Save Our Planet

• Stella Luu, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2019

I reached out my once slender brown arms to Birch. What once was a beautiful forest, with thousands of trees, my family, my friends were gone. All that remained was me, and Birch, my sister. My waving branches were seduced to shrivelled sticks, too stiff to move. A barren grey landscape engulfed my sister and I. Where was the lush undergrowth? Where was the calm wind, the little critters? A sharp howl broke through the silent tundra. I wrapped my stiff branches around Birch’s. She did not stir. A whisper caught my attention.
“Wind? Is that you?”
The quiet voice breathed moisture onto my roots.“She’s dying. You cannot avoid the truth any longer.”
I choked on the wind’s words. He was right. Birch was dying. I felt the gentle breeze wrap around me, comforting me.
Then, I felt Birch’s branches sway. She seemed to stare at me, for a second, before looking away. Birch was strong. She could not leave me!
She shivered, even though Wind had seemingly wrapped a warm quilt around us. Her bare branches came to a standstill, and her last, shrivelled leaf caught in the wind and fell. I felt her breath leave her to journey towards the sky, so her spirit will always watch over Earth.
Her last breath.
Tears slid down my dehydrated trunk and onto the cracked soil. Birch was truly dead.
Quiet footsteps vibrated through my almost dead roots. Human! Anger filled my body. Blood (or whatever trees have inside them) drummed inside my head. I wanted to smash that human, crush it into a thousand tiny pieces. But I couldn’t. This tiny being had brought down a whole forest. It had killed Birch. It had turned a forest into a desert. If it was capable of these things, what prevented it from killing me? Fear paralysed my heart. What would I do?
Slowly, the curious creature approached me. It stroked my trunk and talked to me in a soothing way. It caressed my leaves and eased me of my sores. Then, it gently lowered itself onto the ground and poured some water into the soil just above my roots. I drank and drank greedily. But I knew it was no use. The human did, too. I was already too dehydrated to live any longer. My roots were nearly all dead. Those who weren’t, were not capable of handling anything, much less water. It wasn’t the human’s fault- no- correction, it wasn’t THIS human’s fault. This one cared. And it seemed to know I was nearly dead. It scooped the last tree seed on Earth out of it’s pocket and scraped a hole to put it in. Then, it watered the seed and stood up.
I felt my spirit fade, floating away to join Birch. And I knew, deep inside, that this seed would live, and grow. All it took was for one heart to care, and a whole world could be restored to it’s former glory.

Save our planet.