Original fic - Once There Were Figs, Birds, Bromeliads and Lianas
Title: Once There Were Figs, Birds, Bromeliads and Lianas
Author: sarbear12456/Japanese and Chocolate
Fandom: Original
Summary:
Mother taught me how to find food. She taught me what to eat, what not to eat, and the cruel tricks the trees play so we don’t eat them. My mother taught me where the kind trees were.
I like the figs. Everyone is there when a fig tree blossoms, all the birds and insects all want some figs. The yellow fruit is sweet, not like anything else, and not pretty enough to be poisonous.
Each year fewer animals come to the trees. I don’t mind because I get more. The ripest fruit are usually gone by the time we get there because birds cheat and fly straight there. They don’t have to go the long way like us. One time, all of the ant birds are gone by the time we get there. They follow ants to find out where their food is, just like I follow mamma. She says sometimes they get scared of the light and can’t follow the ants. I ask what happens to them then, when they can’t get food. Mamma doesn’t answer. This year, they must have come early, but at least they left us some of the good fruit.
Sometimes we can drink from the bromeliads. You’ve just got to be careful of what’s in them first. I did it once when I tried to take a fruit off the ants. They don’t like that and I got bit. The water helped. The bromeliads are everywhere, on almost every tree, so there’s always plenty of water. When they get too heavy, though, they fall and take a branch or some lianas with them. So we find a new way around.
The lianas make good pathways and join all the trees together. Everything is connected, mother says, and that is how our ancestors knew what would bloom and when. That is how we know.
One of the trees is gone. A big one came crashing down, and took all the little ones around with it when it went. We will go hungry, for now. Mamma says a new one will grow in time for my grandchildren. Maybe.
It was loud when the monsters came. Everyone stopped singing just so we could hear them roar. The trees came down and pulled others with them. Animals get caught and sink below with the remaining trees, away from the sunlight. I spring through the branches, swinging and pulling and pushing and leaping through the boughs, one of many colourful blurs fleeing through the forest.
I came back, once. There were no more trees, no more figs, no more birds and no more bromeliads. Just small spikes that come from the ground and beyond these I see some red-brown dirt, the kind the old leaves usually cover.
All the trees are gone now, and mamma with them.
Author: sarbear12456/Japanese and Chocolate
Fandom: Original
Summary:
Mother taught me how to find food. She taught me what to eat, what not to eat, and the cruel tricks the trees play so we don’t eat them. My mother taught me where the kind trees were.
I like the figs. Everyone is there when a fig tree blossoms, all the birds and insects all want some figs. The yellow fruit is sweet, not like anything else, and not pretty enough to be poisonous.
Each year fewer animals come to the trees. I don’t mind because I get more. The ripest fruit are usually gone by the time we get there because birds cheat and fly straight there. They don’t have to go the long way like us. One time, all of the ant birds are gone by the time we get there. They follow ants to find out where their food is, just like I follow mamma. She says sometimes they get scared of the light and can’t follow the ants. I ask what happens to them then, when they can’t get food. Mamma doesn’t answer. This year, they must have come early, but at least they left us some of the good fruit.
Sometimes we can drink from the bromeliads. You’ve just got to be careful of what’s in them first. I did it once when I tried to take a fruit off the ants. They don’t like that and I got bit. The water helped. The bromeliads are everywhere, on almost every tree, so there’s always plenty of water. When they get too heavy, though, they fall and take a branch or some lianas with them. So we find a new way around.
The lianas make good pathways and join all the trees together. Everything is connected, mother says, and that is how our ancestors knew what would bloom and when. That is how we know.
One of the trees is gone. A big one came crashing down, and took all the little ones around with it when it went. We will go hungry, for now. Mamma says a new one will grow in time for my grandchildren. Maybe.
It was loud when the monsters came. Everyone stopped singing just so we could hear them roar. The trees came down and pulled others with them. Animals get caught and sink below with the remaining trees, away from the sunlight. I spring through the branches, swinging and pulling and pushing and leaping through the boughs, one of many colourful blurs fleeing through the forest.
I came back, once. There were no more trees, no more figs, no more birds and no more bromeliads. Just small spikes that come from the ground and beyond these I see some red-brown dirt, the kind the old leaves usually cover.
All the trees are gone now, and mamma with them.