Chapter Text
After so many decades of standing I finally plummeted to the ground. The life in the Earth below me had given it’s last, and my legs could not find purchase in the empty, brittle powder that remained. This, I knew, was how my kind die.
I could no longer see the sun or moon flying through the sky, but as I lay on the ground, I took in sights I had not seen since I was a child. I saw smaller kin who stretched their arms to take in the life radiating down from above. Softer creatures flew by me, swift as the passage of time, without giving my fallen form a second glance. They, too, knew the natural course.
Then I saw the lifeless soil where I had stood before being replaced by a mound of new, healthier Earth. At that moment, a surge of energy passed through my body the likes of which I had not felt since I first emerged from the Earth.
I would not die here.
I curved my trunk to reach the new life in the Earth, digging my legs in to bond with it once more. I used the arms that were pressed under my fallen form, the arms I could not feed with anymore, to push my body off the ground. I reached out with my remaining arms, drawing in all of the nourishing light I could. I defied all known forms my kin could take, curving my neck and head to rise above my fallen lower body.
My kind were not meant to live once we had fallen, once we had separated from the Earth. But I did not accept this.