We are Seeds

The girl is bound to a tree stump. Clothes half-torn. Respected elders, who cared for and guided her, lie dead, bodies strewn like driftwood. The bad men are torching the village. The girl has some idea why she and the other children are still alive.

 

Hot sun on her forehead. Where the rune is. Smoke warps a fey sky into cracked, cinder block shapes. The girl’s entire world is collapsing. Grandma’s words coalesce her mud-spattered face: It is time. You cannot rely on the ancestors. Become your own spirit animal. Protect the children like a demon.

 

The evil men seek to debunk elemental myth. And stupidly, they believe a child powerless, to do with as they please. It is their undoing. She embodies remnants: the tangible. Watered by screams, reddened dirt and teardrops burrow into the earth; cascading sprouts. New life.

 

Embedded. Windborne. The girl lashes out in the old language. A header of wet fog shrouds her: essence of the universe. Terra. Sustain. Mist. Nourish. The elixir is creation and she inhales the potion.

 

The men sense a disturbance. One of them looks at the girl perched on the hollow tree stump that appears to be a carven throne. Uprooted. She smiles, her lips curled as a scimitar. Branch and bark rise to slice her binds. Splinters fly in daggers.

 

The whups of the oppressor turn to terror. Encircled by glowing green rings, druid circles, sylvan symbols. The girl plunges her fists into beckoning clay. Pulls forth roots. Wooden vasculature. Whips. Tentacles. Skeletal lifelines.

 

She will not be whittled so easily. From the soil, magic grows in force. Rises. Culls.