How Trees Came Into the World

 

How Trees Came Into the World 

Back in the Old Times, long before anything else happened, some beings got together and made the trees.

Beings then could do many things but they were not very smart. They would sit around, and look at each other and get very bored, even though the stars were still all singing in the sky, not yet having lost their voices, and the clouds were all softly humming, and the small pebbles of the ground were sparkling about in patterns, making flowers and snowflakes, though no one knew that's what they were, since flowers and snowflakes weren't around here yet.

This time, these beings were more bored than ever. They kept looking up at the stars and clouds, happily singing and humming up there, and they started to get annoyed.

One said "Listen to them up there, making that sound."

Another said "They sound happy."

Yet another said "Why should they be so happy when we're so bored and miserable?"

And they started to grumble and as they grumbled they got angrier and angrier.

One said, "Let's make something really tall and climb up there and make them be quiet!"

That sounded like a good idea, so they started making the little pebbles of the ground stand on top of each other and stick together, and they made them do this in tall stacks, close side by side so the bunch of them standing there got thick around, and they tried to make them all stick together, but the pebbles got bored too and after they got stacked up about so high, they'd start falling and jumping off the stacks onto the ground.

"We have to make them stay better," the beings said, and then one got an idea.

"Let's make them very hot, so they get all melty and stick together that way!"

That sounded smart, so they started trying to figure how to bring the heat into the pebbles, hot enough so they would get melty and stick.

One brought heat from the corner of the world where the sun slept. That helped a little but the pebbles still tumbled off after a while.

One clapped its hands together really hard and fast and made them hot and grabbed the stacks. That didn't work at all.

Finally, one held its breath for a long time, and then blew it out, very hot, onto the pebbles. And the pebbles melted and got stickier and stickier.

The beings got excited then, stacking pebbles, holding their breaths and blowing out onto the stacks. In between breaths they shouted at each other "Bring the heat! Bring it! Bring the heat!"

And they worked themselves up to a hot fever, and the stacks of pebbles melted and stuck and grew taller than the tallest of the beings could reach to breathe hot breath on them anymore.

And then something else happened. The stacks of pebbles started to send branches out from their main tallness.

And not only did branches start coming out, on the branches there were soon leaves and needles growing.

The beings were not really smart enough to wonder how this had happened, but they quickly climbed up the branches like they had planned to do, on their way to tell the stars and clouds to be quiet.

But then a funny thing happened. The trees started to sway, back and forth, and the leaves and needles made sounds like "Hush, hush," and the beings, one by one, fell asleep.

So the stars kept singing for a while longer, and now there were trees in the world.