Talking Pines
By: Cameron Robinson
Tags: Short Fiction, Short Story, Gothic, Nature, Death

These woods do speak. The branches wave in the wind and speak through the rustling. The bark cracks with jokes and chips in scoffing. The falling bark carries messages to the forest floor as well as the annual report of the leaves as they make mention of all that is above. The soil is always reveling in the news of all that is above even though it is almost always the same. Nevertheless, the communication is more than just words; it is sensory. The soil absorbs everything that comes into it from the leafy messengers.

The seasons have come and gone. The rains are gone for the season. In comes the snow. The warmth will come after that and so on and so forth. These are but passing things. While the trees can understand the joys of the soil, they are much more interested in hearing the goings-on of the ground beneath, what gets brought in and has spread through connected roots. The trees have a hunger for knowledge that stretches as far as roots and dirt can take them. They want to know of the earthworm’s path through its small inch of the forest, the only world that it will probably ever know. It wants to know of the moss spread of the forest floor.

It’s interesting in seeing how and why the ant persists in its existence. It wants to know of the gathering of the flies over the body decomposing behind the azalea bushes. I can’t tell it that; I don’t know how I got there. The forest communicates; it moves to and fro. The vines literally crawl and inch to find the source of my death. They stretch further than anything I can imagine. I am fresh they tell me. The chasm opens up and I am swallowed beneath the moss. They do everything with consent, picking me apart and spreading me across the forest floor. The soil pushes into the roots of vines and trees and allows me to see.

I see for a long while and understand something that was not apparent before. I am become like them, but only in the understanding. I see how I always like them. “From the dust you were taken…” I see now that those words I grasped so closely to my heart turn out to be true. So am I a plant now, I ask. No, they answer. You are simply here under protection. Protection from what I ask.

From your brother, they answer. How long shall I stay here in this state?

Oh, Abel, we do not know the times and seasons.

How should I describe this half-existence? I feel as though I have been exiled from everyone. I am not united to anything or anyone. I simply wait for a time or a season, to bring me some further comfort. I don’t hunger or thirst, but I still long. I long for something of what was stolen from me. I feel that consolation of what is to come, but at times it feels too much to bear. I feel like hiding myself in un-creation.

I ask the forest about this lonely existence, if there are any others like me. No, they respond. You are the first.

Does that mean others will soon join me?

Unfortunately yes. Such is the doom of your race and everything living now.

The bearing of such an existence became lighter with company, though I cannot say that the initial newcomers were joyous to behold their now present state.