charisstoma: (default)
[personal profile] charisstoma
2. Why leaves change color?


Title: A Tale not Told
Mythology
Author: charisstoma
Word count: 302

Long ago, it is said, trees used to walk the earth. No one knew why, just that they did. Sometimes they still do.

Acer could have told them but he was held to the oath all trees take as saplings; never to reveal that they can walk, or talk for that matter at least not in human speech. Still he remembers what it was like to dance in the moonlight; to do more than dance, to fuck in the moonlight. That knowledge comes down through the generations, born into each and every tree.

So he remembers the time when a human caught two maples cavorting drunkenly from having imbibed the other’s sweet sap, of how the human joined in and sipped from the hollow knotholes that the drunken ones had used and used those same knotholes for his own rutting.

He remembered, as did those trees and the human did too, making up some tale of spirits beings in the trees. A tale changed through the years of a god pursuing a nymph until she turned herself into a tree to escape him.

Acer could tell that to this day all maple trees remember and their leaves blush crimson, knowing that the humans have a way to record images now and admire the effects of their shame until the trees in desperation drop those same leaves to stand naked and stark but less noticeable in the landscape.

All the trees do this to some degree, for the shame is there for all … except the conifers who have no shame to speak of.

Acer could tell but he doesn’t but he and his kin speak, just not in human word, when the wind rushes through their limbs and sometimes when there are none to notice they still dance in that same wind.

Date: 2016-03-29 04:49 am (UTC)
frogs_of_war: (Default)
From: [personal profile] frogs_of_war
I haven't had a chance to read this yet, but the tree from the picture is in the Japanese garden not far from my house. The tree is so often photographed that I have pictures of it in all four seasons hanging on my walls (from used calendars I cut apart). They just renovated the garden and redid (or are redoing) the entrance and I need to go again.

Date: 2016-03-29 01:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] charisstoma.livejournal.com
Pretty and so lucky it's close by you.

Date: 2016-03-31 06:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mee-eep.livejournal.com
What a beautiful tree, you're lucky to have it near you :) I love all the seasonal colours of trees.

Date: 2016-03-29 04:57 am (UTC)
frogs_of_war: (Default)
From: [personal profile] frogs_of_war
When the trees were people and mountains walked... (The "once upon a time" of the local indigenous people)

Conifers have nothing to be ashamed of. Reproduction is a part of the circle of life.

Date: 2016-03-29 01:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] charisstoma.livejournal.com
*snickers*
I see some Lion King in there.

Date: 2016-03-31 06:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mee-eep.livejournal.com
Conifers having no shame amused me ;)
You're doing well with these.

Date: 2016-03-31 10:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] charisstoma.livejournal.com
Conifers do a slow fan dance of a striptease, dropping some of their needles and retaining some of their needles.

Date: 2016-03-31 10:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mee-eep.livejournal.com
Never thought of plants as being saucy teases before!

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