Todays bit

The tree was silent, taking in what the unhappy buttercup said, while the other flowers all agreed with the first.


“Do you know what?” he slowly asked.

“What?” the little flowers chorused together.

“I once thought the exact same thing.”

“You did?” the small buttercup asked in surprise.

“Yes. I was once young, like you.” answered the tree. The flowers giggled at the thought of the huge tree before them being younger and smaller.

“You see, a mother used to come and sit beneath the shade of my leaves, although I did not give much shade at that time, because I was smaller. This mother brought her little boy, and would read him stories from a book. I listened as she read exciting stories about the hot and dry deserts, the dense and wet rainforests, and the cold and windy mountains. It all sounded so exciting and I wondered why I couldn’t see the world and experience a different environment. One evening, as I folded my leaves with the sunset, I thought again about all that I was missing and I felt sad, wishing that I could travel.

“I woke up the next morning to rain falling. ‘How could there be a storm in the summer?’ I asked myself. As I opened my leaves for the sun’s rays to give me strength, there were no rays coming from the sun. Gigantic trees with enormous leaves towered above me, and I could not see the sunshine. There were many colorful birds and other animals frisking and skittering around. ‘Where am I?’ I asked bright orchid. ‘You are in a rainforest of course; the biggest one in the world, the Amazon rainforest.” Yet because of the many other trees all sticking their roots deep into the ground and drawing out the moisture, I was growing weaker from lack of nourishment, and everything went dark.