The Tale of the World Through the Eyes of The Oak

I do not remember when it was that I tasted the light of the sun for the first time - if such a moment even existed. But she was there each time I began anew, bathing me with her luminescence, fueling the desperate growth of my fingers trying to reach her, the determined burrowing of my roots deeper into the earth, and the ever-widening girth of my trunk. I do not remember the first but the cycle is always the same, and it has been happening for ages far longer than the furthest stretches of my memories.

The oldest memories I have are of cold days, days long before They were born. The leagues of ice that refused to thaw for generations… The dryness of the freezing air… The tiny furry animals clinging to my side hoping to get warmth, sustenance, protection… For the longest time, I remember how we thought that life could not get any more terrible for we had thought our pain from the harshness of Mother Earth to be the pinnacle of misery. But even in those days, I do not remember once thinking of Mother as evil. The ones I had considered as such were yet to come.

Once everything warmed up, things went by a blur. The ages that came after were of comfort and rejuvenation. All that was good was also plenty. We filled forests reaching further than could be imagined. Our numbers had never been higher; never had each of us been happier. Harshness still permeated our world - manifested as terribly quick and loud fires shooting from the clouds to rip open our barks, flames that once sparked on the branches of one of our brethren, would not stop until a huge chunk of our population along with uncountable others were burnt down, nasty creatures that ate up our insides until we were too perforated to support our own weights. But nothing had compared to the cold of the old times, where our fruits were as dead and smooth as river-side pebbles. Nothing compared until They came along.

My first encounter with Them, I remember. They were a family of seven. The leader of the family looked brutal - like he had been in countless battles and lived to tell the stories through the scars that littered every patch of his skin. His mate carried two of their children, each suckling on a nipple. The other man, I assumed, had shared a nipple with the leader when they were babes - although years apart; he looked so alike to the leader except that he was much leaner and a head shorter. The mate of the younger man carried no child on her hands but had a swollen belly. The last of them was an adolescent that tailed behind his father, looking as arrogant as all boys his age did.

When they carefully emerged from the shrubbery, I had mistaken them for Their close cousins. But when they got into fuller view, I knew I had never seen Their likes before. These hardly had hair on their body. The fur I had thought to be theirs was, in fact - as I realized in horror - the skin of another’s used as clothing. Beings that destroy other beings for the sake of the continuation of their lives are cruel. Animals are thus cruel by definition. But rarely had I seen animals killing for the sake of stealing skins.

Unlike Their cousins who use sticks to dig out ants to gently guide them to their mouths, these ones used sticks, rocks, and strings in a myriad of clever ways, mostly as efficient weapons. They also seemed to communicate very strangely. I had seen animals producing sounds from their throats to warn each other of territorial breaches and to entice their mates but never had I witnessed this level of variety in the connotations. 

I was curious at first.

After a while, they settled in the shade my leaves allowed. Once they were sure that there were no predators lurking around, they were comfortable enough to sit and lay their weary backs on my roots that jutted from the ground. The fathers, along with the adolescent, went deeper into the forest after some time. Before their return, the mothers - with the children taking turns clinging on to them - had dug a hole in the driest part of the ground, collected an armload of dead and dry branches in it, and collected a variety of small plants. The leader, his son, and his brother returned before nightfall. The leader had a dead animal -  a doe, by the looks of her softness - slung on his shoulder. The brother and the son each had dead foxes in hand. Proud of their cruel actions, they came in with smiles. 

Leaving the carcasses to the mothers, the leader shod off his stolen skin and began fiddling with an object he had taken out of one of the bags. A small wooden object, it was. And it fit illy in the leader's massive hands. Soon, he brought the object to his lips, shut his eyes, and breathed into it slowly.

I marveled. 

In my long age, I had assumed there was little novelty that I would see. The sound that came out of the object was the most eloquent combination of the birds’ songs sung well before the sun arose, the wolves’ calls to each other done in droves, the elephants and the elks, the wasps and the dragonflies.  

I marveled. I thought these animals beautiful, a rare sight I considered myself lucky for having witnessed.

With his music in the background, in shocking efficiency, the mothers skinned and gutted the hunts using a sharpened stone. In delicate-looking containers made of dried earth, they put their food over the dry wood they had piled in a dry hole. The leader’s brother showed his son how to smash rocks together. I had not understood the purpose of it then, but after intently watching the young man try futilely for a long time, I saw sparks jump and greedily eat up the dry wood in flames. FIre I had only known as the ultimate destroyer, the one to be most dreaded from all the harshness Mother had concocted, being so easily mastered in the hands of such a weakling, too, surprised me very deeply. 

So these animals that I thought were so beautiful for having shown me music were dangerous, I thought.

I remember forcing myself to believe that They were not to be feared; I remember letting my memory of the music the leader had played swoon me; I remember realizing, even then, that I was letting my inner weakness - a profound thirst for something unfamiliar, something to remind me that I was conscious, that I was not rock or air - to take hold. 

It mattered not. Even if I had known how obstinate They could get and how set-on They are at improving, even if it meant sacrificing what made Them beautiful, I would have not been able to change anything; for what was I but a mere chain of thought and memory distilled from the lives of my forebears…

And held against the prowess of Their cleverness and perseverance, I was nothing.

Everything else was nothing. Only They mattered. It is true that to everyone, the only ones that matter are themselves. But when Their sharp mind and relentless soul cleaved through the ranks in a world where the strongest dominate to make Them gods in a land of mortals, They became the only ones that mattered, not only to Themselves but also to everyone else as well. 

The second time I saw Them was only a few hundred years later. Their numbers had massively increased to the point that before I saw Them a second time, I had been feeling Their presence, Their marks on the world, through the air that brushed past my leaves and the tiny channels of water that veined the under-earth. I still vehemently refused to accept that it was my beautiful creatures who showed me music that were to blame for the rumors of the atrocities being committed on the edges of the forest.

I could hear the tapping of his feet long before I saw him. He burst through the hedgerow. He was dressed very differently from the family I had seen before. This one had a fine cloth covering only his midsection. Sweat was glistening off of his naked skin. He was running with all his might, daring a glance or two before he saw me, and decided that his only chance was to scale my body. I watched him reach as high as he could climb before being completely blocked by the thick canopy. Picking a spot where the vines provided cover, he sat there silently muttering to himself. His pursuers came not long after. They looked around as if sensing his presence there but then quickly left. He stayed the night there and rushed to leave at dawn. 

Not a fortnight had passed when those that chased him brought him before me. But this time, he was badly beaten, and he was wailing. They had also brought another with him, but she looked like a mother. They tied their arms and legs together, pushed them down onto my roots, and used rocks they had brought with them to stone their captives to death.

It was the first time my roots tasted their salty blood.

It was not the last.

In the decades to come, the forest’s edge that had always seemed too distant to be relevant came rushing towards my domain. They became even more powerful as time went by, and in Their wake, They only left destruction for my kind. No one was spared. They cut us down by the day, completely destroying in a day’s work what took eons to grow. We could not retaliate. Nor could we hide - for that was the way of nature: trees are bound to witness what is around them and simmer in their sorrow. 

By the time They reached me, only one of me remained in leagues. Perhaps that was why They decided to let me be. Perhaps They looked at me and saw - faintly it may be - that part of Them that I loved so dearly. Perhaps I was a promise of a better future.

Perhaps They let me be to tell Their tales. 

I do not know. 

But I know the pain of watching Them eradicate all those around me.

It only took a few more sights of violence before I had almost completely lost all the affection I had for them - dread and rage filling me instead of yearning at their approach. They had built a village from the houses they built from the flesh of my brethren. The village stood as a wound on the grassy-plain barrenness they created. They approached me only when they had major quarilles to solve, battles to wage, and crimes to punish. What started as that with their forefathers and foremothers soon became a religion to their sons and daughters. If I was not outright worshipped as a god, I was worshipped as a tool of their gods. They named me, prayed to my name, slit throats of animals as sacrifices for my name, and uttered my name in battles and in deathbeds.

In those days, the only thing that gave me a semblance of joy was having them sing to me. It was a form of prayer to them, a means to connect with the divine. In some ways, hearing them was the same for me. Even then, it could not be denied that they are capable of creating unparalleled beauty. 

Armed with metals extracted from the earth, another group that was built smaller but numbering much larger came one morning galloping on horses. It took them less than half a day to kill every single one of the villagers. In less than a month of their occupation, they had sunk their hard blades into my trunk to kill me, give my parts to a carpenter, and make more of their tools. Parts of me became parts of boats they used to expand even further. Parts of me were made into beams to hold up the castles for their kings. Other parts were made into planks to make crosses on which they nailed their criminals sentenced to death.

On the dead stump that remained rooted, two women had hung themselves to death using leather belts. 

It felt long before I heard music again. Centuries later, an artisan cut a young me that grew out of the acorn his aunt had planted as a child in her home garden. He carved me into a beautiful shape, hollowed me out, and stretched animal gut strings over me. The music was as sweet as ever. I was lucky enough to enjoy it for some time before, years later, the house of the musician who had bought me off the artisan burnt down, and took me with it.

That each of my lives came to an end in a violent way is a testament to what kind of world They had built. It was not that They were evil. I have come to learn that no such thing exists. It was just the circumstances in which they were driven by the weapons they needed to have if they were to survive in a home permeated with Mother’s harshness. That does not mean that it is easy to forgive. Or forget.

How can I be expected to forget how the air reeked so much for so long that I had almost forgotten breathing air that was not pungent in the days before Their reign? How can I be expected to forgive how the toxic water (excreted from Their factories) I consumed turned my bodies into a mutated shadow of my previous selves? How can I forget the legions of species that were killed off to make room for Their ever-growing greed?

I cannot.

But I will try not to hate. I will try to tolerate, if not love. 

One of the last things I remember of Earth was a circle of mothers and fathers, along with their children standing around me. Some of them had tears running down their cheeks. In those days, a decade after the bombs They detonated in Their meaningless wars had eradicated Their cities along with almost all other inhabitants of the planet, I had been the last of my kind. The very last. Not a fruit, not a leaf, not a root that was mine existed anywhere else. Of the survivors, those that had surrounded me were part of an initiative that was bold enough to try to redeem its kind by preserving and caring for all life forms that were left. I was the last one, and I was too sick from Their mess for Them to help me. I knew my time had come. 

I wished they sang for me. 

But there was still no way for me to communicate what I wanted to them.

As they watched me fade into non-existence, I tried not to cling to my memories of music. I did not want to be reminded of being alive anymore. I was glad to finally depart.

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It is hard for me to accept that the crimes of humanity were just one small but integral phase of Earth’s history. I do not know how many ages have passed since I had died for the last time. We are no longer on the planet. A safer, more stable haven had been built by the humans. The recuperative process is ongoing. From the DNA samples harvested from BioVaults insightful humans had installed before the nuclear war, today’s humans have restored almost every species. Through the vivid scanning of epigenetics and reconstructive processes, they have also been able to unlock our genetic memories.

I stand today in a forest pod that I would not have been able to tell was artificial if I was not informed. Two humans sit next to me with their hands touching my bark. We can communicate. It is strange.

The one thing they want me to understand is that they feel terrible grief on my behalf. I believe them; I feel what they feel, such is the communicative channels they invented.

There is music playing. There has been ever since they found out my love for it. I appreciated that. 

It is a very difficult place I am in right now. They understand that. I suppose that is why they did not dare ask for forgiveness. 

I do not know what is going to happen now. I know that they will care for me and for everyone else on board. I do not know for how long. 

But I do not look into the future and despair anymore.