07-12-2019, 09:54 PM
“They aren’t immortal.”
She speaks abruptly and without returning Lilliana’s gaze. It is true, you couldn’t call them that. Some live long, many do not, they have their own diseases, their own predators, their own poor luck. Some barely eke out a survival, the pines near the very tops of the mountains are no more than scrubby, scraggly bushes. Best not to judge them all on the merits of redwoods. Not very different from the horses already around them, in that way.
“I have not met anyone who talks to trees and hasn't been kicked in the head. What can a tree have to say? For one hundred years, I’ve watched 10 million generations of squirrels bury their acorns, have their children, and die?”
They cannot move to improve their situation, they are stuck where their seed landed and rooted for a century, and then they fall and feed the mushrooms. It is a rather pessimistic response to the chestnut’s playful daydream. Neverwhere considers the idea of being able to talk to trees. There are rarely benefits to being able to talk with other horses, she is pretty decided that trees would not be much better.
"You assume that the trees will want to talk to you. What if all they do is scream?"
As if to mark her point, the wind above the canopy picks up and whistles through the branches, slipping down to the forest floor with a soft moan. She does look back at Lilliana, then. The chestnut's earnestness is so obvious, and so alien to Neverwhere, who is mostly just sarcastic and disinterested, with no real social grace.
"I answer to Neverwhere, more often than not."
She speaks abruptly and without returning Lilliana’s gaze. It is true, you couldn’t call them that. Some live long, many do not, they have their own diseases, their own predators, their own poor luck. Some barely eke out a survival, the pines near the very tops of the mountains are no more than scrubby, scraggly bushes. Best not to judge them all on the merits of redwoods. Not very different from the horses already around them, in that way.
“I have not met anyone who talks to trees and hasn't been kicked in the head. What can a tree have to say? For one hundred years, I’ve watched 10 million generations of squirrels bury their acorns, have their children, and die?”
They cannot move to improve their situation, they are stuck where their seed landed and rooted for a century, and then they fall and feed the mushrooms. It is a rather pessimistic response to the chestnut’s playful daydream. Neverwhere considers the idea of being able to talk to trees. There are rarely benefits to being able to talk with other horses, she is pretty decided that trees would not be much better.
"You assume that the trees will want to talk to you. What if all they do is scream?"
As if to mark her point, the wind above the canopy picks up and whistles through the branches, slipping down to the forest floor with a soft moan. She does look back at Lilliana, then. The chestnut's earnestness is so obvious, and so alien to Neverwhere, who is mostly just sarcastic and disinterested, with no real social grace.
"I answer to Neverwhere, more often than not."
Neverwhere
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