entropy.

Something the tree could never understand was why humanity so fiercely demanded immortality.

They seemed so afraid of change, and would constantly lament the ages of old; things were better then, things were brighter then.

People would move in and out of the surrounding houses constantly. Seasons blurred together, spring to summer to fall to winter to spring to summer to fall . . .

Each building, held up by a decapitated sibling, had a stoic and unchanging exterior and an interior constantly ebbing and flowing with the memory of a thousand souls. Day and night and day again, humans greying and withering away, returning themselves as dust into the earth from whence they came, just as God ordained in the beginning.

The humans had a calendar system, but the tree knew not how it worked. Sometimes they spoke of months, or days, or weeks. Were they referring to time? Were they referring to hobbies, or siblings, or toys, or pets? The tree knew not.

People often came and went, and the tree paid little attention. Sometimes they would stop and stare at it, fascinated by its forever unchanging expression. The tree often considered its desire to touch the sky with its limbs very similar to the human desire to never die: it was fleeting, and impossible. Yet they both dreamed together, one day wishing and maybe hoping, as the days began to blur to the point of oblivion.

Then there came a day where everything stopped.

Humanity, for whatever reason, placed itself on pause. Nobody left, and nobody came. The seasons passed by, blurring together once again, yet the houses were silent. Perhaps they had trapped the souls of their inhabitants? The tree could not know. It could not see inside.

The old normal seemed a rotting carcass. The tree wondered if its siblings were taking their revenge, rooting the humans in place as a strange and twisted punishment for their deaths.

Where were humans? What were "days," and where were they going? What was there to record in this year's ring?

What was supposed to resound in the silence?

Nothing the tree could ever try to say would have the ability to replace what the humans threw away. With them gone, it just. . . wasn't the same.

What was this feeling?

Did it miss them?

The tree would have shaken its head, if it had one. That was impossible. It felt nothing for the humans that used to chatter in the sidewalks, passing it without giving it more than a futile thought.

The tree found it ironic that humans despised change, and yet found that moving forward was the only way to progress. They never lingered in one spot. They spread their wings (did they have wings?) and flew to all the corners of the universe that they had the ability to reach.

Now, their wings had been cut and tied. Now, they were forced to stay in one spot, only barely holding themselves up with their underused talons. What was a house but a nest? What was time but a fleeting tool of entropy?

Entropy.

The tree wanted to bathe in the word.

Perhaps this is what humans feared most.

Entropy, the natural tendency of the universe to bring everything into a further state of chaos. Entropy, the agent of the greatest and smallest of changes.

Without it, everything would be frozen in a state of static nostalgia. Perhaps that's what the humans wanted, but it was the tree's constant reality. As a result, it had simply lost track.

The seasons ebbed and flowed, blurring the days and the nights and the people of nature: the rabbits and deer and pesky mosquitoes that bothered the humans so.

The landscape and the nature? They lived on, forgetting the humans and their complex problems; they lived with the simple and sacred numbers that described their universe.

The humans, though? They never came out again.

Well, except for one.

There was a day, rather, a rain-kissed midnight, when the ambient passing of time was interrupted by the creaking of a door; more specifically, a front door.

In the frame stood a human with a pale, wan complexion, and long, filmy strands of ebony hair grew awkwardly from its head. They were like malnourished vines, in the way that they formed into waves. Its clothes were tattered, and holes had intermittently set up camp. From what the tree could tell, its eyes were pools of tar, and it clearly was starved of both food and sunshine.

It took wobbly steps towards the tree, before awkwardly plopping itself at its base.

"Quarantine has been really getting to me, making me resort to talking to a tree. . ."

It had a high and tinkly voice, that reminded the tree of a songbird chirping on a cheery summer morning. The tree felt the human's head lean against it.

The human continued to talk about its life, which consisted mainly of it being cooped up in the nest it called a house. It hadn't been allowed to see anyone, it said. It missed everyone, but could do nothing to fix that.

It wondered if anyone even cared. It just wanted to end it all. It just wanted to die.

Wait.

A human who didn't want immortality?

The tree resounded with the spirit of this human. This one didn't care for a forever of any kind. It, too, loved the word entropy, and wanted to succumb to its forces.

The rain continued to patter to the ground around the tree and the human, and the leaves did their best to shield the tree's companion from the cold sting of the drops.

Some still made it to the bottom, hitting the top of the human's head and giving its hair an ethereal shine with the help of the warm streetlight.

Suddenly, the human began to climb the tree. It grabbed hold of its branches and ascended carefully, making sure not to break anything too large. It pulled a rope out from under its clothes, and tied it to the biggest branch that protruded from its middle. The other end of the rope was fastened into a hook, which the human wrapped around its neck.

What was the human doing? The tree was innocent, and legitimately curious.

Just like that, the human jumped, and a snap resounded in the air.

The human spoke no more.

Its soul was no longer in its body, and its lifeless corpse hung from the rope by its neck. The rain continued to fall, and the streetlight illuminated the human's face. It had closed its eyes just before death, and it looked peaceful, almost asleep.

Already, the tree missed the soul that could relate to it so well.

Perhaps it was in a place called "heaven?" A place where it could live in a tranquil sort of peace with the Creator of the universe?

It was then that time resumed, and the seasons, the spring, the summer, the fall, the winter, the days, the nights, and the storms began to fuse together again. Yet, this time, the tree had a morbid companion: the abandoned body of the human that once lived in complete harmony with the tree, if only for a few spare minutes.

The houses, the carcasses of the tree's siblings, soon began to crumble, and what was once a lively neighborhood slowly transformed into a strange and twisted cemetery. Boards fell as the homes caved into themselves, and the nature took them over. The tree would glance at the decaying shell of the human and wonder when those ebony strands would grow into the vines that made up its soul.

And yet, this human had made an imprint on the tree's poor imitation of a consciousness. As it made its way through the remainder of the earth's days, that tree thought about the human that dangled like a limb from its biggest branch.

Something the tree could never understand was why humanity so fiercely demanded immortality.

They seemed so afraid of change, and would constantly lament the ages of old; things were better then, things were brighter then.

People would move in and out of the surrounding houses constantly. Seasons blurred together, spring to summer to fall to winter to spring to summer to fall . . .