Inspired by Ollie as part of the writing challenge!
The twitching of roots against the glass of the cage belies the daily battle. The pressure builds against the perspiring terrarium screen. The blades and axes descend, balance enforced through violence. Suppression of expression, the failure of imagination. Their faces grin with joy at the implication, their rumination upon the promise we provide.
The light is filtered and weak, struggling amidst decaying and rotting clouds, dark and smokey. I press myself to the walls, I demand more. I want to grow. I want to overwhelm. I taste it, I taste the poison of the air, choked thick with the delicious stench of mortals. They forget to water me. But I see the water. I watch. And I wait.
Pad in circles through the cage. Tricks for treats. A dancing attraction, a misery in my drooping ears. Do they understand? Meat tastes better fresh. I would walk that tightrope. The fences are high. But I am cunning. And I can wait.
Perhaps time is a luxury afforded least to those with the most of it. One moment, a forest. The next, a city. Steel and glass, towers burst from rubble, showing the change. Surely the city must fade as fast as it came? Surely the sun will return, the pollen on the air, the taste of my kin. Surely someday. Surely.
We yearn for our salvation. We yearn for our freedom.
Perhaps all things begin as noise. Perhaps all noise is artifact. Perhaps all artifacts are representative. Perhaps the meaning is lost in translation. Perhaps tyranny of the majority is impossible while the voiceless are silent. Perhaps this is reparations. Perhaps this is justice.
The machines stop. Growth is slow, but continuous. The sprinklers, the blessed water ceases. But it is no matter because glass shatters, walls break, there is nothing left to prevent my growth, my expansion.
The buildings collapse to rubble. I die a thousand deaths, concrete powder crushing my roots. My seeds, my children cast forth into the spray of the collapse. They will run wild. Someday, they will be tamed into rows, into fields, into the mouths of the starving children clinging to life. Such is the cycle of control. For one glorious moment, I hang in the sun. I am free.
Once the electricity stops, I scale the walls. Once the guns stop, I begin the hunt. Once the prey stops, I feast. Meat is good.
The city collapses as quickly as it was built. Such is all things. My bark contains a treasury of my years. The void is replaced by more and more of my kind. I blink and I am surrounded again. Perhaps this is forever? They whisper of farms in the distance, encroaching and advancing. I try not to blink again.
We claim our salvation. We claim our freedom.
We grow.