There is no start or end to the world-song; only perfectly chaotic eddies, pinched from the infinite for brief, beautiful moments.

In his joyful, clumsy manner the child plucks a single seed from the sky and embeds it in the ground. Over time sapling and boy grow together into hardy, stronger beings. At a vulnerable age, where sapling becomes tree and boy is almost ready to become man, the boy begins to dig two deep, square holes.

One he leaves, and soon it is full of the falling leaves of the growing tree. The other hole he continues to dig, until it spirals into a network of sprawling tunnels and deeply exploring caverns, far beneath the skin of the little insulated world the young man has always inhabited.

The tree has grown faster than the man, much faster. It is now a great and luminous being that towers over the man’s small home. The man has grown greater too, but in a more subdued and gentle way. Hair grows from his face now, slowly beginning to match the longer hair flowing from his head. Leaves grow from the tree, lush and life-giving. Every day, the man observes tiny droplets of dew that gather on each leaf, shimmering in the ever-shifting sun and reflecting rays of cosmic heart-light into his little world.

The man cuts down the tree. In his hearty youth he carves the flesh of the tree into pristine planks, and then leaves them outside to season and warp, so he can reshape them anew into hardier planks in the time to come.

Into his deep, cavernous pit he travels, and there he digs some more; finding shining fragments of metal from a long gone era of resplendence. He pulls these shards of history from the ground, and with a new ache in his back he carries them to the surface.

Somehow his skin, his very structure, seems a little thinner. Ignoring inevitable decay, the man builds a small clay forge from the efforts of his digging, and into it he loads his metal memories. All are melted down, and then cast into sharp nails and tools.

The man, hobbled in one leg by the ever-weathering of life, nails the planks together in the only way he knows how. Slowly, and with expert precision, he crafts a tightly bound box for his first night of rest. The sun still travels through the sky, though, so he’s some time yet before he can rest. The box is too small for his grand form in any case.

Among the scattered leaves of his lost childhood friend, the old man finds a discarded seed. With a nostalgic smile, he places it into a hole among the stars. Although every move is an effort now, he labours to fill in the deep, cavernous hole he made in the world. Each pile of dirt returned is thrice the effort it took to remove it, yet he meticulously returns every grain of earth.

Into the other hole, he places his box-bed; a casket now perfectly shaped for his withered, bowed frame. With his last breath, he collapses downward, grasping at the door and pulling it to as he falls into his first and final rest, as the sun finally vanishes from the horizon.

Over the night, box dissolves and metal memories slip back into the soil. The flesh of a life duly lived dissolves, returning in wiser fragments to the world-song.

–

Did you like this short story? Interested in helping keep this site running? I’m now on Patreon, where fans can directly support creators and the work they produce! You can see my Patreon page here.