Once upon a time, in the center of the world there stood a giant tree that towered past the mountains and the clouds and even the stars. The roots of this tree stretched across the bottom of the ocean and twisted and turned beneath the surface of all the lands. Though the tree bore no fruit, it was connected to every living plant in the fields surrounding it.
In a village close to the mighty trunk of the tree lived a little girl who’d seen her first chick hatch in the spring and built her first snowman in the winter. She was a playful little girl with hair red as flames, and every day she would go to the tree and she would sing. Around her the singing would echo as it came and arose from every plant every flower in the field. Sometimes she and her friends would sing together or listen to music as they would drift to sleep and the tree would show them so many colors.
One day her and one of her friends sit down after a short scan of the field. She pulls a bag across from her shoulder, searching for a source of music it as it dragged its way round her. She takes out a item; it's an mp3 player. As she sifts through the endless list of tracks her friend slides himself down into a more comfortable position beside her. Hitting play she lays back to join him, and the magic starts...
The first few notes of the song escape from her speakers and fall around them like the first drops before a summer downpour. She turns her head to the sky, the first few notes flow across filling the deep blue above them. They breath deeply and start to sing, now drawing their attention to the planes soaring way above which leave behind their cloudy trails; criss-crossing each over randomly, like the roads of a busy city. The air traffic begins to clear and she closes her eyes lost in the song. They begin to float above riding upon the wing of a plane way up high, looking down on the cities and busy people, with hardly a care in the world. The song drifts on, and they open their eyes to look at the field of flowers surrounding them the colors changing and the flowers swaying as the music plays and they sing magical words.
A new song starts like a fresh dream, painting over the colors of the old one. Each melodic dip creates new shades of color across the once still field. Her eyes follow the flow of the colors, moving across the flowers only to then suddenly leap up and grab her friend's hand as they sing and dance to a song for children. As they dance along laughing and singing the tree's branches move with them every skip the tree moved its branches. The music flowed all around the field and as they skipped along the flowers started flying around them in a whirl of color.
They jump. The new sounds, much more upbeat, throw them from my their dancing. Standing still their eyes flicker to catch a bird flock as it gushes from the tree to fill the atmosphere with their airborne acrobatics. She strains to keep my focus on one continuous bird as they dart past each other too quickly to follow. Their similarities making it much more difficult to keep track of one specific bird among the group. The birds begin to tweet and sing, the tree amplifying it and making it into a beautiful song.
Gasping, they rub their eyes, amazed at what they are seeing. A rainbow; the largest and brightest ever seen strung out across the patchy blue yonder. The colors and moods harmonizing with those of the blue sky and murky cloud alike. Contrasting only with the diagonal stripes, still lingering after the long departed planes, running against the arch of colors. They lay amongst the dancing flowers breathless, smiling up at the splendor of the atmosphere. Studying the rainbow's colors, she drifts into a hum and beams back at the sky once again as colors fade into a deep purple, engulfing the burnt orange aura of the setting sun. The evening stars just breaking through she velvet sky, still tinted with the rainbows colors, tattoo-ed with silhouettes of the tree's magical branches and birds encrusted with diamonds of dew, that reflect the colors of the evenings stars. They look around, enjoying all the views one last time: the sky; in all its beauty, the crickets; their light whistles now adding to the symphony, in tune with the music, the pale blue of the far eastern horizon; a contrast against the deep amber of the west, the beautiful flowers as they sway and move and make the song become their wind.
They walk back to the tree and lean against its trunk. They find that the music on the little girl's mp3 player had stopped long ago. But as they drifted off to sleep they music continued coming from the tree and the flowers in a sweet lullaby. The branches of the tree enveloped them both in a hug lifting them into their branches high above the ground. The leaves from those branches wrapped around them like a blanket. The last of the music fading as they drifted to sleep.
I awoke in my bed, arose and crossed to the window. I looked out across my backyard at the flowers that covered the lawn. I looked at the big tree and remembered when I was a child dancing in the field with the magical tree. My friend and I would see the tiny little sparrows and thought them giant flocks of birds. The music that surrounded us as we danced and played. Then there was falling asleep and being held by the branches. We did indeed fall asleep but it was our parents arms are the ones that would hold us and carry us in to cover us with a blanket as we fell asleep. Our giant magic tree, the tree that played music, that swayed and reached across the entire world. The tree that everyone loved because everyone had one. Our magic tree is the tree of imagination the best magic of all.
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