A Story of Salvation

I felt the ground shake. It began with a dull thud, the thud of gathered tools. The thud of resolve. The thud of what was about to happen. And then it continued. A shaking through the earth. The distress of my friends.

Their distress conveyed through the core of the earth. Their distress reached down into the soil and spread with their roots. It echoed across the rocks and down to the core of the earth, where it spread. It spread.

Like the news of an earthquake it spread through the earth. Tremors echoed off the iron core and bounced across the surface. I felt it come. I felt it stop.

Another thud. The thud of finality.

The wind whispered the news to me though I had already heard. The clouds rose and brought the message.

I see the stumps in my mind’s eye. I see the roots drinking in the life they long for and conveying it up to the tree that is no more. I see the life emerging from the veins, coming in contact with the sky and evaporating. A mist rises from the mutilated trunks, gathered up by the wind and condensing into the clouds of the sky. The clouds come, misting across the sea, the evidence of the deed.

The moon rises and I look at her. We stare at each other in silence. Both knowing what the other is feeling.

Both overwhelmed. Both silent. We understand each other without speaking. We take comfort in each other’s thoughts. We wait.

The deer hears it. He hears it as he grazes in the grasslands and lifts up his head. His antlers grow, they grow faster now, gathering in the life the clouds bring, the life of another. They grow fuzzy and harden. They harden and shine, gleaming taller than the deer of yesterday. He listens to the wind. He feels the tears of the clouds. He understands.

There, in the midst of the destruction I know another stands. A single tree stands in the midst of the rubble, alone to bear the pain of emptiness. All is stripped from her, but she remains. She remains to grow and she remains to tell her story. She remains to tell the story that there is always hope. There is always a reason. She feels the wind caress her leaves, the embrace of a friend. She looks to the sky and gathers hope. She gathers the hope as the sun rises each day and she looks down on her trunk.

There, written in the bright red of spray paint is a single word.