Thirst by: Jonathan Sencion, Digital Photo, 2018
The Curse to Live
The leaves flutter in the wind, rustling their beautiful song to the vibrant azure sky. My children shudder as the last breeze of cold leaves the grove with the fallen fragments of shady green that float to the blades below. Brown mountains spread out in a line before me, as I skitter my way to the end of the lowest branch of the tallest tree in the forest; the heart of this land, my home. There, at the end of her extended arm, my children shake with anticipation of their emergence, their many eyes hungrily devouring me from inside their circular crystalline cocoons, the hairs on their legs beginning to sprout.
It will be a week now.
After plucking my way across the silken threads, I settle into the center of our netted nest, nestling in close to them, and rest. Here, I ponder the bittersweet relief I will receive from this life once they hatch and spread their many legs upon the soft bark of our great caretaker. A day passes, and then four more. Strange giants with only two eyes, and two legs upon which they walk, appear in the land. They shake our home with their presence, the trees shivering and groaning in displeasure. Leaves fall like feathers from a plucking bird as if to say leave me be. Why would the great mother be so frightened?
I crawl down her large trunk and observe. A disturbingly strange silver branch with a short orange trunk emerges from the steel steed on which the intruders first arrived, and I am fraught with dread as it suddenly starts to growl like a hummingbird with the ferocity of a bear.
No…
Time begins to slow in my disbelief, and terror echoes through each of my legs, the hair upon them spiking out like the quills of a porcupine. The two-legged abomination moves toward us, leaving utter desolation in its wake.
No!
I scamper along the branches in a panic, and tie my silk thread to a knot, then dive from my safety into battle. Just one bite! Surely, that will stop them. My venom will course through their veins and paralyze them so they will be rendered unable to harm anything else in the grove.
I land upon the strange beast’s brow and sink my fangs as deep as I can. It screams like a pitiful rabbit and I am flung into the forest of blades. When I lift my head, the intruding giant carrying the strange spinning silver arm of death approaches the great mother tree.
Our home…
My children!
Scurrying with all my might and dodging the green stalks as quickly as I can, my desperation and despair begin to sink deep into my abdomen.
Then, a great thud shakes the earth.
My children… gone with several snaps, a cacophonous chorus as the branches beneath our last safe place break from the weight of her withering frame. Yet here I stand above their broken bodies, their tiny hairy legs curled against their shattered shells. They will never get the chance to taste the life I had longed to give them with the sacrifice of my own body. Now, here I stand, among the wooden wasteland, cursed to live again.