They Were the Trees

This is what it felt like to walk among the trees, a light breeze blowing through your hair, they said.

They gathered around Sam, whose suit was ill-fitting but presentable. Some of them stood stock-still, arms out at a variety of jaunty angles, their many fingers splayed. They were the trees.

They were weeping and they were tall and mighty and they were the trees. Were they arboreal? Yes.

Others moved close to Sam, very close. They positioned themselves so that they were nearly touching Sam, skins mere millimeters apart. They puckered their “lips” and blew softly upon Sam.

Sam closed their eyes.

The trees made noises that—they had explained beforehand, over scones—were similar to the noises that trees had made and that the myriad life-forms that lived among the trees had made.

A rustling. A whistling. A creaking. A tittering. A cawing. A buzzing. A scurrying. A chirping.

The noises were complicated and heartbreaking and lovely. The trees loomed.

Their collective breaths made Sam’s hair move. Winter wheat, thought Sam.

That’s it, said Xander. That’s what success looks like. Look at the hair. How it moves.

Quiet, said Persimmons. You’re a tree. Trees make sounds but they don’t talk, except in the moving pictures. So shut the fuck up. Kindly.

All of you shut the fuck up, said Hobart.

Shhhhhh, said Buckwheat, many-pronged “branch” to pursed “lips.”

Sam smiled. The script said that Sam should smile at this point, but Sam would have smiled anyway because of how this felt. How the breeze felt. How the trees sounded. How they loomed.

To be among the trees, said Sam. Yes. To be walking among the trees. I am. That. This. Of this.

Quiet, said Buckwheat. You are making little to no sense.

That was Sam, said Pumpernickel. Sam can talk. Sam is the walker among the trees, a breeze bl—

Fine, said Buckwheat. I stand corrected.

Shut up shut up shut up, said Sweet Vermouth.

Now it was Brie’s turn. Brie was the owl. Brie was the owl. Brie was the owl.

Brie had researched owls all night long. Brie felt confident. If someone had asked Brie at that moment to rate her confidence in her knowledge of owls, in her capacity to make sounds similar to those made by actual owls in an actual deep and dark woods, she would have said, “Fourteen.”

That was out of fifteen, Brie figured. Out of fifteen maximum. “Hoot,” said Brie. “Hooooot.”