Following stories came naturally to me. It’s difficult to explain how exactly it worked, but the feeling it gave me was like a drop of water rolling downhill. I don’t think the water knows exactly where it’s going-- where it will stop-- until it’s there. My magic went ahead of me, clearing the way so all I had to do was lean into the fall.
I don’t know how long it took me to get there. It must have been a long while, for I remember being distracted by trees and clouds and butterflies, and lowering my nose to the earth to feel the words rise up to me slow as mountains. For their slowness I could not make out their form, but it pleased to know me that they were there, wherever “there” was-- for if it was not a physical thing, and no one else could hear the earth speak, who’s to know the words didn’t live in my head?
Anyway, when I finally arrived I laid my body down upon the roots of the tree, and I felt the embrace of the great beautiful earth beneath me.
I knew my mother had done the same, and I knew my father had pressed his cheek to the glassy trunk.
I knew many things, for the tree told me-- as it told me of the fabric of space and time it wove together, and the ache of summer as it yields to fall, and the countless tears that have fallen on the bare earth, sorrow that watered seeds which became forests.
I stayed there listening to the tree until the sun fell and my magic sputtered out. And then I slept, the inexpressibly heavy sleep of the spent, until the sun rose the next morning. When I opened my eyes, nothing was changed about the world except myself. I stood up, shook the sleep from my bones, placed a kiss on the tree, and finally I went home.
***STAFF EDIT
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