‘Life’ & or ‘Live’

‘Life’ & or ‘Live’

Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

Light rends the darkness followed by an earth shattering peal and the overwhelming scent of ozone. Skipping the step of sparks, flames lunge past footholds to climb and devour in their wake. As lightning continues to ignite the sky and skip across the mountain, an ancient tree takes in the calamitous scene and weeps tears of molten sap. Popping and hissing they cool in the torrid breeze bearing final witness to the majesty and beauty of this once life preserving canopy.

The flames eagerly consume the bark of this old tree, sapping its strength, weakening its once firm grip on the mountainside. Then. With a sound almost as loud as the violence within the sky, the tree lists, breaks, and becomes weightless before finally exploding into the scree slope.

Climbing lazily into consciousness, a massive boulder shakes off its slumber at the passing of the ancient fir. Blearily taking in the scenery it feels something it hasn’t felt in ages. A stirring. A giddiness of the littles wedged beneath its girth, freshly loosed and scrabbling, gurgling, down the slope into the darkness. Curiously and uneasy, the boulder heaves against the depression of its resting place to see what the littles have found further down the mountain. The excitement of the scree slope grows lively in the heavens as the boulder awakens to the rediscovered glee of freedom. Bouncing and crashing down the mountain the boulder leaves its mark, spreading joy and life to everything it touches. With a deafening whoosh the boulder finds a weightlessness of its own and end over end it spins euphorically through the air before parting the cool curtains of the lake below.