Thanks to Pauline Moss for
permission to use her beautiful image, “Ornate Roots”!
Cabriel appears to doze on a
broad branch of the Dreaming Tree, catching fleeting glimpses, half-seen
impressions, of a million, million dreams. On guard, despite his relaxed pose,
he opens one eye as a flock of thousands of Red-billed Quelea swarms past, waving back and forth in the
brilliant blue sky. He rumbles a growl deep in his chest, and they move on.
The Dreaming Tree is ancient, rooted deep in the earth before
mankind wore so much as animal skins for warmth. Its broad trunk is scrawled
with the dreams of generations past, stretching up to the canopy of thick limbs
and wide leaves that shelter Guardians from the sun’s fiercest heat. At night,
the branches droop almost to the ground, and the leaves slide together like
hands holding tight, protecting the trunk and any therein from the night’s
bitter cold.
There is only one Guardian. Cabriel was drawn to the tree
when he had scarcely lost all his cub fur. There had been no one here, and he
had jumped up the trunk to the lowest branch and stretched out for a nap in the
heat of the afternoon. He learned all he needed from the Dreaming Tree itself.
Since then, he never strayed far for food, and he never needed more companionship
than the dreams.
Rarely did he need to do more than growl to deflect any
intruder. The sound was a subterranean rumble that strangers felt in the bones
of their feet, or their wings. Birds did not land, nor animals climb the
Dreaming Tree. In all his years, he had never seen a human outside of the
dreams.
They fascinated him, the two-legged ones. They overran the
Earth, seemed willfully ignorant of their effect upon it, yet remained so
integrally dependent upon it. Their dreams were so rich and varied in
imagination. Cabriel could never have dreamed such visions as they carelessly
spun and wove into the Dreaming Tree.
Could be
continued…
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Dogs in house
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Houdini, Maize, Malachi, Brindle
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Time writing
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15 minutes
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January word
count
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2,483
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