The Green Sun ©

There was once a powerful nation built upon a land so dry there was but one tree. It had been said that the tree birthed the entire country but that story has long been forgotten. The tree was deep brown and perfectly smooth like something out of a dream with leaves that shown green all year long and shined like moonlight. At the base of the tree was a large hollow big enough to fit a small person if they squeezed inside. To see this tree was like to gaze upon the very beauty of life itself. Beneath the tree sat a man; the man’s name was Enosh. As Enosh studied the tree, he saw nothing but simple vegetation and ignored its verdure. He sighed and jumped up onto his feet. He swiped the dirt off his old, slightly ripped pants and walked over to tend to the sheep until a thought entered his mind and soon left his lips.
“Why should I herd the sheep for those dirty dogs? What have they ever done for me but feed me disgusting slop and occasionally allow me to walk about?” he mused, “They stole our land, our animals, and my freedom!” As Enosh thought it over he saw him. It was Mr. Lupus Teivel, his feet bombing the ground with orange leaves crunching under his feet as he ran at him with an air of superiority. It was he who had stolen his family’s land and even killed his parents. Teivel and his wife, Lilitu, had come in claiming rights to the land five years to the day. As he reached the last steps before him, Enosh’s heart plummeted down; a feeling Enosh had gotten very used to and barely noticed it was so commonplace.
That evening as Enosh held his bleeding arm, he crafted an idea. The answer was staring him right in the face from the bowl of dirty, raw mystery meat sitting on the floor in front of him.
As Mr. and Mrs. Teivel ate their dinner, food clinging to their hairy faces, he realized that as long as the food kept coming he wouldn’t be noticed. The Teivels were disgusting people. They loved food like most people love gold and never take their eyes off anything edible. As they ordered for more steak and liver, Enosh edged more and more closer to the door after each fetching and, when the opportunity was right, he made for the door. He ran out as fast as his short legs could move him until the cottage was out of sight. The sights were bleak, just dirt and rock as far as his small eyes could see. The tree began to rise far in front of him like a magnificent green sun.
Before him stood the tree in all of its glory, beginning to give birth to the year’s bounty and he wondered why there are no trees that grow from that fruit. He stood there for a moment before he heard the sound of barking dogs and dashed into the hollow of the tree. Knowing the dogs could smell him out he began to panic over his foolishness. They ended outside the tree, too far away to find him.
Enosh waited, trying not to breathe, for what felt like an eternity before he came out from under the tree. Paralyzed, Enosh stood gazing directly at the blood shot eyes, which seemed to be looking straight through him, something that the paranoid boy wasn’t entirely used to. There was Mr. Teivel just ten yards away, his ear twitching from every whistle of a single bird upon the tree. He was staring at the tree as if it were the very essence of evil. And just as beasts will in the face of danger, Lupus ran off, never even having noticed Enosh.
Malevolence seeped from their shriveled souls toward the tree, which gave him an idea. He plucked a single stick from the tree and used his teeth to sharpen it just a little. He left back the way he came; his goal was to win back his home. When he reached the cottage, stick held in the air like a mighty symbol of power, he saw no one. He stepped over the threshold to find Lilitu, she had been even worse than her companion. As he search her tearful eyes of brown for what must have felt like years to her, he recalled those eyes as they pierced his soul and her cruel, insufferable words pierced his skin just the day before. Her words were worse than anything and it was as if a thousand knives to the chest. She winced and cried for forgiveness, she knew her husband would not come to save her. She reminded him that it had been her that convinced her husband to spare the child’s life, his life.
“Show me where Lupus is,” Enosh ordered the sobbing savage.
By his orders, she led him to Mr. Teivel, who hid beneath the bed as soon as he heard his wife’s howling. The cowardly creature promised to give Enosh back the land and home but that was not enough. They had to pay for what they did, each and every day, but as he starred with no mercy into the eyes of the demonic dogs before him and imagined their fates, the stick began to turn. Its magnificent shine began to turn a deathly charcoal; it fell apart into ash within his grasp. As the dogs began to realize their luck, the ash hit the cedar floor and began to miraculously burn and spread like a match to alcohol. As the fire let loose, Enosh managed to escape. The fire broke through the floor and the howling and barking dogs fell, never to kill again.
Even though Enosh lost his home, he was ridden of those beasts. He soon took shelter below the very tree that saved him. From the ashes of his old home grew a tree, which couldn’t be cut down by the evil dogs before it became too powerful for them. Soon there was a forest, which lived forever with the mother tree at its center. It’s said that if you find this forest its beauty alone will give you eternal life but that’s just a story. The real story is the story of the birth of a nation built around a tree with the help of a single person.