Short Stories From Out There

The Green Leaves of Love

As it waved in the warm, damp wind, the tree passed stories it had found in the ground to its neighbors. There were tales of all that the universe wanted to be, tales of what it had been but wanted to forget, and tales that were simply too far out of its own ordinary to be able to exist for long, especially now that the fires of Creation had cooled and rules of this cosmos had asserted themselves. One of these stories, involving the color Red, the number Eighteen, and the things that are born when facets of perception make love, caught the tree's attention. The story wasn't cooperating, as leaving the primordial dirt would no doubt hasten its ending, but the tree was determined.

The tree felt the unmistakable vibrations of a cherub that had been bothering it lately.

This particular cherub bounced into view, briefly carried through the air by its wings before dropping to the ground, where it bounced up and along a few feet to drop again, all the while chirping and mumbling and singing short melodious bursts of beauty that ended as abruptly as they started. It made the tree dizzy, watching the little ball of happy chaos move toward it. As in the past, it wanted to give the cherub what it wanted so that it would leave the small grove in peace.

Tradition, however, dictated a different attitude. The tree was tasked with making the cherub's job difficult, for the tree did not have an endless supply of branches, and giving them up to the cherub to build its fragile bows was not considered something important enough to risk the tree's getting weak, especially with Snow and Bitter on the way.

The cherub landed just out of reach of the tree and looked up into its branches expectantly. Its chubby little body jiggled, doing a little dance, humming fragments of the First Songs while its bright blue eyes glittered above its wide, toothy smile. It stood there, or rather bounced there, waiting for a branch. The tree knew it but did not move.

The cherub whistled in a short burst, trying to get the tree's attention, to which the tree responded by rustling its leaves but not delivering anything to the ground. An expression of annoyance appeared on the cherub's face. It took a step forward, whistling louder and a little longer. The tree did nothing by way of response.

The tree sensed something else approaching from the same direction the cherub came from and subtly turned its leaves to identify it. It was the cherub that came for branches. But that cherub was already here, hiding behind a tree, highly agitated and watching the place where the new cherub would appear.

A tremble ran through the tree as it checked the state of time in its new home. It was as it should be, dependent on gravity and forward-flowing only. Then how could the cherub be in two places at once?

This second cherub arrived in the grove like the first and came to a stop. Unlike the first, it sat down on the grass and began running its plump little hands across the tops of the grass, giggling and muttering all the while. The tree felt the roots of the grass shiver excitedly and sensed their joy at the cherub's touch. The tree realized this was the right cherub to make those bows, and the other cherub was not.

The first cherub jumped out from its cover and hissed out something in its language (which the tree did not know, but if it repeated it, it knew that its smartest sibling could translate) as it threw a rock at the sitting cherub.

The second cherub did a backward somersault and rolled up into the air, pushing off with its strong little legs, and was its height off the ground before the rock hit the ground where it had sat. It shot up into the tree's branches, grabbed a young green branch, and ripped it from the trunk as it shot higher up and out into the open sky.

The tree let out a yelp (that to mortal ears would sound like a cracking of wood) and pulled its branches in.

"Cupid!" screamed the first cherub in a surprisingly deep voice, "Get down here this instant and face me!"