"She felt, finally, abandoned. Defeated. Was she a reject tree?"
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WARNING: This book contains adult themes and content!
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Chapter 2.2: Where Miranda Tries to be a Pig
What did keep her attention for some time were the trees, her presumed kin. She would climb them, hang from them, jump from them, pick apart leaves, lick the bark, chew on branches, dig at the roots. Tree dwellers piqued her curiosity as well. Squirrels, birds, (woodpeckers!), cats, tree frogs, more bugs... What did they know that she didn't? She investigated every kind of tree in her forest. She learned much, but nothing of herself.
Perhaps all this moving around was her mistake. Trees keep still. So, she tried standing at attention for days, weeks - maybe even longer - waiting to take root. That, of course, never happened.
She felt, finally, abandoned. Defeated. Was she a reject tree?
A type of success came accidentally. It was late Spring, perhaps her first. She was walking, aimless. She'd been pacing for months, bored with the snow, already tired of life. With Spring apace and life budding, she was a little more upbeat, though she realized she had no real connection to it. Was a life without cycles, without end, a life without meaning? This she pondered.
And then the sow attacked.
Miranda had gotten too close to its den. Weeks earlier the sow had had its litter, and she was in a protective state of mind. Now, Miranda had nothing to fear. She could not be harmed. But she could be startled and was.
She ran for the nearest tree and jump at the trunk. As she reached out she knew that she had another option. No on. Not up. But in.
The sow slid into the tree and squealed. Ow! Where'd the ape go?
Miranda, hiding inside the tree, could still hear just as if she were standing outside. Indeed, she quickly learned that she could see out as well from any vantage point the tree granted. She could sense the tree, deep in the ground thirsty, the highest leaves basking in the sun, the weight on each bough. The excitement of another year of growth.
And, yes. That sound the sow made. It meant something. All those sounds animals made meant something. But understanding that discovery would have to wait.
At first, Miranda believed that she had finally made it. She was a tree at last! But she soon realized that the tree was its own thing. She was still herself. Nevertheless, this was a consciousness-raising experience. She discovered that trees connect to each other through the soil. They talk. After a fashion. They make root room for their offspring. Offspring? Miranda had yet to understand the concept of having young, let alone breeding. But now, living inside another entity she understood how plants live. She learned how to move between trees without having to emerge back into the forest. Some roots connected between trees, she quickly discovered, and with a bit of courage, she was able to squeeze through from one to another, without harming the trees. In time she discovered alternate lines of communication and resource sharing between the trees and that she could transmit herself that way as well. It was slower and harder to do, and at times she lost her way and found herself whole again buried in soil, but soon she improved and learned how to cope with the difficulties.
Miranda did not spend all of her time inside the trees and the earth. She had developed a habit of rising to the top of the tallest tree at night and popping out in the nook of a high bough to look at the stars, watching them set over her mountain. She learned those stars well, observing them for years, understanding that they moved in a nightly and yearly pattern. They seemed unchanging like her, but free, unlike her. Miranda had lots to learn and explore, but she knew she was in a prison. In the silent pitch of the night, she could hear them hum. Her skin was electric in response. They were so far away - she knew they were very, very far - but they somehow had much to do with her.
Even the Milky Way, which was available to her in such detail as there were no city lights in that time obscuring the ceiling of sky, was something she knew intimately. Far from thinking it was somehow separate from the stars, she realized that if each star could be thought of as a tree, then the Milky Way was just a far-off forest.
She watched storms from this vantage too. She did not fear them. She was fascinated by the raw power, by how the trees swayed and strained and by the fires the lightning sometimes caused. Those alarmed the trees. She put them out when she saw them, smothering them painlessly with her hands.
This old beech tree became her home. It towered over the forest around from both its great grow height and its situation on a hill. Her forest was bordered almost completely by mountains. There were some breaks between them, but Miranda never ventured outside. The ground in those breaks was clogged with rocks, and she had a hard if not impossible time travelling tree to tree with rocks in the way. She could walk out, of course, but her forest was large and kept her interest.
During the day, from her vantage point in the trees she was able to wander through the forest without being seen, and without disturbing the animals. She learned a lot this way.
Animals ate! She didn't eat. Well, she could, but she didn't need to. They did it often. The reason why was so far unclear.
They slept too. Some in the day. Some at night. This confused her. She had no idea what sleep was. She had no need. She would at times lie or stand still in contemplation, and sometimes would hold her silver-grey eyes shut to aid her hearing, but to curl up somewhere isolated and close her eyes for hours? That was not something that made any sense to her. She saw animals dreaming, but had no idea why. And bears. There were bears who slept for months. It was all very strange to her.
-- End of chapter 2-2 --
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