The Plight of the Trees

Green Note: I heard Sunday Scribblings died like so many other things did this day. Since SS was instrumental in my foray into fiction, I’ve come to pay my respects in the usual odd way.

They gave us two days to prepare. By the second day, it seemed like it wasn’t going to happen, and then during the night it did.

I awoke to the sound of rain hanging in the balance between fluid and ice and the slop of raindrop bombs spilling out of the gutters and smacking snow and frozen grass all the way around the house.

It was black inside: no nightlight in the kitchen, no blinking amber printer light in the office, no blue glow from the corner of the room where the paper shredder is, just a pinpoint of blinking blue on the cell phone.

I called the water and light department: a woman answered, said they’re working on it, and that was good enough for me at the fuzzy hour of four. I had faith the power would be restored in a couple of hours and I lay back down to sleep, but started thinking instead.

Just in case the outage would last longer than I expected, I got a bucket from the garage and put it out on the patio underneath two badly joined pieces of rain gutter to collect water for toilet-flushing purposes. Then I slept.

I dreamt of a door to a lit-up room. I moved toward the glowing door and paused to look in. Pink champagne sparkles trailed after an unusually sprightly fairie flitting about, handing out sunshiny souls to a roomful of robots. And for a moment, the entire room was blinding white with the possibility of actuality, truth, joy, fulfilment…

Just as I was about to step inside, the fairie began blowing Brut Rosé kisses at every new being as she flew backward toward the door, and as she did, the light in the room dimmed with her disappearing until it went black the instant she was gone, and that is when I awoke to one distress after then next.

The power was still out, hours of repair to downed power lines was predicted, the temperature in the house had dropped, toilets would have to be flushed with buckets of water, brushed teeth rinsed with Aquafina, refrigerators kept closed, counter foods eaten, and when I raised the bedroom shades, I saw all the heavily burdened, completely iced trees, from tips to points of entry into the snow-stacked earth.

I went outside in my sweats and wellies to get in touch with the plight of the trees. Every limb, branch and twig, every single pine needle was coated with a thick layer of ice, beautiful and sad. Some of the more supple trees, like the slimmer birches, had bowed with grace in resignation, the tips of them one with the iced snow.

The significance of it all, being indefinitely power-less and amongst wounded-ness weighed heavy on my un-fairie’d soul and cast a bleakness on the future of the world and I wondered about the end of it—

The crack of what sounded like a gunshot went off in the woods to my left, and with the subsequent sounds of crashing through branches and the shattering tinkling of ice crystals to the glassy forest floor, I realized the top of a tree had snapped and come crashing down.

Sayonara Sunday Scribblings.

Click here for more on prompt “#400 – Finale” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

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