Equinox by Charlie Godwyne

Author:Charlie Godwyne [Godwyne, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-27T05:00:00+00:00

As consciousness slowly returned, the first thing I felt was cramped. My arms were folded into my chest, and I could not extend them. Furthermore, I was standing, but not by my own strength. I opened my eyes to find myself surrounded by what looked to be rings and pathways. Grass below me, dirt and roots diving into the lush ground. I tilted my head up and saw great branches reaching up toward the sky and out to crowd the neighbors, a slow but insistent battle for which of us gets our little solar panels into the space with the most sun.

Terror shot through me. "I'm a tree."

Yet even as I spoke, I could feel that I did not have a physical body apart from the tree. I was melded with it, a hybrid tagalong, doing human things with tree tissues and cells, like talking.

I tried to push, but the trunk surrounding me didn't even pretend to yield to my will. "Help. Heaven, someone help me—"

"Don't panic." Augarten's voice resonated through my mind. "Have a heart attack in here, and you'll die, you know."

Despair filled me. How is that supposed to get me to not panic?

The tree hugged me in tight, and ever so slowly, my adrenaline began to seep out of me. The tree filtered my distress, taking it in and converting it to something more useful. But it did so on tree time, and therefore operated on a time scale that resulted in me being painfully uncomfortable long before I began to feel some relief.

"Don't hurt my tree," Augarten chided. "You'll make him sick with all that stress."

Oh no. "I'm sorry. What…what am I doing here?"

"My tree is regrowing you," she replied.

I swallowed down my fear. "Was I grown by your tree last time? Is that why I have no memories?"

"Well, not this tree, but yes. You could get your memories back and accelerate your regeneration, if you simply relinquished what you took from me."

Ian's warnings echoed in my mind. "I can't. You know I can't. How long am I inside this tree?"

"As long as it takes for me to regrow you."

"So…my soul is inside this tree because my physical body fell apart and you are regrowing me, right? Why didn't I just die like a normal human? Did this happen during that nightmare?"

A long pause. "Do not concern yourself with those nightmares." Then Augarten's voice left.

Again, I felt like I should be panicking. "What about those other questions…"

Without any other companions, I took to talking to my tree. It clearly didn't understand human language, but I could feel it listening to my emotions and the vibes I gave off. When my mood finally settled, the tree seemed satisfied with that, having brought things back to equilibrium, though now it was hungry from the energy expenditure, and drank in more of the sun through its leaves.

Once I ran out of things to talk about, after reflecting on how I felt being trapped inside a tree, my attention turned to that book I was still reading from the library, and I told the tree about The Cosmic Doctrine.

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