Aurora’s World: Iaelaera: Becoming Human

[k_a_webb]

Written for dreamwidth user forgottenspirits’ picture prompt of a tree, which went in an entirely different direction to the one I was expecting.

Watching was the hardest part of being a tree. It could do nothing to change what was happening, because it didn’t speak the same language as the humans, and it wasn’t sure that they would even listen if it did. Over the years (it didn’t know exactly how old it was, but it could remember a time before human magic existed) it had watched the humans hunt those who were different to them. Or maybe hunt was the wrong word. Hunting was a natural process. What the humans did was unnatural.

The trees often talked about the humans, seeing them almost as pets, even though they couldn’t understand why they did what they did. First magic was seen as a good thing, and people with it were special, but then something happened to change that, so all the magicians were destroyed. That had been a strange time. It could remember the wave that swept across the land, from kingdom to kingdom, until all magicians were viewed as dangerous creatures who shouldn’t be permitted to live.

Slowly things were changing again. The tree heard from its neighbours, who had heard from their neighbours, about how some of the kingdoms were beginning to appreciate magic users once more. Other kingdoms weren’t. One of the kingdoms, the kingdom where magic had first been discovered, was dealing with two problems at the same time. People were dying, mostly the homeless, and no one knew why. No one but the trees, who couldn’t say anything to the humans. They watched as magic users who knew how to use their power stole power from people who didn’t know what they were.

If the tree could cry it would have done. Hearing about those poor humans was almost too much for it to cope with after witnessing the death of so many when magic was first outlawed. It wanted, more than anything it had ever wanted before, to help the humans, because they needed the trees. They didn’t know that they needed the trees. To them the trees were just trees – non-sentient beings that just existed.

Maybe it was that want. The tree didn’t know. It would never know for certain what had happened, but it had a theory. Even though the humans weren’t using the magic the way they should it still existed and when the tree focused it’s entire being on helping the humans it had watched the magic worked on it. When it thought back to that time, which seemed like it was much longer ago that it probably was, it could remember dozing during the night, because that was what a tree did when there was no sunlight. No tree slept the way humans did. In the morning it found itself sleeping next to a tree.

Realising it was sleeping was the first thing that told the tree something had changed. At that moment, having just woken up and being rather disorientated, it didn’t know what. It wasn’t sure it wanted to know what, even though it needed to know what had happened to it. The other trees still spoke to it, which made him feel slightly more calm, and it opened it’s mind to them, to see if they knew what had happened. Fortunately they did.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.