Outside, Inside

The vines were choking. The trees would have coughed if they could have. It hurt, it burned. The forest was dying. The concert was rolling over, rolling in, crushing everything. Houses of stone went up where once were bird nests. Dandelions were torn up before even a whisper of a wish could be breathed onto them. The sky was clouds of ash and smoke. The grass had been brown and brittle, now there was no grass at all. There were no seasons, only smog. Only dull industrial heat. Heat that rose and lingered off asphalt and clung ever to pavement was everywhere.

What was this for? Why was this here? The stone houses were empty. The steel machines with wheels were stationary. Perhaps the fragile vines had been strong enough to outstand the building makers. The bone trees shivered in heat waves. The leftover trash blew in the ash clouds. Ripples of dust bit into the bark, eating away at the dry skin of trees. Gnarled, twisted, bitter, withered, brown tendrils reach for unknown.

The sunlight is bright with its yellow rays overpower the lack of air, the lack of earth, the lack of rain, sending everything more and more into dryness. The sun is aloof, unaware; it only wishes to shine. It has burned up its sunflowers. It had no remorse to see them go, it did not shine for them. The white-hot rage barely noticed as they were paved over. The sun simply shone for the sake of burning, unfeeling rays licking over the concert.

Concert, asphalt, pavement, stone, with its shades of black and its shades of gray, locking away the earth, and coving great expanse of horizon. Buildings rose, and fell. A never-ending skyline cut into a never-ending sea of ash clouds. Shades of grey outlined in black, with heat waves bellowing up more foul dust. The buildings make the air move against its will. If it had its way, the air would stand as still and tall as the buildings, proud with its strength, proud with its own hollow pride.

But the air is not air. It is filth. It is heat. It is dryness, and ash. There is no escape for the trees. For the vines there is no relief, no fresh breath. They gasp in the heat, they grasp for relief, but none is in their fragile finger’ reach. There are only the endless colors of gray and black, and white-hot and dust as far as the eye can see.

Except inside.

Inside was kept safe, kept livable. It was the houseplants that survived, with the untainted water and the rests by the windows. They reached out their tendrils, beckoning. The glass was too fragile to hold them, to hold them in, to hold the others out. Soon the vines were working doors; knobs did not stop them. The air inside was clean. The air inside was cool. The air inside had been kept fresh. The trees sent their seeds on the heat waves to creep into the carpets.

Soon, the vines were thirsty. The reclamation of their home had left them thirsty. Years of fighting concert had left them dry; decades of withering away in the smog, in the heat, in the outside, had left them to die. Centuries they had toiled in the outside, for only themselves, for only clean air, since outside had been ruined a millennium ago. Soon, however, their fingers forced open the copper pipes. Soon, however, they were quenched, sitting fat and plumb with water in their veins.

The carpet was swelling with seeds. The vines could not keep all the water to themselves, and it spilled out over the patient little trees. The seeds took the water, and hugged it close to their shells like an old friend. They drew into a tight embrace and curled deep into the carpet; deeper, deeper, till the floor itself folded them into the cool earth under the stone houses. The water that flowed away from the embrace soaked into the ground, and the little trees grew bigger and bigger.

Then the big trees, with their long root, their deep roots, their roots that had spread and spread to deep under the houses, deep under the asphalt, deep under the stone house, tasted the water. The big trees, with their dry leaves, wanted water too. They bowed their skeletal bodies, branches opening up like expanding ribcages, breathing in the stone houses, breathing in the scent of moist earth. Deep, deep roots laces together, lifting the stone houses up to let in more air. As the copper pipes burst a little more, a little more water flowed into the embrace of the trees. The carpet was green with moss, the little trees were not so little, and they brushed against he ceiling fan, gently turning it and dusting up against the roof.

The stone houses tipped, unsettled. They did not know how to be stone anymore. They could only be houses now, with cream carpets and copper pipes and ceiling fans. They had once been moss covered rocks along forest paths, but that was before they were stones, hard against the forest and vines and little trees and birds’ nests. The roots of trees picked the stone houses up. The stone houses felt light. Then the stone houses laid down their roofs; the not so little trees inside liked that. The stone houses did not have to hold themselves up anymore. They decided to lay down their walls too.
But that was okay.

The inside was everywhere now. The plumb, fat vines had decides to take the water in their veins to everywhere. Soon the asphalt was in little bit, graciously moving so dandelions could whisper secret wishes to the wind. Soon the pavement was letting its deep rifting cracks be filled to the brim with grass, like vibrant green rivers. Soon the copper pipes had curled back, letting real rivers flow.

Green moss, brown earth, blue skies, white clouds, clear waters as far as the eye could see.