[B.....n]

Black. Pure darkness. Painted over everything.

Words. Scattered here and there across the blackness.

Kind words. Difficult words. Amorous words. All sparkling in the dark like jewels.

The words were few now. But time was shorter.

Grabbing the words in desperation, the tree turned to the sky.

This is wrong - whispered the tree in the voice of wind through the leaves.

This is not how it was supposed to be.

...The plan has failed.

Once, long ago, the tree had remembered everything about the world.

This was its task. Its purpose.

It shivered with something approaching joy as it collected the memories of mankind.

This was no accident; emotions were as much a part of the tree as root and bark.

Memories collected like dew on the thick green leaves of the tree.

And once they had formed a web that spanned the entire world.

Words collapsed into sunlight before passing through the leaves and into the pool of memory.

From the pool, the words joined together to form colonies, the colonies united into whirlpools of light, and the light coalesced into stars.

Each star was like a child of the tree, and it loved them all.

Look at my memory.
A child is here, brought low by disease. He is far too young to have suffered so.

Thin beyond words, the boy's skin is a shade paler than the bleached hospital sheets upon which he lies.
His parents no longer visit him, for they cannot bear to watch him suffer.
The doctors have long since surrendered his fate to the gods.

The boy, too, has abandoned hope. Strange emotion - weariness, hatred - swell within the dark recesses of his young heart.
He tries to reject the black terror that germinates in his body, but no amount of effort or tears can
drive the invader away.
He has long ceased to resent his parents and doctors.
Once he did, but now his pain is so great that there is little room in his heart to think of others.

Only one person brings the boy comfort: a healthy young girl with tan skin and deep blue eyes.

She is a beacon of brightness and light in the boy's world;her very presence is a comfort to him.
But he is unable to look upon her face.

Whenever they meet, the boy is filled with loathing for his own state. Soon, this loathing eats away at what joy he receives from the girl's visits.

The girl will stop coming. He knows this. His every waking moment is spent in fear of this day.

He thinks that if he could talk to her, if he could tell her of his feelings, that this might not be so.
But this conversation never happens.

The girl disappears.
The boy dies alone.

The tree scoops up this memory and carefully stores it within itself.

Etched upon it is a single word: Envy.

Look at my memory.
There is a female warrior.
Her greatest enemy is a beast with red eyes that she cannot fully comprehend.

When she strikes it with her sword, it turns into a pillar of salt and dies.
But when the white smoke clears, a new enemy rises.
And another.
...And another.

The warrior knows that her struggle is folly, but fighting the unending stream of enemies fills her with a sense of joy and purpose.

Somewhere deep in the warrior's drug-addled mind lies a vague memory of a daughter. Perhaps the child exists only in her head; the dying remnants of a powerful dream.

She does not know.

Her friends and fellow warriors come and go. Some flee in terror. Some are eaten. She began the fight with 23 companions, but most are gone now.

The warrior's body shudders. She does not understand why at first.
By the time she hears the fierce, low sound, the arena is already enclosed in darkness. Looking up, the warrior sees a beast so large that it blots out the sky.
She is laughing. She has been doing so for as long as she can remember.
Covered in blood and dirt, the warrior laughs. She laughs and laughs until the town that contains her daughter collapses into a pile of dust.

This memory has been stored for a long time.
It is etched with a single word: Loss.

Look at my memory.
A red dragon falls from the heavens...
Ah, that memory has been lost. A shame. It was a favorite of mine.

After many centuries of existence, the tree saw that its carefully labeled memories were beginning to dwindle.
Once seemingly infinite, the memories now seemed ready to disappear forever.

The tree did not feel sadness at this; grief was an emotion beyond its comprehension.
It did, however, have the distinct feeling that something was missing.
The mountain of memories it had so carefully assembled had disappeared.

The tree stretched its branches as far as it could, but new memories refused to flow.
The pool of memories was a black, empty pit; a hollow place where life had once flourished.

The tree had lost its purpose.
There was nothing to be done but sift through the few remaining memories littering the ground under its branches.

#feels #angielski #angielskizwykopem #nier #opowiadanie

[gorian2222]

nvm