My first truly planned and developed piece. This story is inspired by the dogwood tree outside my childhood house, and was originally titled “Against a Blue Sky”.

In early April, the soil of the meadow begins to crack, allowing another Spring to escape. The grasses and wildflowers breathe life back into their roots, while those newly sewn seeds try to push through the layer of earth which housed them all winter. The Dogwood extends a bright green and eager stem to the sky, as its root navigate a maze created by those who have called this prairie home for generations. He allows his first leaves to bathe in the April sun through the windows allotted by the green blades which tower above.

            From the moment his stem breaks through the ground, the Dogwood has thoughts only for the sky. Within a few weeks those native grasses are forced to borrow the sun from between his new branches, and his roots have found unclaimed territory beneath those of his neighboring perennials. For his first cycle of seasons, the clouds come and go, the rain falls and gives way to the sun again, the Dogwood blinks and these events have passed. An instinctual drive has grown him beyond the reach of rabbits and pests, and in the late fall, he rests.

            Standing now nearly four feet above the soil which nurtured his infancy, the Dogwood extends his limbs outward. His branches yawn with a creek, as he takes notice of his home for the first time. The harvest moon has peaked above the horizon just before the day’s light has vanished. The meadow is dull at the moment, drying grasses and dying flowers appear sad beneath the Dogwoods dark red autumn foliage. Where the barren ground ends, his consciousness is immediately enthralled by the surrounding forest. He recognizes himself in the towers of bark. He envies the yellows and the purples. He is mystified by the dark green needles which still remain.

            The Dogwood’s boughs drop slightly. A remarkably sudden move for a normally stationary being frightens the field mice, who quickly scurry away. He lets a few leaves drop as if to pay respect to the culture he has just encountered.

            The fall continues to crawl to its conclusion, and his slow-motion perception of the world has fixated on that ring of inhibition which separates him from the forest. Each night he blinks, and lets a few more leaves drop.

            “Maybe in the Spring,” he thinks at the hawk who has found refuge near his trunk, “I will join them.”

            The hawk hears nothing, preoccupied with warming her nest for the night. The Dogwood blinks heavily, as the winter closes in and the first snowflakes fall. 

…

            In early April, the meadow begins again, this time with another generation of adventurers setting roots. The first spring winds are cold and dry, the Dogwood shivers, and wonders when his new coat will come in.

            As he is waking up, he takes notice of the new world around him. In his first year, the sky acted as a mobile which mesmerized and entranced his sapling self. He spent all of his energy growing towards it. Older now, the sky seems more like a loving parent, allowing him to grow, but encouraging him to do so in his own time. This particular morning the sky is light, and the familiar hawk is circling above.

            In the field that blankets his roots, the grass is short. There is more color than there was in the fall. Yellow dandelions dot the green canvas with layered florets, swarming with halos of bumblebees drunk on their nectar. The gap between him and the forest is the same, but he tries not to let that ruin such a wonderful day.

            “What beautiful colors you possess,” the Dogwood lowers a branch to a dandelion in his shade.

            No response. Perhaps, the Dogwood thinks, they had not heard him. He tries again.

            “Forgive me, I have not learned the names of all my neighbors yet. Would you mind explaining to me how you and all your friends got here? I seem to be separated from my family.” This time, the Dogwood strains to extend a root toward the dandelion.

            The dandelion does not speak, but their petals seemed to tilt toward the Dogwood, which was response enough. For a tree patience is an innate skill, and so he relaxes, he lets his leaves begin to grow, and he watches his interlocuter. He believed the small being was trying to tell him something.

            The Dogwood blinked, and his companion had lost his vigor. The grass had grown, and the dandelion seemed to be losing their space in the prairie. Another spring gale blew, but the Dogwood stood fast with fear. Fear for the loss of the only plant who had given him any response, fear for the answer which he would never receive. The flower’s weak stem heaved heavily in the wind; a few small petals were whisked away.

            As the Spring began to give way to warmer weather and thunderstorms, his leaves had now provided him with insulation, and his own flowers were starting to form, though the dandelions had yielded to daisies and marigolds. His coat provided shelter again to the hawk who spent much of his time perched on the sorrowful fingers of the Dogwood. The tree waited and waited, but the yellow flower never returned, and he allowed his branches to fall slightly, mourning a friend gone too soon. Some of the Summer flowers would gaze in awe at the lone monolith of the field, but the Dogwood could not subject himself to another attempted companion.

…

            Seasons continued to change, and the Dogwood continued to grow. He patiently lengthened his heartwood, about a foot per year. At the same time, he expanded his shade further across the meadow.  In each subsequent Spring, his leaves would burst forth to grant him an extra few inches toward the forest. He would scan the meadow for the dandelion, though the yellow bursts seemed to appear in different places every year, and he could not be sure if any were the sage he was looking for. Each Spring he would lose hope and let his mind idle in search for distractions. He would learn the name of the Cooper’s Hawk who called his branches home. He would learn that the Cooper’s Hawk helped to rid his hide of pests, but was also the reason that no other birds would venture close enough to introduce themselves. The Dogwood became acquainted with flowers, who were not afraid of his flying sentinel. The daisies and the marigolds would continue to awe at him, and one year when he was particularly lonely, he extended a root to greet them.

            “I’m sorry for my coldness, I have been looking for a friend for too long now.”

            The daisy jolted when they felt a root nearing them, and their own roots leaped at the opportunity to meet a celebrity. “Oh! It’s no trouble at all, it is an honor to finally meet you.”

            “I am the Dogwood, what might you and your family be called?”

            The daisy formally introduced their self and approximated a curtsy with leaves and petals bending at awkward angles. After a pause that was long even by the standards of plants the daisy thought to prod slightly, knowing they might never get the chance again.

            “I’m sorry to hear that you have lost a friend. Was it another Dogwood?”

            His leaves bustled and a few of his flowers opened, a response that he did not expect from himself. Something about the phrase, another Dogwood, jarred him. He regained his composure and hoped that the daisy had not been too observant. “No,” He stated sharply. The Dogwood felt that extending his root was a mistake, but he could feel that his blunt comment caused the daisy to retreat their own root for a second. The tension in the Dogwood’s roots was palpable. Neither party spoke any further, but the daisy would not let go of their connection, and the Dogwood would not undue it himself to avoid further embarrassment.

            In the Summers that inevitably followed the Springs, the Dogwood’s solitude continued. Passively reaching out his branches, his growth was much slower in the heat of July. After his conversation with a neighbor, he decided it best to not be so outgoing. Cooper’s Hawk continued to visit the forest freely, and the Dogwood continued to drop his branches lower and lower, while he felt his roots cementing him into his prison. When it rained, he couldn’t help but straighten towards the sky. Those were the worst days.

            In the Falls that always followed the Summers, the Dogwood would feel hope. His growth would cease sometime in August and leave him with nothing to look forward to but the show of lights that came with the harvest moon. In every Autumn, just like his first, the Dogwood watched the forest turn a million shades, just as his leaves found their own dark hue, the very same every year. Just like that first time he always took notice of the hawk sheltered near his trunk and thought to them, “Maybe in the Spring, I will join them.”

            Each year he believed it less and less, and every Spring he opened his consciousness rooted to the same place, with the same grasses blanketing his roots, and a new smattering of dandelions. The Dogwood’s branches would drop as soon as they lost the rigidity which maintained him during his Winter’s slumber. His lowest branch hovering just over the spot where that first yellow traveler gave him hope.

            This year, something was new in early April. The soil cracked, the dry winds blew, but this time, small yellow petals rose from where his first friend once laid. A sensation the Dogwood had not felt in a long time had returned. A segment of root not used in years, began bustling with murmurs.

            After his miscommunication with that daisy, his roots always picked up some traces of conversation, but it pained him to listen. Something about these murmurs broke through his mental barrier still. He could feel the daisies, almost in unison, gazing towards his branches like they did when he was young. Twenty feet tall, but a fraction of the celebrity he once was. No one seemed interested in a depressed recluse.

            “Did you guys see that?”

            “He lifted his branches!”

            “It was probably just the wind, that tree has been waiting to die since his seed rooted.”

            It was too early for Daisies to flower, but their unmistakably serrated leaves were always there. The Dogwood recognized the first voice but had to assume the rest came from root connections he had not made himself. Their astonishment forced him to notice something himself. He had picked up his branches. “I should know better,” he thought to himself. Careful not to broadcast his internal monologue to the spritely daisy chain around his trunk. He saw the yellow florets dance in the wind, but he could not force himself to check if the dandelion had really returned, his gaze was fixed to his own branch and the tempting florets which danced about in the wind. “I always get my hopes up, and I’m always disappointed. Why should this Spring be any different.”

            The Dogwood blinked, but the daisies murmured still.

            “So, it was the dandelion!”

            “I don’t believe it.”

            “Yeah, why hasn’t he moved since April then?” The chatter continued. The Dogwood blinked, they gossiped on.

            Although a tree is born with immense patience, it can only watch the theatrics of those hawks, untethered to the Earth, for so long. He thought to himself, “Surely the Spring is drawing to a close, most of the dandelions must be gone by now. What could those damned daisies still be chattering about?”

            The Dogwood turned his attention back to his lowest branch, which he always neglected to move away from where he met the dandelion. On a gray morning, with rain clouds moving in, he could take it no longer, and resolved to take a look. By midafternoon, the wind was beginning to pick up, and his consciousness was just beginning to perceive what he believed to be dandelion leaves. The daisies murmuring intensified as they noticed the Dogwood’s flowers opening slightly, an unmistakable sign of excitement among trees. Like a dog wagging its tail, or a human blushing, the Dogwood knew he was excited, but tried his best to block out the rumors.

            What met his outstretched leaves was not a layered bouquet of delicate petals. The Dogwood noticed still that those leaves belonged to a dandelion. He was certain of it. In place of that yellow member which once provided him hope, was a ball of white. Utterly perplexed, the Dogwood froze. He had spent decades now in this meadow, learned the names of every creature who called it home, but had not seen this ball of fluff even once. He noticed now that they were smattered all about the field, and in each place, they were accompanied by dandelion leaves. A gust of wind blew. The rain was near, but the Dogwood remained still.

            In the wind, something began to float up towards his outstretched branch, which drew him out of his vegetative state of thought. He glanced to the alien below, just in time to witness them hurling the remnants of their fluff upward into the wind. As intentionally as a flower is capable of throwing anything, the Dogwood knew he was not mistaken. He tried as hard as he could to hurl his roots upward, anything to make contact with this being. He was certain it was trying to tell him something. He didn’t understand how, but he knew it was the dandelion. His branches swayed violently as the storm continued its invasion into the meadow. He was throwing all of his might into reaching those roots, but he had to dig through dense native grasses. The murmuring in his roots intensified but he tried to fight it. Some of his newer branches were cast into the forest by the winds, reaching those towers he would never greet himself. Even his newly formed flower petals lost their attachment and flew skyward with the low pressure. The daisies were nearly screaming at this point, and the Dogwood no longer had the resolve to drown them out.

            “Stop!” They were all shouting in a round.

            He paused momentarily and found that daisy who he first made contact with. There was clearly no time for pleasantries and curtsies like the last time they spoke. The daisy recognized that he had gained the Dogwood’s attention. The other flowers, yet to bloom, calmed their chorus so the two could speak.

            “You are wasting your energy. Your friend is already in contact with you, but annuals don’t have time to talk like we do.”

            The Dogwood considered this for a moment and returned his mind to the dandelion. It was still hurling its white hairs into the sky in a frenzy. Only a few remained, and the Dogwood looked a little closer.

            There, at the tip of its stem, he could see it. That same flower from the second Spring, the petals replaced with wispy hairs, but the center was familiar. Her head was tilted in just the same way, imploring the Dogwood to watch, to listen. He finally heeded the message and watched as those tendrils floated away. He could barely track them for their entire flight, but their trajectory was clear. He strained to focus on the forest floor and saw what the dandelion was trying to show him. There, beneath the trees he envied every Fall, were hundreds of yellow florets, slightly behind in their life cycle, but enjoying their shade and protection from the rain.

            The Dogwood could not bring himself to respond to respond to the daisy and regained the resolve to block out their chatter. The Spring was coming to an end, and he tried to make sense of this lesson that had been proposed by those flowers of the meadow.

            In that Summer, which always follow the Spring, the Dogwood had no time to feel lonely. He had no time to idle in aimless acquisition of knowledge like he normally did. He understood now that he had not lost his family, but that he carried his family within his flowers every year. He puzzled over a method to sew his own seeds, but knew that trees are born with patience, and he would find a way soon enough.

            In that Fall, to which Summer always gave way, the Dogwood felt hope. Before the harvest moon. Before the forest show of lights and colors began. Before he had a chance to consider his solitude again, he thought to himself, “In the Spring, I will join them.”

            The Dogwood’s leaves turned red, just as they had for decades previous. He was enchanted again by the spectrum of purples and oranges. He admired those dark green needles who never yielded to the seasons. As the moon set, and the first clouds carrying snow returned, the hawk made his nest near the trunk of the Dogwood. The Winter disappeared into the Dogwood’s slumber.