When I was young a tree was planted in my mind. I did not
see it there growing. Did not notice the flowers that sprang onto branches; not
until the child emerged from her roots. The child was beautiful and wild and
brave in her adventures. She danced between the roots and gathered falling
blossoms to lace through her hair.
She grew from the seed of the tree that was planted from the
love of another’s soul. She dreamed and shared her wild universe with the mind
of the girl she lived within. The girl began to write of adventures and paint impossibly
wild and beautiful creatures. The two danced together invisible yet bound
together; then the darkness began.
It was distant for long and away creeping closer even when
the tree was first planted it had been hedging the universe within searching
for a way in. It hungered for dreams and adventures to consume. The day the
girl heard men of medicine say he is not long for this world now the child
within grew still, holding her breath. She made ropes of roots and flowers nourished
by tears shed in the night. But the darkness was coming closer and closer
faster every day. Then the storm began.
Fed by medicines and whispers and broken hopes, the storm
hid its ferocity high above the shade of the tree; unseen, unheard until it
began to whip and pull at the delicate branches. The night the darkness came
the Gardener called the girl and the child to him. He said, “Be brave, be in
the world but not of the world. Do not despair. Promise me?” They promised. Hand
in hand they sat at his side until he vanished in the darkness. The crying was
quiet and constant held tightly within the tree; a thing for solitude, not to
be shared.
The tears nourished the tree; girl and child grew with it. Though no
longer wild the dance remained strong, with purpose, “Be brave, do not despair.”
The cracks began when the girl lost her
first before it ever knew the forest or light. Grew as parents of parents and children of those faded
into the grasp of darkness, one by one whatever she loved was ripped from
her arms and consumed by the ravenous darkness. Her back stood straighter each
time she felt love, yet broke that much more each time it was lost. By the time
her mate was pulled away the child within clung to the upper branches and screamed
into the whirling maelstrom. Yet the storm of darkness ate her every sound
until the girl thought she was alone.
Time and again the gardener's voice tried to whisper to her, “do
not despair, be brave.” But the storm isolated the girl and the child; trapped them in silence
and darkness, with only a muffled wail to remind them they were alone with the
scattered fragments of life.
Each time the gardener came to them the child
within told him, “It is a lie this Christmas! It is a mask they wear once a
year in hopes of new toys to break. They do not mean what they say. Humanity
only wishes to feed the darkness.” Then she would hide in the roots of the tree
and draw monsters on the walls and her skin.
The girl could not leave, could not join the darkness, nor
the child.
No matter how dark and bitter the night she had a promise to keep: be
in the world, not of the world.
In time all that remained was the storm, the
girl, and a child hidden in torn roots covered in monsters of blood and ink. Hoping that the day will come when
either humanity ceases putting Loki on the throne, or the gardener calls her to
him, the girl waits. In silence. Unable to hear the child over the storm she
waits for the eye to be over her, she will know then what the last painting
will be.
Of this, I am certain.
