The Only Tree in the Forest

by Hap

Chapter 15

I have seen many ponies use an axe. The magic ones use their horns to grip them in a glow of magic. The ones with roots grip the handle in their teeth. But they all swing from the side, first up and then down. Cutting out one chip at a time, until the remaining trunk is narrow enough that it fractures as it tips over.

But this pony has carved a chunk out of my side, and though she has a horn, she has only used her hooves and her teeth to hold her tools. Soon the hole is large enough for her to stand in. She steps inside and continues hacking away, tossing the wood chips outside as she digs deeper. Her hooves stand on my wood, and I can feel her reaching out, reaching in to me.

The ponies who swung axes before, they chopped with precision, but without haste. They were doing a task, a job, and that was all.

This pony chops with a manic energy that I’ve never seen. Her fur is lathered with sweat, and still she attacks the wood with frantic, haphazard strokes of the axe. Soon, she will break through to the rotten wood. She will see what is inside.

She senses that she is close, and redoubles her efforts. I feel the last of my sapwood give way. The spongy rot beneath lets the axe sink in deep, and takes hold of the iron head. Tugging on the handle with her teeth is not enough to free the axe, and she resorts to punching through the last bits of solid wood with her hooves, splintering it until she can wiggle the axe free.

With a growl, she tugs loose a large chunk of the rotten wood and hurls it outside. She sits and pants and sobs, leaning against the wall she has carved into my trunk. Salt from her tears and her sweat soaks into my exposed wood. Her hooves are not just against my bark, or pressed into the soil over my roots. They are standing on the living fibers of my trunk. I see into her, and I understand that I was right, so long ago, when I first met her.

She is like me, I remember concluding. Her heart was burned away that night, when fire consumed the castle town and smoke rose up to stain the moon. Burned, like me, and slowly rotting from the inside out. As she shudders and sniffs, her cheek pressed against the splintery, ravaged timber, I realize why she is here.

She is not going to chop me down to build a house or a cart, or to burn me to cook her oats. She is here to cut the rot out of my heart. We are one and the same, and she will do to me what she cannot do to herself.

I wonder what it will feel like to be hollow. My heartwood has long been dead and rotten, but I have never been empty. I have become accustomed to the twisting, crawling sensation of worms and beetles eating their way through the spongy fungus.

After a moment, she wipes away her tears and takes a deep breath. She takes the axe in her teeth and steps inside the hole she has made, poking around the rotten wood with its blade. Dust and spores float outward in a cloud. She sneezes violently, three times, and backs out of the alcove. My heart is as toxic to her as it is to me.

She stares at me. The sun has barely climbed above the eastern mountains, and their shadow still falls over the foothills beyond the sea of grass. I remember the first time I saw those mountains. I never would have seen them, if not for the ponies’ axes and saws.

A bell rings out from the distance, drawing the tall pony's eyes to the apple farm that I've been watching for the past several years. Ponies stream out of the orchards toward the farmhouse. I can't hear them, but I can see that they are laughing and shouting as they run to breakfast.

She smiles. It feels good to see her smile.

She lights her horn, and shakes her mane. Her whole body glows, and she shrinks down to the size of a normal mare, her horn and wings disappearing entirely. She is now a root pony, her fur the dusky pink of a dogwood flower, with a mane the color of the deepest cloudless skies. Her disguise complete, she scoops up her empty saddlebags and trots off toward the buildings over the hill, across the creek, where ponies come and go with their carts and crops.

Comments

[Reese]

My emotional state is not really nominal at the moment, but just letting you know that I'm continuing to enjoy this. :)

[Hap]

9881922
I'm glad to hear that!

[Mitril]

I hope it won't be that predictable how I think it is.
It's probably the golden oaks library tree, isn't it?
So it dies anyway, *cough* Tirek.

Celestia and the tree have some connection, right?

Maybe the tree will have o body to move, talk, etc?
That would be cool and different from just following the original timeline
So it won't just die like we know it normally would

But in general cool story

[Bad Horse]

The first paragraph is a nice, cruel way to sustain the tension. Tho I think switching immediately to past perfect tense in paragraph 2 was a mistake. You could've drawn it out more.