Stone tree

The old rerun was on the TV again, close encounters of the fifth kind and Roy decided to just go and have a lie down since his head was aching and he did not want to watch it having already seen it several times.

As he lay there with his curtains closed to make the room more dim his eye's closed he slipped into a waking dream.



The young boy was known as squirrel since he often climbed the tree's in the forest near the village despite the elders and the shaman warning him it was disrespectful and could bring the anger of the forest spirits down on him, really they just did not want him to fall and injure himself but they did kind of half believe the long tales they often told him.

He was sitting in the top of an old mighty tree, the biggest he could find and actually climb and looked wistfully over the top's of the smaller tree's toward the mighty tower of stone known as stone tree to his people that in later day's would be called devil's rock, how he wanted to climb it but it was too far from the village and the elders especially his parents would surely scold him if he dared to go that far especially with the dangers of the wolves and bears as well as mountain lions but as he grew older this longing never left him.

Many years later after he had passed his hunter initiation gaining the second name of Owl and could go were he would even though it was still frowned on to go too far from the village except when hunting food for the people and never to go too far alone he felt that same calling and so having wanted to see the stone tree close he chose one day to make the journey but not wanting to anger the shaman he went to ask his blessing.

The shaman had always liked the young man and had him in mind to marry his daughter since if he could just get this strange notion out of his head he would make a good husband for her so long as he did not wander off and leave her so he made a deal with the young man that he would indeed give him his blessing but that he must then upon his return marry the shamans daughter and also learn the secrets of the village shaman so after a moment of shock the young man had agreed even though it was a great responsibility.

The Shaman whom had known the young man had something more to his spirit smiled to himself as the now serious faced young man left his hut, Squirrel Owl was a dreamer but then so had the shaman been when he had been a boy all those years before.


The Journey was more than a day but eventually the young man reached the mountainous tower of rock and stood looking upon how vast it was up close, great scratches that looked like tree bark were an immense bear had marked the imaginary giant tree with giant claws.

The following day when the sun rose he began to climb the stone wall's, something that few had ever done and many believed impossible but he had never feared heights and was so sure of foot and hand that he managed to climb all the way though it took him most of the day to do so even despite the speed of his climbing but eventually he reached the top and found it barren except for a few scrubby bushes and strange plant's he had never before seen, it was colder up here in spite of it being mid summer but he stayed the night after finding enough scrubby wood to build a small fire and enough dried plants to keep himself warm, He built a small wall of piled stones to keep the wind at bay and huddled inside the half shelter he had made with a small fire roaring in a tiny hearth.

That night as he slept under the stars he had a strange dream.


The old man his beard white stood looking up at the huge tree that reached into the sky, soon it would be ready.

The roots had reached deep into the earth taking all they needed and soon the sky ship would break free from it's roots and take the people far away to another world around another star.

Over the ages that it had grown tended by the elders of the people the mighty tree had grown from a crystal seed energised by the sound of the people's singing and the sacred musicians whom maintained the melody's that provided the necessary waves of energy to start the process until at least the stone tree had begun to grow fed by silicon, metals and other element's from deep beneath the earth, as it's crystalline leaves unfurled they were soon enough to provide it with all the energy it had needed and soon the musicians could leave there sacred duty and turn to other task's tending and pruning faulty shoots ensuring the tree grew correct.

Squirrel Owl stirred restlessly in his sleep then dreamed as he slipped from one dream to another another.

The young woman sat tending her weaving and stopped to look out of the window of her home at the great towering tree ship that was nearly grown, soon the acoustic engineers would begin the process of hollowing it out ensuring the organically grown circuitry and systems of the ship were ready, her people were dying and she knew that if they were to have any chance of survival it would be only onboard that great ship they were growing from a seed left by there ancient ancestors, to escape a world that was killing them they had been forced to re-learn lost knowledge and rekindle forbidden ways to save there dying people, even now nearing completion she knew it would not be ready in time to save herself since she would by then be too old but her younger sister whom she could hear a few room's away crying in her mother's arm's healthy in spite of the sickness that ravaged so many of there people would possibly be one of those that would escape, she smiled sadly at the baby crying and went back to weaving some bedding for her.

Squirrel Own woke forgetting what he had dreamed but feeling uncomfortable then fell soon asleep again as he huddled closer to the still burning fire after throwing some more scrub onto it.

Once again he drifted into a sleep and dreamed.

The people were gathered it was time.

The sound was not exactly music and became a tearing noise horrible to the ears as the acoustic engineers funnelled the sound of strange trumpets at just the right place and soon the engine of the mighty ship joined creating a roaring thunder as it the stone tree broke from it's stump and lifted into the sky, the watching people prayed for there children to there ancestors and did not even try to run as the great crystal leaves and branches fell from the climbing ship onto them shattering into gravel and sand burying them and entombing there city, the last city of there people on earth.

Soon as if he could follow the ship in a disembodied state he saw the great slender long vessel grow tiny then vanish from few into the sky as it got ever higher and higher until it was lost from sight.

The next morning he woke and felt a sense of sorrow, of loss and made his way carefully down the side of the towering stump of stone called Stone Tree, he wondered at the half remembered strange dream much of which he did not understand despite the clarity of understanding that had been his while he dreamed, he wondered at what had maybe once been.


Roy woke his head still aching, he had not intended to sleep and now could not remember the strange dream he had just had but he had this strange vision in his mind, a great tree and a slender tall white haired people with features that resembled most closely the elves of JRR Tolkien's fantasy book's but they had used organic technology's not magics, just a dream he told himself.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Very nice story line!
I had a nice visual going in my minds eye as I read your story.
Keep at it, I want to read more!

a reply to: PiratesCut

Hey thanks for that.

Just an idea I had many years ago, there are folk's that really wonder if they were tree's though I am content to go with the idea they are just eroded plateau's and volcanic plug's (were an ancient volcano has weathered away but the hard core of ancient lava rock (Basalt) that once filled it's heart has resisted the erosion so outlasted the volcano itself, Edenborough castle in Scotland is actually built on another far older and smaller one but that is one that looks nothing like Devil's Towers which really does resemble a gargantuan tree stump.

I remember reading that one of the indigenous tribes of the region had a legend that included a great bear leaving scratched on it's side and that it was a tree to them.

Another story a kind of future shock I toyed with the idea of and mentioned on this site in non story thread's was the idea of a time travelling earth, the earth itself being the youngest earth, Venus being the earth that tried to escape an expanding sun before it was consumed entirely but being left scarred, burning and for (Superman were he spin's the earth backward) some reason it still spinning the wrong way around it's axis so having long been evacuated by anyone that survived whom may have fled to the earth (which may then have been an ice ball like Hoth - snow ball earth theory) or the planet mars long long ago when the planet appeared from a distant future in what to us would be the distant past but during this jump the earth accidentally towed along with it the remnants of IT'S Venus (Which itself had once been Earth while the small planet that some Victorian astronomers thought they had discovered called Vulcan was the fragmenting remnants of the previous mercury) was somehow caught up in the time jump but as the plant was already within the outer layers of the expanding atmosphere of the sun it's entire mantle had burned away leaving only the iron core of the world we now know as mercury (which is about the same size as Earth's and Venus.

I never got around to writing that story but if anyone likes the idea it would be nice to see someone run with it.

I found that to be a very nice read which took me places semi-memerized by where I was going to end up.

Well done.. I liked it .


Johnny

PS... You should grace us in our little Contest with one of your stories.

a reply to: JohnnyAnonymous

Thank you, I may.