"Adnan, stop! What are you doing with that blade?" Grateful for the fading light that would mask their movements, Jigurte caught his long-time friend and pulled him down to a squat in the tall grass, scouting for any fallen leaves or bark to stay clear of.

The great Tree loomed over them. Its shadow made the twilight seem like full dark.

The pounding of his heart near-deafened Jigurte's ears from the terror of being so close to its trunk. He'd heard the tales of those who'd been lost to Song. Only his love for Adnan made him venture this close.

Jigurte hissed, "You'll be executed if someone sees you near here with a weapon - and me just for being with you!" Tree protocol had been drilled into every nestling's head from birth.

Adnan tried to pull away. "Let me go. I know how to save the Tribes."

"No!" Jigurte twisted the fabric of Adnan's sleeve in his hand. The bigger of the pair, he could overpower his friend and make a quick bind from one of the nearby stalks. Queasiness turned his stomach at the thought.

"My one and only friend, please listen," Adnan pleaded. "We must go back to the beginnings in order to move forward. What is our beginning, Jigurte? It is the sacred Tree. This Tree. The First. It is where we came from, and from where we all return when our ashes are scattered at its base to give it nourishment."

"You are talking fool's speech! Your head is rattled from Touching too many scrolls and too much Singing! Didn't I warn you?"

Adnan drew forth his battered old pack and extracted a tube. Popping the end, he reverently drew out a delicate, ancient sheaf and unrolled it. His eyes took on the far-away look of one who was Touching.

Jigurte felt his eyes bug out so far he thought they would pop from his head. "You removed a scroll from the Library?! Sacrilege! Now if they find us, they won't just kill us, but they won't scatter our ashes at the Tree!"

Laying a pleading hand on his friend's arm, Adnan implored, "Please see the evidence I have found. The elders are under the spell of Brigant. They won't listen to me. But this," he held out the document, inclining his head in a bow to it. "Once I found this, I knew the Truth had been hidden from us. This is the oldest scroll. Brigant wants to lead the Tribes in a direction that will bring him power, but ruin to the rest of us. The crops are failing, and this shows us how to revive them and save ourselves."

The parchment looked so old it had probably been separated from the Tree far longer than three of the combined ages of Jigurte and Adnan, not that that would have dulled the knowledge it retained of the Tree or any of the information Sung into it.

A strong wind blew and nearly toppled Jigurte from where he crouched. He ducked his head. "I'm afraid, Adnan. I've never handled a sheaf before. I'm not trained."

Adnan smiled slightly. "Training is just sorting the knowledge and slowing the Hearing. We are all capable of Touching. And Singing for that matter. The Elders have cut us off from our Wisdom. Your Heart will understand what it needs to. But right now, time is short, Jigurte. Touch and See, or leave me to my task."

For an aeons-long second, Jigurte paused. He'd been nestlings with Adnan. Knew him better than any other person and trusted him with his life. Others saw the man sitting opposite as one who'd 'fallen far from the Tree', but Jigurte knew it was just Adnan's deep Insight that scared them. Easier to push him out than take the time to understand him.

Brigant, the current leader of the Tribes, was blaming the crop failure on clinging to the old ways. Brigant was adamant his reform would work. More and more the old ways had been abandoned, but none of the changes had brought the promised great improvements. Instead, things got worse each year. The nestlings he himself cared for were at risk of starving during the next season.

Before he could lose courage, Jigurte stuck out his trembling hand. "What do I do?"

"Just Touch, and the Tree will do the rest."

Glancing at the great towering topiary, Jigurte whispered, "Please forgive me."

Sweat beaded his brow as his fingertips neared the paper. Adnan gave him a nod of encouragement.

Song Colour Light burst through his head. The Tree took him back through time. Starting when this sheaf had been harvested. Seasons snapped past in a second. His mind couldn't form pictures to match all of the experiences the Tree Sang to his heart. It didn't matter though. Jigurte understood what it was to Sing.

The images finally slowed when they'd passed thousands of years back, to when the Tree was just a sapling in the hand of an Original. He heard/saw the Tree reflected in something shiny on the Original's face. It was a sapling, but it looked so different. So did the Original. Jigurte would have been scared if not for the Tree reassuring him.

Through the Tree, Jigurte understood the Original's words, "The wormhole has taken everything from us. We're lucky so much food and these plants made it through. So, let us go back to the beginning. Let this new place be where we return to our innocence. From this first sapling, let life spring forth." The Song swelled around Jigurte, blinding him with its beauty as the Original placed the sapling in the alien ground.

Adnan's face above him and his extended hand to help him up alerted Jigurte to the fact he was lying on his back.

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star," his friend said in the Old Language.

Jigurte frowned and took the offered help to stand. "Now you're just showing off."

Jigurte's heart was full to bursting with Song. He cradled his head in his hands for a moment. So much information. So much Song. It was clear they needed to replace Brigant's 'modified crops' with fresh new shoots from the Tree. Only the original could save them. The Cycle was clear to him now.

"No, my friend. Just remembering where we were before the Wormhole."

Adnan began to slink towards the tree. Hesitant to be an accomplice, but terrified his friend wouldn't succeed alone and feeling the weight of the knowledge he now had, Jigurte followed.

"Did you catch that the Tree is a crepuscular being?" Adnan whispered.

"I don't even know what that means! You're the learned one." Jigurte wanted to just sit and bask in the glow of Song running through his system.

Over his shoulder, Adnan whispered, "We must harvest while it is twilight. That is when the Tree and all of its offspring are most active. That knowledge alone will revolutionise the Tribes. So much deeper we can go just by changing the Harvest and Singing time. I will have to seek later why it was changed."

Jigurte caressed the leaf of a nearby plant. He now knew the Tree would feel it through the root system. "Then let's hurry!"

Within yards of the first ring of the Tree's offshoots, a harsh voice called out, "Halt! Who passes there? This is forbidden ground."

Squinting to see through the gathering gloom, Jigurte saw a hulking figure holding a long, wickedly curved blade before him. The man wasn't from the nearby nests, probably brought in from afar by Brigant because it's easier to kill a stranger than a neighbour.

"Guards?" he breathed to Adnan who only shrugged. Brigant's changes went deeper than had been supposed if there were guards keeping the Tribes away from the Tree. "Let me handle this."

Before Adnan could hold him back, Jigurte slowly stood upright so as not to alert the guard to his presence by moving too fast. He crept forward.

The Song swelled in his head as he approached the guard. He kept his hands up and out to show he wasn't a threat. "I'm sorry. I didn't realise we weren't allowed to venture here. I was just following a strand to bring back to my nestlings."

"There are no strands here. Be gone with you!" the guard barked out.

"I'm very far from my home. Do you know where I can find some strands? My nestlings are very hungry."

The guard pointed his weapon directly at Jigurte. "You have until I count to ten to get out of my sight or your nestlings will most certainly starve because you won't returnnnnn..."

The last word became a gurgle. A surprised look came over the guard's face. He half-turned, dropping his weapon to reach for the knife protruding from his lower back. A knife that Adnan shoved farther up beneath the guard's ribs. His eyes rolled up into his head and he fell forward to the ground with a muffled thump.

Jigurte gasped in fear. "Adnan! Now what are we going to do? How are we going to hide his body?"

"We'll-" Before Adnan could finish, the long grass surrounding the guard's body began to shiver and shake, making an almost sonorous sound.

Adnan and Jigurte cried out at a vibration from within the ground. They backpedalled to get clear of the spot, but fell hard to the ground within a few feet.

"Jigurte! Look!" Adnan pointed.

Holding tightly to the ground with his hands, Jigurte pushed himself up to see. The guard's body had been covered by the nearby plants like a shroud. One gnarly root broke the surface and began to weave its way around the corpse again and again.

"The Tree!" breathed Adnan.

All around them, small shoots pushed up. Adnan looked to the sky. "Quickly, Jigurte! There's no time to lose! Harvest, my friend!"

Using the blade he still held, Adnan began cutting saplings.

"I've nothing to use!" Jigurte cried in frustration. He dared not yank the saplings out by hand. That would be savage.

He dropped to his knees and felt through the grass for something to use. A sharp rock would do. His hand encountered something hard and long. The guard's weapon!

Hand over hand he pulled it forward through the stalks. It gave him a moment to watch in morbid fascination as the root slowly interred the dead man.

Awkwardly holding the back of the blade, Jigurte reached to gingerly hold the first sapling.

Song burst through his head at physical contact with the Tree. The scroll was a muffled sound behind several closed doors compared to this. He lost all sense of himself or what he was doing as he was carried away on a river of Sound.

Only Adnan prying his fingers off the blade brought him back. "The time is passed. By the Tree, we have made a good Harvest."

Blinking slowly, Jigurte looked around. It had been only minutes to full night when they started, yet somehow they'd managed to Harvest hundreds of saplings that now lay scattered around.

Adnan slapped his cheek affectionately. "Don't worry. Listening gets easier."

As wonderful as it had been, Jigurte didn't know if he wanted to do any more and said as much.

"The Tree has chosen you, Jigurte. It is up to us to plant these saplings. We will start at your Nest and take your nestlings with us. Travel with them will be a cover for our activities."

The thought of his nestlings being in peril pierced Jigurte's heart. "But it will be dangerous!"

Nodding at the thin dirt patch that remained where the guard had lain, Adnan smiled, "We have a guardian better than any other. The Tree will be with us every step of the way. Now come! We have work to do!"

WORD COUNT: 1986

Written for the 2021/22 Ooorah Layeth the Smackdown Competition Round 4.

Including this song:

https://youtu.be/Rk_sAHh9s08