Behind closed doors

Poison Tree

^ Sketch I made while writing for personal reference/brainstorming

Summary:

It is thought that no matter how loved or cared for a creature is, when they begin to die, they find somewhere to hide. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere alone.

Carmen hides in a flower field.

Notes:
Inspired by... yes, another song.
Poison Tree by Grouper <3
(Bonus song: Hold the Way by Grouper & Roy Montgomery)

Did y'know that animals, specifically pets, specifically my cat that went missing last year, know when they're really sick or about to die? Well it's thought that they do; and when they sense this they go and find somewhere to hide/die 🩷
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Thick grey clouds cross through the moon like a waft of sleep. Hiding some of the stars with its early warnings of rain... rain Carmen may never see, because she won't be here in the next few days to watch when it finally comes down, and stops obstructing the moon. It smells soft and earthy, like the world was coming to life... just as Carmen was doing the opposite.

The wind lets out a low hum as it brushes through the vegetation surrounding Carmen. Running gently through her hair as she walks through a flower field absently. Her arms roll over nightshades and fingers swim through belladonnas, each petal adoring her skin and soaking dangerously into her injuries... pollen stings as it enters her blood stream. But she doesn't stop. With a heavy heart and low carried eyes, Carmen's body lures her step after step into a restricted sanctuary. Like an aura was tugging her by her heart, like a string. Step after step, following a siren with no reason not to. The birds whistle, and crows scream. Through until she reaches the middle of the field with blood oozing from unsure wounds, wreaking a trail behind her atop the flowers. Red soaks down her arms like patient waterfalls, giving parts of herself to smaller, toxic roots. Drops of her red bounce across petals and ooze into the soil. Flowers silently watch the thief as she's pulled apart.

Carmen reaches a tree in the centre of the valley, the poison tree. It has a thick, wide trunk, hosting a massive sea of leaves and branches that stretch far away from itself and loom over the field. It would take 5 of herselves vertical to cover its width. The tree reigns over the flower fields like a gatekeeper, but not a protector. Worse than that— a mastermind, and a thief, in the form of a lustrous reincarnated Machiavelli tree, haunted by itself. A disloyal mount that has created its disloyal farm of flowers. Preying on its seeds, expanding through them and channeling what it was over what it wasn't. Absorbing the field while staying completely and utterly still. Where everything was toxic from even a distance.

Carmen reaches her palm out, and touches the trunk... her blood smears across it.  The bark is rough, and dirty, bugs run away from her. The open wounds squeezing through her squeeze a little quieter as the warmth of the cold starts to settle into her bones. In comparison to the tree, Carmen can only reach so much. Just a blur— she was just a smudge to it, her blood spills down the ragged and rough material down into the grass, to be taken in unwillingly by the roots.

Carmen takes another delirious step back, feeling the tree's power embrace her, flowing through and past her like she was nothing. And she was. Sometimes Carmen felt she was just an absorber of poison, and not the protector from it that she wanted to be. Carmen backs away slowly, looking again at the moon, no longer hiding but burning with a warning. Scaring through the night like the colour of her eyes. It sparkles down at her, telling her to leave.

But she doesn't. The weeds cling to her ankles and swivel around her legs. Holding onto her, pricking her with its thorns and dragging Carmen down to become a part of its mangled mess. To die in the poison she'd been trying to relieve from the world all her life. The pollen of the flowers brush with the breeze, casting from one flower to the next, glowering towards the tree, and some away from it. Poison engulfs the air, and Carmen watches, with fatigue burning a hole in her head.