Chapter Text
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Phil the tree looked around himself. He didn't have eyes, or a head, or a brain, but he was aware of how the world around him appeared.
And from his impressive height, he could see pretty far.
He didn't particularly like what he saw.
There were many horrible things in the world... Fighting, and divorce, and terrorism, and abuse of all kinds, and pain and death and darkness and pollution and deforestation and prejudice.
All of that might be more bearable with a friend, Phil believed.
But Phil didn't have many friends. He was so tall that most of the other trees couldn't really see the world from his point of view.
Phil wanted an equal. Someone who could understand him, be there for him; make him see the world in a better light. Phil loved light. It helped him to photosynthesize.
Phil just wanted someone to love. He had a lot of extra love waiting for the right person, because he didn't really give much to the world around him, despite what they thought.
He didn't seem sad to most people. To everyone else, he gave off more love than most trees. He cheered them up, let them sit in his shade, swing from his branches. They
believed he was a happy tree. He couldn't exactly tell them different. He was a tree.
But even if making people happy was what he did every day and it did cheer him up a bit, Phil still felt like he was missing something.
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Dan the tree was squished.
He hated light.
That was what made him grow. And boy did he grow.
He had no space. All the trees around him were crowding him, taking his resources. He had nowhere to spread his roots, he was thirsty and needed more air.
He was cramped, and he didn't know how to get out of this. He was a tree.
It wasn't like he was the oldest tree in the forest but he was old enough that he felt he deserved his own space. At least enough to survive.
He needed out. He felt himself dying, and that wasn't what he wanted. He wanted someone to come along and take him with them. Away from all this that he couldn't escape.
And then someone did.
It was a group of humans that had come in the same way maybe a century ago.
Or maybe it was a second.
Or a week.
Human time was hard in the forest.
He could barely sense the surrounding world, and he was also a tree. Trees live longer than people.
The humans inspected him, uprooted him, and brought him in a large, terrifying journey (trees don't usually just up and leave, start walking and sightseeing like people, so
that was new to Dan) to a new place. He traveled down highways, over rivers, pasts forests of waving trees, through the Lincoln tunnel, and up a mountain.
And there he met Phil.
The people replanted him comfortably near Phil.
Then they were gone.
Surveying the world around him, Dan felt relieved and amazed.
The world really was a beautiful place from this height. He felt so tall he touched the sky.
And then there was Phil.
Just as tall as himself, Phil understood Dan. On his bad days and his good, Phil was there with a rustle of leaves and a feeling of comprehending, comforting love.
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Phil had his missing piece. When Dan was replanted he knew. Dan's emotions of joy and relief and awe washed over Phil, clearing his vision.
There they grew together, roots and branches tangled, able to feel and see and think as one.
People saw them as one tree made up of two.
That was what they were, and that was how they liked it.
They were meant be together, and here they finally were.
Under the sky, above the world, doing what they loved: Appreciating the view, together.
They lived many years together, on top of a mountain, near a river. From that height, they could appreciate all the world they could see for everything that it was.
They lived and grew and loved together for centuries, and when they died, they did not fall but were petrified, immortalized for the rest of time.
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