The Glass Tree

More about The Glass Tree

It wasn't a tree of light. Not a crystal tree. Not a monument to be visited out of reverence. And yet everyone stopped when they first saw it. The Glass Tree stood in the middle of a clearing, where the grass ceased to be earth and began to smell like moonlight. Its trunk was transparent, not like window glass, but like frozen air. And its branches—oh, its branches were shimmer itself. They didn't rustle in the wind, they resonated. Each branch, each twig, sounded different as the light refracted through them. A note bright as stardust. A sound deep as a forgotten promise. And sometimes—a humming that smelled of memory. Lyora stepped into the clearing, and immediately she knew that this wasn't a place to be understood. Only one to be felt. The bark of the tree was smooth and cold, but not forbidding. There were subtle, dancing patterns within it—like the course of dreams, or thoughts that hadn't yet found language. She saw herself in it. Not as she was. But as she could have been if she had never stopped wondering. When she placed her hand against the trunk, the tree flickered. Not brightly. More like a candle remembering how fire once came to it. And then the tree spoke—not aloud, not in words. But in colors. Colors that emerged in Liora's chest, pulsed in her fingers, and settled into her memory like blossoms in an old book. "Not everything you are lies in your past," the tree said in a flash of clear blue. "Some things are still in the making." Lyora stayed there until dusk. And when she left, there was nothing in her pockets. But in her soul, for a long time, the golden tone of the one branch that had moved for her alone resonated.