#anyway rest in peace creek you would have loved HP lovecrafts books but hated lovecraft himself

[boopshoops]

The Watcher of the Great Pine Tree

TW!!! this is fucked up- warnings for child death/injury, descriptions of decomposition with bugs- and just bugs in general. srsly gross I warned you. Also unreliable narrator. I do my best to handle these topics with respect!

Let's see... what year was it? Ah, yes.

I died in the late 1830s. A few years after, locomotive trains finally made their way to the Land of Dawning. I was a considered a lucky charm prior to that, all of my parent's other children had died. Now now, settle- that wasn't uncommon back then. Even up till the 1870s, half of the amount of children birthed died prior to the age of five. At least those from families without magic.

Lucky me, I made it to six.

Quite the oddity compared to today, no? Nonetheless, as you can see, I have long since made up for it.

I loved to watch the trains. They astonished my little mind. I wasn't a very smart one by any means, but I wanted to know everything about them. How the wheels turned, and the whistle blew... how something that big was able to move at all. In a way, I wanted to BE the train, hah! Me and the other children would always play by the tracks whenever we were free from our studies. Every time the train went past, I was there.

Then, I fell.

What, were you expecting something more climactic?

No. I got a concussion while playing by the railroad tracks like the wreckless scamp I was. It took me awhile to learn the terms to understand- as well as most medicinal studies at the time, but fluid pressed on my brain more as the days went by, and I had a stroke.

That was when I first became a spirit, but I was not dead yet. My brain was practically nonfunctional. I could see it all like it was from the eyes of another, tethered closely to my body.

My father put me out of my misery with a mallet.

I watched him bury my body by the railroad, and I remained tethered there as all the life in the surrounding woods hummed a tune.

How did I feel? Oh, why of course I was absolutely beside myself. I feel anyone would be, but I was lucky- I had a comfort:

The crickets.

Their lovely song thrummed through my spirit along with the whistle of the train. They were there the entire time, soothing me. Family and friends visited, of course, but the bugs... the bugs were the only ones who truly spoke to me.

So when they began to consume my body, I felt betrayed. However- I learned that this was yet another blessing in disguise.

They all carried parts of my flesh. I was valuable to them. I was such a divine blessing for them. To feed the hoard. The masses. To continue to hear them sing. To untether me from my grave. I was free. I had done something. For the first time in my life, I was something greater than myself. There was nothing left of me there, but I was more than I ever had been. Yet, foolishly, I still grieved.

I followed those bugs out into the woods, to the tree. The old pine tree- I believe it was later called the Great Pine in the years to come. With magic buried deep in its roots. I practically raised myself out there in an abandoned old cottage, a place where I could keep an eye on my nests of friends where my body sustained them.

Despite what I had done for them, as years went by, I knew I wanted to live.

I wanted to live more than anyone else who had ever visited that pine tree.

More than anyone who was already alive.

So I watched. And I learned about that tree. For decades.

At the time, I was quite a sentimental fool- I got very wrapped up in it all. In how I felt, so much so that I forgot completely the feelings of others. Not that I ever had much experience with it in the first place, having passed on so young. I truly only ever thought of myself or my small critter friends. I used to excuse what I did with my death. Now I don't bother. In truth, I don't regret what I did either way.

Because I get to live.

I get to live a life no one else can.

A life of feeling. A life of being more than simply myself. I get to repay the generations and generations of creatures that fed from me. Now I can care for them forever.

So, no, I don't regret taking that girl's wooden frame.

Because now, that exact frame is home to so much more.

Wouldn't she be grateful? To have your very being become an ecosystem?

To be reunited with the very being that once bit into you? To become a part of their lives?

Maybe not. Either way, I am happy. I did feel guilty, mind you, I wasn't completely out of my wits yet, haha! It did eventually happen, though. Wits have been loss, I'm aware by how you are staring at me. Feel free to hate me, I've long since moved on to bigger things.

Suppose around two hundred years will do that to you. I almost miss the guilt.

I almost miss the feeling.

*(sorta) prequel to "The Dolls of the Great Pine Tree" from the pov of that mysterious pal.

tags!

@lowcallyfruity @skriblee-ksk @justm3di0cr3 @cecilebutcher @kitwasnothere

@beneathsakurashade @qsoap @prince-kallisto @kathxrat-01 @twsted-canvas

@scint1llat3 @the-trinket-witch @thehollowwriter @distant-velleity @techno-danger

@sillyslipperybananapeel @gimmeurmoneyagh @tixdixl @twstinginthewind