Well, now she's lucky for us. The only living tree left. She's a miracle."
❖❖
Now, of course, this story isn't all true. But the specific tree that this story is based on is quite a miracle in herself. Every winter I start avocados in water. It's something to do besides endless rounds of lettuce and mustard in the greenhouse. For some reason this year, almost every single avocado I started succumbed to something. I forgot to top up water or change the water, aphids infested the greenhouse, I planted in old soil and forgot to water. In one case, I forgot to zip up the greenhouse. Through all this, one single avocado survived the torture I put it through. And I had to wonder, what would happen if we took climate change to its ultimate level?
True, it's not the only story I've done this with, but it is the first time that a real tree has made it into my writing. I haven't named her, I'm hoping that she gets big enough to actually make her an indoor potted plant. I'm leaning toward "Fern" what do you think?
