Who we are and where we come from is not your concern. We have been asleep for hundreds of years, in what you would call a comatose state, waking only when our lives are put in mortal danger. We are not immortal. We spread our life force across the land, each seed making way for you humans to live. We liked you. You didn’t like us. Or maybe you liked us too much.
William Mack hoisted his chainsaw onto his shoulder. He only had a few more trees to go before he met his lumber count. He saw the one tree that could cut his time in half. By his measurements, he could get three sixteen foot logs out of it, meeting his requirement. Perhaps he would take the one next to it tomorrow. It wasn’t as nice of a tree, the first branch twisting, the base knotted. But it was thick enough that he could easily get two logs from it, in addition to several boards. He guessed it was around nine thousand years old. He didn't think he had ever seen a tree that old before.
William filled up the tank on his chainsaw, knowing that this tree would take a while to cut down. The grinding sound as he first hit the bark soon gave way to a smoother straining sound as he hit the hardwood on the inside. He glanced over at the ugly tree, noting that it appeared to have grown by a few feet and narrowed at the base. He must have just seen it wrong originally. Trees were incapable of stretching. Everyone knew that.
As his saw whistled through the tree, he could have sworn he heard screaming, which was abruptly cut short as he cut through the middle of the tree. The weight on his saw suddenly seemed to increase, a horrible grinding sound began emanating from the tree. He shut off his saw and backed out of the tree, taking a minute to look at the tree. It looked somewhat thicker than he remembered. For that matter, the other tree, the ugly one, seemed to have shrunk back to the size he initially saw it, and rotated ninety degrees. Now more determined than before, William flicked on his saw and finished toppling the tree. He called over the logging crew, who made short work of cutting the tree into logs, de-branching the tree and taking the usable branches, and hauling them away.
William glanced at the other tree as he was leaving, eager to reassure himself he must have just been imagining things. He had been awake two days straight to fill his quota after all. But now, the tree seemed to be shaking it’s branches at him.
“I AM THE BOSS. I AM NOT CRAZY!” He yelled, partially to the tree, partially to reassure himself. One of his workers came up to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.
“Why don’t you hit the hay, boss? We can finish up out here.”
“Yeah. I’ll just go catch some rest.”
The other lumberjack seemed to shake his head as he walked away, a motion that made the paranoid Wiliam all the more angry. Raising his hatchet, he carved a large bald spot onto the bark.
“There. Now I can be sure it is not doing anything.”
He drew a line down to the base of the tree with his hatchet, and placed a large rock in front of the new line. The tree couldn’t actually be moving But he wanted to make sure of it. Either way, he would cut it down tomorrow.
We cocked our heads, branches rustling with the movement. A searing pain, a few screams of death. We woke up. The ones we protected were revolting. It was time.
