The old woman, A’Veda, never truly saw a tree; she saw the echo of a soul woven into the wood. Her grandmother, they said, was buried not under a headstone, but beneath the sentinel sycamore that guarded the eastern field. So, when the first chainsaw blade bit into the bark, it didn’t just sound like metal tearing wood—it sounded like a scream tearing history. A’Veda stumbled out of the cottage, the morning mist clinging to her threadbare shawl, her eyes fixed on the massive, silvery trunk now weeping sap and sawdust. The air, usually thick with the rich, fungal scent of decay and rebirth, was suddenly sterile, sharp with ozone and the dizzying perfume of fear. Stop, she tried to yell, but the sound caught in her throat. She didn’t fear the loss of timber; she feared the unraveling of the unseen tapestry, the sudden, brutal severance of the deep, earthy line that connected her great-great-grandfather’s silent wisdom to the strength in her own bones.
The engine stalled, sputtering into a strained silence. The young logger, sweat already slick on his brow despite the cool mist, swore under his breath and began yanking the starter cord. He glanced over his shoulder at the frail woman standing at the edge of the field, her face a mask of furious, concentrated sorrow. He’d seen plenty of protests—environmentalists, property disputes—but this was different. Her anguish felt physical, like a low-grade fever emanating from the earth itself. As he tugged the cord again, his eyes snagged on a barely visible detail: a faint, swirling pattern deep within the exposed wound of the sycamore, a dark, almost charcoal line that seemed to replicate the fibers of an ancient tapestry, not wood grain. He shook his head, dismissing it as sap bleed or simple decay, yet a knot of sudden, unexpected dread tightened in his stomach. The saw refused to catch.
Meanwhile, A’Veda began to walk, not toward the men, but toward the base of the tree, reaching out to place a trembling hand on the bark, as if to staunch a mortal wound and gather the spirit fleeing from its core. A’Veda’s palm pressed against the weeping wood, her fingers splayed over the dark, patterned wound. It wasn’t just wood; it was rough, cool flesh under her touch. As she focused, pouring her will into the connection, a deep, resonant thrumming began, not in her ears, but vibrating up through the soles of her worn boots. The sound was too low to be heard, yet too powerful to ignore.
The logger, still wrestling with the inert chainsaw, felt a wave of dizziness, a sudden, powerful chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. He looked up just as the great sycamore began to move. Not the swaying of the branches in the wind, but a slow, deliberate shifting of the entire trunk. The roots beneath the churned soil, thick as pythons, seemed to tighten, and a cloud of fine, dark dust—rich, ancient earth—billowed out from the base, tasting of iron and decay, and faintly, of sweet pipe tobacco, the scent her grandfather always carried. The sycamore had answered, and it was demanding that they listen.
The great sycamore’s response was not a sudden burst of magic, but a slow, seismic change. The low thrumming intensified, then settled into a deep, heavy rhythm, like the in-and-out sigh of an ancient bellows. A layer of moss, thick and emerald green, that had clung stubbornly to the north side of the trunk, began to rise and fall, mimicking the slow expansion and contraction of a massive chest. A’Veda, her hand still pressed against the bark, felt the respiration resonate directly into her bones. With every slow exhale, a faint, woody aroma, complex and bittersweet, washed over her, and she had the overwhelming sensation of a thousand forgotten memories being released into the cool air—a sense of old laughter, of quiet grief, of hands working hard in the soil.
The logger dropped the chainsaw, taking three stunned steps backward. He didn’t see wood anymore; he saw an impossibly old, breathing being, and in the slow, rhythmic swell of its trunk, he recognized the terrifying, sublime presence of something that had been waiting patiently for him to stop making noise and listen.
Gemini in the Summer 
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