Byrl became the center of tribal social life as the elders always held council within her shade, and mostly life was good for all. Change intruded, as is always the way.
At first, Byrl sensed anger and resentment as warriors of the People related tales of rudeness and outright hostility from outsiders who invaded their lands. These new pale people built permanent homesteads and tried to deny the People access to their ancient hunting grounds. The anger and resentment turned to hatred and fear as atrocities mounted. Finally, only a few of the People's warriors came by in season, mounted on painted war horses. They and the bison soon disappeared and Byrl never saw either again.
~o0o~
Year after year, season after season, nature cycled through endless variations of the same patterns as before the arrival of the People. Rarely, a new type of people stopped, always on horseback, and camped for the night beneath Byrl’s tree. One small group stayed two days, but only because one of them succumbed to a bullet wound. They buried him just inside Byrl’s shade. She had seen death among the People, but they had always built a raised platform to allow the deceased body to return to nature while the spirit floated off with the wind and birds.
Byrl remained satisfied with life and never expected more nor imagined better. She was amazed and pleased to discover that, after six-hundred years, life still presented wondrous surprises. Although they were on the run, the bandits had carefully buried their brother. They overturned enough dirt to place the body deep, which discouraged coyotes and other predators. They also inadvertently dropped a ripe acorn into the tilled topsoil as they replaced the thin layer of sod. That created the perfect conditions for growth as well as a source of nutrients for the soon-to-be sapling.
In Byrl’s entire nut producing years, her acorns had fed the local wildlife, were swept far downstream by the rushing water, or dropped into inhospitable soil beneath the slightly poisonous drippings of her own leaves. This one acorn, though, boldly poked six inches into the spring air and promptly unfurled three oversized leaves. Upon each leaf sat a small male sprite, and at their junction stood a young, minuscule, but fully formed male tree spirit.
The young tree and its sprite Gnar were full of youthful vigor and pushed out the triumvirate of leaves before Byrl's first buds appeared. She slumbered late but woke to a shrill tirade from the young sprite. A rabbit, delighted to find such a tender shoot with three bright green leaves, attempted to breakfast upon them. The three winged leaf-sprites fluttered and dive-bombed at the rabbit’s eyes, though to little avail. The young Gnar screamed invectives at the top of his tiny voice, but the rabbit simply ignored them all and nibbled the tip off one of the leaves.
Byrl transported to an overhanging branch nearest the commotion and called down to the rabbit. She had known this buck for all three years since his birth and had called a timely warning that concerned overhead hawks many times during those years.
“Twitchy Nose, must you eat my child on this fine spring morning?
The rabbit turned; first to look overhead for danger and then to process what Byrl had actually said. He got a puzzled look on his fuzzy face and twitched his nose as per his moniker. He looked back and forth between the tiny, tasty snack and the massive oak as if he considered the absurdity that there could be any relationship between the two.
“Really, Twitch, that is my son, and I would consider it a huge favor if you could breakfast on something else. I can see a nice new patch of clover just a little way upstream.”
Twitchy Nose sniffed, in a rabbity version of a shrug, and hopped away in search of the promised treat.
“Thank you, Mother! I shudder to think what would happen if Twitchy ate my whole tree.”
“Like I have always said; treat everyone the way you wish to be treated.”
~o0o~
Year by year, Gnar grew along with his fine young oak. They survived through a season of hot drought, an extended freezing winter, and various parasitic infections typical of arboreal adolescents. Through it all, mama Byrl refined his gentle spirit by her wisdom and love. Life was idyllic, except for an emotional rite of passage the year he reached full maturity.
He and Byrl were amazed at the overwhelming number of male pollen sprites that issued from his flowers. Gnar preened with pride over the great abundance of his children. That high made his depression that much deeper when the greatest majority of them jumped off into the wind and disappeared forever. Even the few that managed to find a mate with one of Byrl’s fairies transformed into seedlings and were no longer able to interact as they entered hibernation. Thankfully, he had over one-hundred-years to learn to deal with the heartbreak of lost loved ones before he faced the greatest grief of his life.
Neither Byrl nor Gnar ever experienced such a storm. Two tornadoes came within a mile of them, followed by driving rains and winds up to one-hundred-fifty miles per hour. Towering thunderclouds piled above them, followed by innumerable lightning strikes. The trees were thankfully damp enough that the resulting prairie grass fire barely singed their bark. Just when they thought the worst was over, a massive lightning strike, immediately followed by a second, split Byrl’s trunk in half and burned her core to ash. Gnar never even got to say good-bye.
~o0o~
One day many decades later, the summer silence broke as dozens of people appeared on the far side of the stream. To Gnar, they appeared methodical and industrious as they worked downstream for a time only to disappear on the horizon. A low rumble frightened the denizens of the Prairie, a sound never before heard. Gnar stood on his tallest branch to look out as the sound and vibrations increased. He had no word for it but took an instant dislike to the noisy, hurtling thing as it passed on the new tracks.
A month later, two oxen-lead Prairie schooners with two horses and a mule in tow pulled into the shade of the tree and stopped. The extended family heralding an invasion of homesteaders that came annually for years. That first winter, the final remains of Byrl was chopped up for firewood and went up in smoke within the low, sod cabins. Gnar never knew how close he came to a similar end. A young wife and mother who grew up surrounded by forests stood firm in her desire to spare the tree, as it was her only concrete reminder of an easier life.
In another two years, enough farmers settled in the region to justify a permanent train stop. Over the next century and a half, ninety percent of the Prairie transformed into covered asphalt and concrete. Gnar became the centerpiece of a one-hundred-acre historical park and shared the space with smaller planted trees with whom he had made friends over their short decades.
The wild animals he had known shifted to squirrels, dogs, and the occasional cat. Even the birds, by and large, were more urban-adjusted species. Of all the changes, Gnar most regretted the day people rerouted the stream and domesticated it through underground channels. He hardly ever received a visit from any fairy folk, as few could tolerate the ubiquitous use of iron in the modern world.
Even the few friends Gnar had left were eventually taken away as offensive bulldozers flattened his park and builders replaced it with a mega–mall. The law protected Gnar’s tree in consideration of its age. The architects won design awards for the glass paneled atrium designed just to showcase the oak, but it also completely cut Gnar off from nature.
The sprinkler system provided barely enough water to the roots, and he always felt dry and dusty. Even direct sunlight was limited to two hours at high noon before the surrounding walls shadowed him once again. The temperature was maintained year around so that Gnar and his tree never truly hibernated nor came fully awake. They simply existed in a numbing sameness season after season.
There were people aplenty, but they were so busy and removed from nature that Gnar was virtually alone. Even the children were bereft of the quiet sensitivity required for communion and were just as likely to carve rude words into the bark.. The next fifty years was a period of sadness and loneliness and Gnar only kept living because he had no option. Even this was not to be the lowest period o
f his life.
Not that he cared, but Gnar gradually noticed that twice each year the mall remained empty other than a lone, wandering guard. Curiosity slightly lightened his lethargy after the fourth straight day of out–of–season solitude, and by the fifteenth day, he felt a foreboding of dread.
The catastrophe happened at two a.m. The sky was clear above the glass atrium dome, but few stars fought through the city light pollution. Several bright clusters suddenly appeared overhead and then turned brighter as they separated from one another other. Twenty minutes later, a painfully bright explosion through the mall from every window and glass door, followed by a rumble that made that long ago first train feel and sound like a kitten’s purr. The light increased, increased again, and then the ground broke in waves. The walls buckled and shattered every pane of glass in the atrium. A strong wind pushed east, paused, and then reversed. The light faded and darkness descended, and the sun remained hidden for seventy-five years.
~o0o~
Gnar saw no other living creature for a very long time. The weather rode a frightening pendulum, from rains that lasted for months and produced massive floods, to droughts that continued for years. He didn't have an understanding of radiation, but only knew he hurt. Gnar spent much of the time in a state akin to a coma, but somehow the very core of his tree endured through all the depredation.
The first proof that he was not alone in the world came as legions of insects. The first to arrive were endless carpets of cockroaches, which completely covered him during a three-day wave. The oak survived only because the insects found no nutritional value in his dead bark or outer pulp. Whatever they had previously found to sustain themselves was deposited among the long deteriorated remains of the tile flooring as feces and dead carapaces.
This turned to a blessing as it gave the tree enough of a nutritional boost to sprout several small clumps of leaves the next spring even though hordes of locusts quickly stripped them. The departing millions of insects left tens of thousands of dead, which made more than a fair trade for the leaves.
~o0o~
Slowly, but inexorably, the prairie grasses returned, although they exhibited a distinct reddish tinge. Even small mammals began to reclaim ecological niches, although they were in constant competition with enormous insects. The catastrophe left its mark on everything. Rabbits no longer had eyes, but their ears were twice as big and round like an elephant’s, and their shrieks rose into the ultrasonic for use as echolocation.
Reptiles retook the world as the prominent ecological Class and now came in countless varieties with some as large as extinct hippos. Gnar wasn't sure if the scaled beasts lacked the intelligence to communicate with him or were simply rude. His greatest joy of the recovery years came when the trickling stream reclaimed its ancient bed, and with the sweet water returned of the silly, playful naiads.
~o0o~
Kimbu was hungry, tired, and thirsty. He thought of himself as human, but his ancestors would have taken some convincing. His direct forefathers and foremothers were of the lucky few whose mutations were not only beneficial but also bred stable. His skin locked in moisture and reflected harsh radiation with small, scaled growths that shone with a slight metallic glow. His lack of knees and lower legs, combined with prehensile feet and double-length arms gave him a four-limbed gait that rivaled the extinct racehorse. He was barrel-chested and lean of waist, and at the age of five was considered an adult.
He had completed the rites of passage that included strength, bravery, provision, and progeny so was on his vision quest. His extended clan of two hundred people had depleted their hunting grounds and needed a sign before their next migration. Kimbu and the other four members of his generation had left following radial directions in the hope of richer lands. The most successful of them would become the next leader of the clan.
Kimbu came upon Gnar's tree when he scented the trickle of water from miles away. He greedily lapped at the cool, sweet liquid. He fell asleep nestled into an exposed root and entered a healing dream.
Kimbu’s people had yet to develop self-importance and always kept in mind that nearly every force of nature was more powerful than were they. They also carried a racial sense of guilt over their ancestors near destruction of the planet and kept to a simple level of technology by tradition as well as circumstance. They distrusted pure scientific knowledge and were only interested in day–to-day survival tools.
The mutated humans developed a balance between their hard-won humility and the deep self-reliance evidenced by their continued survival. They gave respect to the natural forces of the world, but without groveling in supplication and superstition. This openness of spirit allowed them sensitivity towards the surviving nature spirits, whom they honored and cherished.
Kimbu had never seen such a great tree as Gnar's had become and simply assumed it proper etiquette to enter into a conversation.
"I am called Kimbu. I thank you for the night’s shelter and the sharing of your water. Would you care to gift your name?"
Gnar was amazed and deeply touched that this son of mankind was so polite and kind in spirit.
"Welcome Kimbu, I am called Gnar, and this is my oak tree. If you are hungry, there is a patch of tubers against the east wall which the rabbits always seem to enjoy."
Kimbu's stomach growled at the mention of food, and he immediately loped to the wall and greedily dug up a handful of pseudo-carrots. He ate a mouthful, hardly pausing to chew, then brought the remainder back to the tree where he finished them at a slightly less-hasty pace.
"You are kind and generous. You have a beautiful view across the South, and the ruins behind you and to the sides look as if they provide good shelter. I can see herds of grass eaters in the distance, and we are far from any taboo nightglow. Would you accept the company of my people? We are few, but we need new grounds to lessen the impact on the remaining wildlife."
"Tell me, Kimbu, can all your people speak with those like me?"
"I, at least, have never met another like you. I am not sure what you are asking."
"The people from before, those that built this place, could not truly speak or hear any but their own kind, neither birds nor rabbits nor trees nor naiads, nor any of the spirit people. A special few were aware of us, but the last such were many hundreds of seasons ago."
"I am in awe of you, who knew the ancestors! There is so much we would learn from you. Please, with all respect, allow us to come, and guide us with your wisdom."
Gnar had mellowed with age and came out of the long dark times as a simple, gentle spirit, so it never even entered his mind to deny such a request.
"I dearly would love the company, and whatever knowledge I have is yours for the asking."
As Kimbu gathered supplies and trekked back to his people, ancient memories slowly returned to Gnar. He thought, perhaps, he might be able to help direct these people from some of the dangers that befell their ancestors.
And direct them, he did. His very first act was to introduce them to the naiads, who showed them to the blockage of the ancient riverbed. The community quickly and thankfully restored the creek to its former glory. Gnar dredged up more memories of the first settlers and their farms and introduced the stability of an agrarian community, but also preached the intimate symbiosis the Buffalo People had shown with the land.
The people’s mutations shortened their lifespan so they seldom lived past twenty-five years. Gnar became a mentor, arbiter, and an ever-flowing well of stories and teachings. The small tribe thrived and spread their ways and culture throughout the world. No matter how far they expanded, Gnar's Valley and ruins remained a treasured link to their past as a living memorial. Gnar saw them through another fifty generations until in the fullness of time the grand oak reached the end of an exceptional longevity.
In tribute to all Gnar had given, the people traced a direct descendent of Kimbu and sent him as their representative. The young girl simply sat and reminisced as a friend until at last the life force o
f the tree faded and Gnar separated into his rest. Much to Gnar’s surprise and beyond any expectation, his soul gently rose above the surrounding tumbledown walls that had been his view through so many years.
It seemed his soul was incapable of tears; else so deeply did the People's final gift touch him they would have flowed profusely. The ravages of radiation had made his tree sterile, so when the people found any rare surviving oak out in the world, they brought back acorns and planted them along the hills beyond the walls. These became a forest that numbered in the tens of thousands, a secret they kept from Gnar as a final good-bye gift. His last view, as he looked down, was of countless sprites that looked up and cheered him on, along with their millions of children.
A split appeared in the fabric of the sky above, and as it opened, Gnar saw Byrl waited beyond with outstretched arms.
“Welcome home, my son, no mother could be more proud!"
~end~
Chapter 4: Felinus Supernus
These bound transcripts are certified copies of originals kept by the Office of Temporal Veracity. Unauthorized removal or duplication is strictly prohibited.
~o0o~
This board is convened under the authority of Inquiry. The subject of this Inquiry is certain allegations surrounding statements, oral and published, from one Whiskers Tabbyclan, licensed Systemic Classifier; to wit, statements contradicting clear passages from the Divine Tome.
Tom Tabbyclan, before you lies a paper entitled "The Advancement of Clowderkind Through the Ages.” Are you the author?