The tree is huge, that much she knows for certain. It had gone on and on and on in the late night gloom in which she'd found it, the rain largely obscuring the details above ground. She had paid more attention to the lower branches, ones with interlaced leaves that stretched all the way to the ground. When The Noise had shaken all the world she had pushed her way through those branches and found a kind of shelter beneath them, where the leaves of the tree protected her from all but a few errant trickles of the cold, wet rain. But the rain hadn't bothered her at the time; it was good to feel washed clean, and it had felt almost like the touch of a living thing on her back.
But then it had gotten dark and The Noise -- a great big pounding from the sky -- had shaken her down to her roots, and she had fled in fear of it. Small Noises had followed, mere growls in comparison to that first loud slap of sound so big it had made her ears ring, and those had kept her in place long after the echoes had faded. She'd spent the whole night huddled under the sheltering branches of the tree, and it is only now, as morning has dawned, that she has the courage to poke her little nose out between the branches and sniff at the rain-cleansed air.
Last night, when she'd finally fallen into an exhausted slumber, there had been dreams of softness, and a gentle scent of flowers .. and it is the vague memory of those dreams that gives her the courage to step out into the day to see what it holds. Maybe those dreams are a sign of what this day will be: perhaps, she thinks, she will find someone like in the dream. She hopes she finds someone, even if they do not smell of flowers, even if they are not soft. It had been very lonely, in the long night after The Noise.
