Changes

It was a morning just like any other before. Nothing had changed in the night. The ancient, semi-shrivelled, ductile yet solid old tree stood as it always stood – exhaling a breeze from its dappled brown-grey limbs, happily waving at time as it skipped by. The sun rose as it always rose. Nothing moved but everything stirred, singing their praises to the day but somehow oblivious to it as well; hidden things, invisible under an emerald blanket embroidered with gold. It was a morning just like any other.

And like every other morning before, in the house by the old tree, a creature was perched on a window sill. A creature that watched the world before her – her world – come alive and throw its face at the paintbrush that dripped golden sunlight everywhere. Everything greeted the light as if in defiance, yet also as if in offering of peace.

When the creature breathed, things from the bottom of her soul, sediment that she never even knew existed, would scatter out from her lips and settle in between the cracks in the ancient bark. Occasionally a green finger or two would brush her knee in a gesture that sometimes felt like a reassuring pat. Like the tree had absorbed the sediment and understood it. Then she would laugh at the very notion of it, a laugh as quiet as the wind sighing between those very same green fingers.

But suddenly she stood up and closed the window quietly. Suddenly the morning changed. Shutting out her only friend, she was quiet, but resigned. For some reason she felt suddenly sick of sitting and waiting for a nod of acknowledgement from Fate, from the Universe, from Karma, from the God or Gods or whatever else you call it; tired of the monotony of the unchanging mornings that she had only ever known how to love. And she didn’t know why. Even as she walked away the creature already missed her precious morning. The exiled tree already seemed to droop in surrender. And she didn’t know why.

Because she had changed. She had changed and therefore the morning must change. But the creature did not know this.

She went out to apologize to her friend for changing the morning. To explain that she didn’t know what she was doing. It was true, for the colours in her mind had changed. And the songs in her mind became different too. The colours that used to meet and fuse in exaltation and beauty now just clashed, like something that was just simply, unjustifiably wrong. Familiarity crawled into a little corner inside her, whimpering and whining all the way.

When the creature reached her ancient tree friend, she curled up at the base of its mighty trunk; beneath its thick canopy. The coldness she felt there disturbed her. It was something strange, new. Too new. Too strange.

As intended, she apologized. And she spoke to it as she always did, wondering at everything that was happening all too suddenly. As she spoke the coldness seemed to melt away and the rain tree seemed to want to hug her again and be happy again and laugh again. She sighed and leaned her back against her friend. Perhaps the next morning might yield more unsettling things. Or it might tuck this morning somewhere beneath the folds of history, erasing all memory of it. Perhaps. She could only hope.

And though her thoughts remained more tangled than the roots of her tree-friend, some semblance of peace did return to her heart. And what with that and her best friend’s forgiveness, and the tiredness in her bones from change, her eyelids soon fluttered close.

Only she never woke up. She remained there as long as the tree did. And the tree remained there as long as she did. Never was there another morning just like every other before, yet there were infinitely many. They remained there, each depending on the other. Unmoving but not frozen, a little fragment that time forgot to drag ahead; the creature, the tree, and the changed morning. Because she had changed. She had changed and therefore the morning must change.