D - Nature (500-word flash fiction)

All That Lives Must Die

She wrapped her arms tightly around him, and bore the frail weight. Thunder crashed and the shrieking wind battered against them, but she held her ground. He moaned as the icy rain lashed his sides; gently she cradled his broken frame. All these years he had protected her. Now, when his strength had faded and he stood trembling neath the storm, she would protect him.

For he had been here long before she appeared. A great edifice of wisdom and peace, the first light she saw had been through his gentle smile. She had been a small, frightened thing, but he comforted and sheltered her. The wind-swept nights and liquid-gold mornings were the times he would tell her tales. Some were of grandeur, wonder and life, others were of sorrow, misery and death. As she grew, she listened, and when the wind blew she asked questions in her soft, whispery voice. She learned to tell stories, and taste spring upon the air; to feel the heartache of the earth, and the laughter in the wind. Peace and hope he gave to her, and she was content.

But the years which give strength to the growing young must also take it from the old, so that as she grew beautiful and strong, he withered away. She knew he could not live forever, yet pleaded with him to promise that he would.

"I wish so, child," he always replied, "But we can know no more of the seasons and times than that they will surely come."

Then came the storm. It roared and thundered as no other that she could recall. The wind's fury and the rain's bitter lash beat against them, and she heard him groan.

"Hold tight to me!" she cried, wrapped her arms around him and loosing her long hair to shield his head.

"I hold," his trembling voice replied, and as she withstood the storm, he whispered to her one last tale: "Once there stood a great cathedral, fashioned by men in hope, but abandoned in their despair. For a hundred years it withstood the vast sea of wilderness alone until, one day, a single seed was dropped into a crack of its stony floor. Rain came, then sunlight, and from these two the seed drew strength. She woke, she grew, and was a willow tree. Together the cathedral and the tree remained for many glad years. Yet these years which strengthened the tree withered the cathedral until he was little more than broken sticks, glass and stone. One night a great storm struck, and though the cathedral loved the tree and wished to remain with her, he knew his strength and hers were not enough to hold back time. As his aching bones quaked and broke at last, he said 'Farewell, my friend, and thrice-blessed love. May you bless others as God has blessed you.'"

Golden were the rays of the waking dawn which glanced past the cathedral's fallen frame, and lighted on the weeping willow tree.