A girl sat in an old ocean which was now a desert, in a handmade home made of sea glass and ship sails. And the table in front of her whimpered under the thin red cloth covering it. She tried to block it out and focus on meticulously scraping all the possible nourishment of the remnants of fish still left on her plate, but the table groaned and sighed every time the thick clay plate pressed on it’s surface. The endless cries of the wood were irritating, but quiet. The sound was a wisper compared to the thick bone shaking sound of the oak shadowing our home. The walls muted the sound, and she’d always been glad that most of our “house” wasn’t made up of wood, but patched together with rusty sheets of metal, thick cloth, and cloudy glass.

When she was young we had marched around the desert singing and “treasure hunting”, and found ourselves about seventy three pieces. She scooped the fish bones into her hands and stepped outside into the sunlight. She hurried to the shade of the tree, (which was already warping her eardrums.) she knelt down, her back brushing against its trunk, and scooped away the hot sand until she found cooler layers and thin tree roots underneath. She dropped the bones into the hole and covered them back up again. It was always wise to bury any food remains, (giants) but she always hid hers between the roots of the tree so that they would decompose and keep the tree alive. Because even if it rumbled through the night, and kept us awake,

That tree was hers.

And as the sun dipped down into the horizon, she sat with her toes buried in the sand, watching the sandfish ripple the smooth dunes. And the deep sound of the tree changed. She sat up straight. The tree was speaking.

“Joy”

The tree whispered.

“Sorrow”

She smiled in wonder and befuddlement.

“Tomorrow”

It said

“Tomorrow”

It kept on like this over and over until she stumbled back inside and laid on the shifting ground until the sound faded. But it didn’t. The sound was a hundred times quieter then the usual booming sound of the oak, but it pirced the walls and trickled into her ears.

“Tomorrow”