The Trees are Talking
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. No matter how much she wished it were, it had all happened before. Time and time again. First it started as dream, one she simply ignored when she woke up and went about her day. It was a beautiful dream, but eerie in it’s elegance. Tall trees that reached far into the sky with deep shadows slinking about around their roots. She couldn’t recognise the trees, silver and white wood with gold cracks, all glowing in the darkness of the bottom floor. Dark green leaves with red, dark, dark red lines on them swished and swayed above her head. It was completely silent beyond the rustling of some leaves above. No sounds of birds whistling to each other, no animals making their paths along the loud floor covering of leaves and twigs.
Then came the whispering, high-pitched sounds, so similar to voices, flowed around her like warm water on a cool day. It was comforting and oddly familiar, but she didn’t remember hearing it before. Then the beeping started, echoing all around. That was a familiar sound that she definitely knew. That meant that it was 7:00 on Monday morning and school wasn’t going to wait for anybody.
After that dream Sylva began the notice the whispering of the trees even more. They rustled and flowed and moved constantly, even without the wind to blow them around. Walking to and from school was now a more interesting experience, no longer silent, no longer so lonely.
Over the few weeks proceeding after that night, the whispering had gotten louder. In the beginning it was just a small noise that she would absently notice in the back of her mind when she was alone, impossible to hear when there were other noises. Then, it gradually got louder, no longer a whisper and more like a gossip that never went away. You could ignore it and make more noise than it but it would always be there, beside you, behind you, talking about anything it could get its hands on. But that wasn’t where it ended.
It just got louder, like rain, going from the pitter-patter of droplets on a garden path to the torrential downpour on a metallic roof. By the end, she couldn’t hear herself think let alone heat anyone else speak. Going to school was impossible; the never-ending questions asked by teachers that she couldn’t even hear anymore. Her parents were worried as well, but when she tried to explain it to them they just told her to rest and get over it quickly. It wouldn’t do her or them any good if she continued to miss so much school. To them, education was the most important part of growing up and they didn’t want to have an uneducated child. Then they went to work and that was the end of that.
However, after all those weeks something finally changed. Not the noise, which was as never ending as it ever was, no not that. It was her skin. Once lightly tanned and freckled, it was now, step by slow step, turning silvery white, almost pearlescent. Starting at the soles of her feet and moving up, the discolouration was faint in the beginning but it steadily got worse. Surprisingly none of this scared her.
She knew that what she was feeling was not normal. She should be freaking out, should be worrying, should be running straight to the hospital; not looking at her feet in a amazement and wiggling her toes. There was an odd sense of calm, seeping straight into her bones. That calm spread as quickly as the colour did, oozing through her like chilled water.
By the time it hit her waist almost nothing could faze her. There was a fight at the neighbours, one of many, didn’t invoke the same feelings anymore. No more cringing at every raised voice, in the neighbours house or even downstairs. Nothing. It was like she was sinking to the bottom of a clear pool, the water rippling above but not enough to disturb her slow decent into the dark and quite floor. She could still see the world through the haze of water but only distantly. It felt like nothing could affect her, even if she wanted it to.
That night, the dreamed happened again, the same forest; but this time it was real. Not the sort of dream real that you notice once you know it’s a dream. No, the real life real, the warm buffets of air brushing against her skin, the cooled moss on the forest floor. The whispers were quieter here but much more obvious. The sounds weren’t as muttered and muffled, sometimes she could even hear words. ‘Forever’, ‘Sister’, ‘Join us’ and ‘Belong’. These words kept repeating themselves over and over again, never seeming to stop for more than a second before starting up again.
It was compelling, the peace, the warmth, the soothing voices calling out for her to join them. It was completely different from the life that she was living. No raised voices, just soothing tones. No endless work that no one was actually interested in, just the endless night and wind blowing. It was undeniable, not that she actually tried. So she stepped of the worn and moss covered path that had been her foothold, leaving behind the person who was Sylva.
When she was finally checked on, hours after she had last been seen, there had been nothing to find. Neat sheets on a metal bed in a sparsely furnished bedroom, nothing in the room pointed to the fact that someone actually lived there. It was that sort of impersonal feeling you get in guest bedrooms, laid out for visitors but expecting none. In the spot that she had lain on the bed, on top of the sheets, there was a sapling of indiscernible species and no trace of Sylva.
