The Great Goddess Tree Tale

XII - Tree's nature

The Great Tree for many times was called Isle's spirit or Great Goddess Tree by ancient people of the Isle. They knew by survivors' stories that it was enchanted, divine, angelic, that is the reason for the name Goddess. Theretofore, as they knew, no one ever studied that mystery in a scientific way before. No one ever investigated that event as a real causality. As a living being. Would that be a new species?

In that short period of joy, Mat started to analyze the Tree. He was fascinated with that being, mixed with its goddesses of love. Could comprehend almost nothing about the Tree's true nature. How could that disappear? What does it consist, anyway? Would be an animal or a real vegetal?

Many questions wandering on the mind of the young physician and not even one logical explanation. It only existed. Only that way, any other connection that science known until that point. A living mystery

It wouldn't shake the great fascination that Mat had on the Tree and the Goddesses. On the contrary, every new encounter, every new touch in the skin, the relationship grew stronger. Now, to Mat, everything was like in a fairy tale. He was surrounded by magic creatures in a magic world. Maybe that being only could live on the isle? thought. What would an apparition of the Tree look like in a big city? That is unworkable. The Tree itself should get away from these enormous agglomerations, always escaping from the cities and going toward isolated fields.

At a certain moment, he stopped and started observing the physical characteristics of the Tree. The central trunk had over 8 feet of diameter. It was huge and followed up until the top of the Tree. Many other lateral trunks emerged from the central one. Up and sideward it spread itself. From them, many strong and tough branches came. The greenery had two main colors, softly bright green and sparkling silver, and they stuffed the long branches in pairs, bringing joy to the mortals' eyes. The hue of the trunks was a dark ice white, remembering a little the color of the polar ice caps. Its texture was smooth, but with certain undulate on the surfaces.

At branches, the color was more white ivory. Its consistency was solid and continuous. There were no bugs or any other living beings on its trunk, branches, and leaves. At least at naked eye. It was like a Stone Tree, inhospited and forbidden to that micro beings.

Mat looked at the Tree with admiration and fear to the unknown. He came closer to the roots and noticed something unusual.

The big and spread roots had many cut and bruises, as rips made by animals. He touched it gently and came to his mind that an animal had dug the claws into that.

It would be a claw of a bear? No, it wasn't. Too small. Could be a wolf or even a fox. Ahead he saw a threadbare dark coloration on the roots. It should be the scratch of a hoof, some herbivorous animal of the Isle, he thought.

Oddly normal for an abnormal tree, he analyzed. Well, if it were a real normal tree, that would be natural. But It was an Erratic Entity. A being that could disappear and appear again. How it was possible that those marks do not reestablish themselves?

If the Tree could do such a thing like appear again, it should come back intact, as before. But no. Again, another strange characteristic of the Tree showed up.

It couldn't reestablish itself totally in a new appearance. The marks demonstrated that old events were engraved on it. The healing happened such as regular trees.

"For the Gods sakes! That means that the Tree can be affected, cut, carved and even killed?"

Would that Tree be a mortal? That bruises suggested many conjectures.

Mat lay down on the turf and the questions came and gone. On his innermost parts, a light was born. The reality could subjugate the supernatural.