The girl at the top

It seems so long since then, that time – oh, thousands of years ago – when females grew on the tallest of trees, taunting the males on the stout bushes below, men that were forever sheltered from the sun by a canopy of ever-ripening women and a layer of thick leafy branches overhead. They lusted after them, constantly tempted by the lush pickings the females' provided throughout childhood, adolescence and the beginnings of manhood. They watched from afar for years and only when they were mature and ripe enough to be dropped from the bush would they be given the opportunity to pluck the women from their branches. For some, the day came too soon. Most cowered, shivering and deserted at the base of their lost home, struggling to even find the strength to move away from everything they had previously know, towards a life where even finding water was a struggle, a life of hunting, of loneliness...

Like all the others, he had watched them. He had watched them like they had watched him: with both a deep longing and avid interest. As the seasons changed, he watched their hair glimmer in the light of the sun and flame against the white of snow. He had observed as they grew as he too had grown with them. They were friends he was yet to be acquainted with, sisters that he was yet to meet, the strangers he wanted to befriend.

Peetic looked up at the tree looming above him and in longing, sighed; they were so beautiful there. Hanging from their branches, clad in leafy gowns of maple and oak. The dusk sun glimmered, sending out rays of golden light and bathing them in it, transforming them into radiant stars dotting a green sky. Peetic leaned back against the thorny outcrop jutting out of his bush and smiled, like a free man would as he stared up at the stars.

And yet, they scared him.

Peetic was so different to the females hanging from the branches above, seemingly in both appearance and behaviour. They were abnormal, strange, freaks and yet, oh-so enticing. His logic pained him. 

He shifted against his branch, attempting to avoid the hooked talon-like thorns that protruded from it at all angles. He had never questioned why they were there. Much like he never wondered why, recently, his stringy web of stability - that held him to the branch and ultimately his home - was slowly receding, with it, taking every source of nutrition he had ever known and truly, ever needed. Peetic didn't tend to question things he considered to be beyond his understanding. So rather than thinking, he avoided the thorns deftly and closed his eyes, ears open to the sound of the wind whistling through the leaves of his home and the tree above him.

From somewhere, seemingly far away, a quiet melody began to sound, drifting on the wind like muffled birdsong. He opened his eyes, staring up at the female trees surrounding his home. On finding nothing, he settled back into his position, eyes still open and ears at attention alert to every sound from the rustling beneath him to the whistling above. The hum sounded again, this time, distinctly above him. 

He stood on his branch, shielding the sun from his eyes as he stared at the tree. As the melody drifted for the third time, the owner of the voice was clear. She was beautiful; hair glimmering in the sun like spun ivory tinged a pale yellow. She was sitting, legs swinging beneath her on the highest branch of the tree, nails biting into the bark, a mere speck in the distance. She was smiling up at the sun, head tilted back and hair spilling down her back like an unkempt waterfall. She was attached to the tree via a thick vine that encircled her torso before wrapping around her limbs and feet, it provided far more security than the flimsy web that encircled both the males and the other females hanging from the very same tree. It was if the tree itself wanted to cling to the precious gem-like fruit rather than let it ripen and fall to the undergrowth far below, bruising and breaking until the girl was no longer a gem but tarnished bronze.

Slowly, his mouth opened in admiration, breath escaping his lips in a wistful sigh. 

Her song was sweet and coated with sugar, it mimicked the beauty of her features and the soft curve of her jaw. His vision blurred, forgetting the other beauties of the tree and seeing only her. The girl who was surrounded by a soft yellow haze and hair seemingly aflame, glimmering almost silver in the sunlight.