“I need you to watch after it,” a voice spoke, pouring out from the women’s frame, impacting all around her, but only for her ears.
As she looked at a sapling in her yard, she didn’t respond. The night prior, she was asking for a reason to keep going, so she didn’t question the thin stalk with one small and large leaf. The larger, tilting it down ever slightly. She didn’t question the first voice she heard coming from herself, which wasn’t her own. She squatted in front of it, bringing her legs to her chest. She understood this was her task, and was content. Work was not reason enough to wake, but she hopes this tree could be. Something greater than herself. Or some minute insanity. She didn’t know which she preferred—some greater being needing her help, or her own mind making this odd plant out to be something greater. A reason nonetheless.
There were no questions asked. She simply sat and looked. Her folded form, encased by a large fenced yard with no others for miles—not even a highway—only the few train horns that were carried by the wind from the distance. And the animals in the trees around who would turn to look at her for no more than a minute, with still eyes, before they retired to their business.
Every morning before work, she would come out and look at the sapling. She kept a log of how it changed; the notes, initially sparse, grew incredibly verbose with the season
In the spring, she spoke of its color, of how the leaves appeared to be getting larger, and of how the stalk grew stronger
In the summer, she wrote of concern for the sun above. For whether the precious green could withstand the orbs burning rays. But how, despite her concerns, it grew bigger and stronger.
In the fall, she reflected on its reliance. But as the chill drew in she began to concern over the weather to come, the first winter. She planned, and as the chill grew, she built a green house. Spending all free moments fretting over the construction. Windows that could open for the kinder seasons, but that could close tightly when nature hardened. A sturdy frame and construction that would last through the years of its growth, but that was aware that it would only stay as long as it needed.
In the winter, she spent much time out in the meticulously crafted glass home. As the winter began to give way and spring began to curl, she found herself napping within the shelter. Not wanting to miss a moment. This was her task. One in which she could not fail, or she would. Her lifeline.
She began to live by the season. When she wasn’t working in the town, cultivating her garden, or caring for her few chickens, she was with the sapling. She began speaking to it from time to time. Not to that which tasked her, but to the growing truth beside her.
“You are very important; no matter your grater purpose, you are great to me.”
The first words she spoke to the growing stalk. She meant them, she was grateful to have found something to care for. She wished it could have been for herself alone, but she was not part of those fortuned few. So she cared for that life, which enabled her to care more for all else, and in turn, herself.
As seasons passed as plentifully as the blades of grass, she didn’t consider the time past. She lived her life well, she treated her body well, and she assured the tree was protected and safe. It wasn’t until those who she knew began to pass. Till those at her work, in the town began to whisper at the oddity that she had not. It was then that she left the rest of the world. Her life amongst them had been lived; now she would live with it. In her sustainable corner of the planet. In which she protected the tree that outgrew the home she built all those years ago. The tree that could now shade her in the way that she had shaded it.
As hundreds of years passed, her home began to fall. When the roof fell in, she began to use its rubble for fire when needed. That home was that of the life she had lived; in her continuation, she no longer needed it; now only kindle for warm.
The home was soon taken by the earth, the generations of livestock returned to the world, and in time, the tree opened to her. She found her way in and felt its breathing warmth, and as she closed her eyes, she heard the voice that saved her all those years ago.
“You both watched well; now watch over all that is to be, and rest in the comfort that it will watch you.”