the seed
There was once a tree so great and so beloved, that it became a kin and walked the swamps. But first, it was a seed - for all trees are seeds. As a seed, it had been picked up by a crane and carried through the air. The crane dropped it in a river and the river carried it to the sea. There, it bounced between waves until it finally came to rest on the sandy shore.
At the sea, there was a tribe of kimeti. They were as hard and rugged as the salt water. A doe from this tribe found the seed.
The doe said: This is the ocean and the water here is heavy with salt. Poor seed, you will not grow here.
The seed did not know this. Now that it did, it wanted to ask how it could go somewhere else. It was a seed, and being a seed, it wanted to grow. But lacking a voice, it could not ask the doe.
The doe said: I will take you somewhere you can grow.
And so the doe left with the seed. But the tribe that lived by the ocean had a rule and it was that once you leave, you cannot come back. The doe had given up her home for the seed.
The seed did not know this.
The doe carried the seed back to the swamp and found a place where there was both soil and sun. She planted the seed and tended it as well as she could. But the doe was not the sort who could stay and find happiness tending to a seed.
One day, she left.
The seed did not know this.
the tree
Do you ever wonder what length a plant year might be? For the seed, years tumbled and fell like rain quickly. It grew roots and branches, and long after the doe that carried it from the ocean had passed, long after that doe's children had passed, the seed became a tree.
As a tree it stretched upwards into the sky and downwards into the ground. It knew the smell of rain, the feeling of sun. It knew that seasons came and went in cycles.
As a tree, it met many others. Kin sought shelter under its branches - from rain or from sun - and kin made homes under its branches.
There was a buck who was born under the tree. His mother left his long sac under the tree. Having seen many sacs before and heard many stories before, the tree knew that from the sac a child would be born.
It was summer and so the tree's leaves were deep green. The buck was born in the tree's shade. A tree grows an inch by an inch, but young bucks grow far quicker. In what seemed like a moment, the buck was fully grown, and then in the next, he had a family of his own. The tree watched these children grow too. Like their father, and the others before them, they played in the shade of the tree. They tripped over the roots and chewed on the leaves.
In the next moment, the buck was gone. He had fallen asleep in his favorite groove and he had not woken up. The tree knew, from all the cycles it had seen, that this was when one would say goodbye. Goodbye, said the tree, good night.
The children left shortly after that. One, a buck who looked quite like his father, turned for one last glance.
The buck said: "I will come back one day. I promise."
The tree did not know what a promise was. The tree did not know what coming back meant. But the tree knew that the cycles would continue and that kin would come and go. The rains came, and they left. They dry winds came, and they left. The tree saw many lives come and go beneath its branches.
One day, a doe came.
The doe asked: Are you the tree from my grandfather's stories?
The tree willed its leaves to rustle, but there was no wind, and so its leaves did not move.
The doe said: Silly me, a tree cannot talk.
The tree willed its bark to twist, its roots to rise, itself to speak. But it was a tree, and so it could not.
the taken form
The MotherFather asked: If you become a kin you will never be a tree again.
This was an acceptable trade to the tree. Kin were free to move as they pleased, to see the world, and to speak with others. The tree wanted to do the same.
The MotherFather looked at it. They tilted their head and said: You do not think like a tree.
The tree wanted to tell them that maybe the crane that picked him up, or the salt-water sea, or the buck and his family had made him less like a tree. But being a tree, it could not speak. The MotherFather did not need to hear the tree speak to know what it thought. They pressed their head to the tree and saw all the things the tree had seen, as a tree, as a sapling, as a seed.
The MotherFather said: I understand.
When the tree burned, the entire swamp could see it. It had grown very big after all. The tree burned so brilliantly the swamp was filled with smoke for two weeks. You see, for one thing to live, another must die. And so the tree had to lose its form before it could ever become a kin.
From the ashes, where a tree had once been, a kin rose.
It turned to the west, to the east, to the north, to the south. It jumped and it rolled. It screamed into the air.
And then the kin-that-had-been-a-tree, turned and left.
It was a kin now, and it could do these things.
It traveled to the edges of the desert, along the way it met many kin whom it recognized. I knew your father, it would say, he slept under my branches once. The kin looked startled, or sometimes they laughed.
They would say: How can that be? You are not a tree.
It followed the river to the sea and when it got there, it found a tribe of kin living on the beach. They were as hard and tough as the salt wind. The kin-that-had-been-a-tree said, Oh! I knew one of you once. But none recognised its description of the doe that had carried him.
Oh, it thought. Have you forgotten her?
But the tribe knew nothing and so the kin-that-had-been-a-tree stared out at the ocean alone. It drank the salt water and laughed.
You are right, I could not have grown here.
That night, alone under the stars, the kin-that-had-been-a-tree dreamed that it was a tree. It felt the wind rustle its leaves. It felt the earth below feeding it. It felt the rain splash against its leaves. It felt kin taking shelter under its branches. It felt the moon go by in cycles, and it counted days in the passing of seasons.
But when it woke, it was only a kin.
*
"But what happened to it?"
"Perhaps they are still out there in the deepest corner of the swamp. Who can say for certain?"
"How can that be? If it is a kin it would have died long ago! Kin are not trees."
"Ah, but you see little one, even when you change forms you do not truly lose what you are."
