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3067 AD.
The year of the murdered trees.

*

Over dry earth they ran, kicking up the dust like escaped prisoners. They hadn't looked back. Couldn't bear to. Not until the terrain underfoot blended into rare cushioned soil and they could see their objective clearly on the horizon.

The children had risked the small freedom they had for just one chance to see such a spectacle. So whilst their feet grew tired within shoes of radioactive leather, their minds remained wide-awake.

One child- the fastest, squealed in excitement when the first treetop soared into the sky to join the clouds. A hint of life amongst the dead landscape of their home.

They had almost reached the forest now, after days of searching and they carried with them a readiness to explore the unknown.

It was with this same curiousness that the four children entered that forest- blissfully unaware of what lurked behind the bark and branches beyond.

*

"Come on then!" called Tom to the three other children. "Or are you too chicken?" he said, turning to the child who stood closest to him- Kate was her name.

"Why do I have to race you?" replied Kate. "I'll only win. And then you'll go off and sulk like a sourpuss, again." She had ginger hair that curled cunningly around and over her shoulders.

"Stop calling me that. I'm thirteen years old!" Tom glared at the smirking girl, who had succeeded once again in irritating him.

"Oh be careful guys. Why are we even doing this? Don't you know how much trouble we'll be in?" asked Jasmine- the third child. She looked up at the strongly rooted tree, which Tom and Kate were planning to climb. She bit at her nails in trepidation. They were only children after all.

"I agree with Jas. Safety first," finished the last child, who adjusted his oxygen mask over his face and puffed out his chest proudly.

The forest surrounding them was lush and natural and green - a juxtaposition to the toxic towns and cities in which humans now existed. You wouldn't call it living. Living would suggest that they had felt alive in those places. But dying didn't cut it either. Existing on earth felt more like being stuck between the two, life and death, in a quicksand that trapped you into submission but never quite buried you under.

The terrain in their dwellings was covered the closest thing they had come to grass, but the children knew that it wasn't really grass at all. The green urban excrement was something much more poisonous than vegetation. Though arguably just as powerful.

The oxygen masks and tanks the children carried with them to avoid choking to death was certain proof of that.

*

"So are you gunna race me to the top of that tree or not?" Tom was getting impatient.

Finally accepting his challenge, Kate nodded and stood next to Tom at the base of the particularly large tree.

"Can't we just explore? Like normal kids and not make a competition of everything?" Jasmine pleaded with a pout.

"We're far from normal," Flynn told Jasmine, gesturing to their masks and holding her hand consolingly.

"Sorry Jas. When I beat Tom in this race then we can explore. Count us down?"

"Alright," she conceded. "Just don't fall... On the count of five, no three."

Tom and Kate readied themselves.

"One..."

"Two..." but before Jasmine could get to three, Kate pushed Tom over and began climbing up and up and up.

Kate could hear the boy's protests from beneath her and cackled in satisfaction. She advanced higher, towards the blushing sun. As she did so her hands were met with smooth bark; the aged skin of Mother Earth's oldest children.

She felt a sense of exhilaration. It was as though she were passing across the tree's history- tracking its growth through centuries as she clambered up the trunk.

It took her almost no time to reach the top and once high up there she stopped and looked around. There were trees of all types- pine, oak and willow.

The pine trees took her notice particularly. She liked that they looked like spears, about to be thrown and make static the once neutral sky. Kate had never seen real trees in her life before. None of the children had. Grandparents had told stories of Mother Nature to their grandchildren but, through generations, they had been altered - until no one knew fact from fiction.

"You cheated!" spat Tom, who had finally reached the top of the tree himself. "I want a rematch." There was no reply. "Are you even listening?" he leaned across the pine and prodded Kate.

"Shut up and look around," Kate ordered.

And as he did just that, Tom was enchanted. He called Jasmine and Flynn up. Although timid at first, they too became bewitched by the gust of sweet wind, which carried the crisp leaves and whispered a truth the children had never been told before. A forest still exists. And so there is hope...

"Well this is over-ELM-ing," Flynn whispered to Jasmine, as they stood, gazing into the vast array of lime, pine and juniper green trees.

"You've got that right!" Jasmine replied excitedly, after laughing kindly in response to Flynn's unoriginal sense of humour.

"And to think that you wanted to stay in your Safety with Radioactivity lesson today," Flynn tutted. He shook his head at Jasmine.

"Okay, this is... so much better! " said the girl with rabbit shaped eyes.

Soon, the day threatened to turn to purple dusk and the four of them had barely spent an hour in the forest.

"We should leaf... I mean leave," Flynn suggested comically, attempting to lighten the unavoidable outcome of their trip.

"What if we don't?" voiced Kate. "What if we stay here? Who's gunna know?"

"That's a stupid idea," said Tom. Kate pulled back a tree branch and let it hit him in the side of his face. "Hey!" he sulked.

"They'll know we're missing, Kate," Jasmine replied and ,unlike with Tom, Kate listened to her. "We'll come back. We won't forget about this place." Glumly, Kate settled down- trusting in the fact that Jasmine never told a lie. Never could. For she wore her emotions so vibrantly across her face to begin with.

*

And so they began to climb down. Flynn first, followed by Jasmine, Tom and then Kate; but Kate wanted one last look.

She remained at the top of the tree, searching for the answer to the thing she had travelled all this way for. Away from home. Away from her family. But the answer didn't present itself to her straight away like she had originally hoped and soon she drifted off.

After a moment, loud calls drew her attention down to the forest floor, where she found her friends were already at the bottom, gesturing to her.

"All right I'm coming."

Their voices became more urgent. Kate saw that they were looking ahead of them in fear. She was nervous- she wondered what was upsetting them so much.

Shakily, Kate scurried down the tree. With each step her lack of focus became apparent. She struggled to find her balance.

"Kate hurry!!" screamed Flynn. With that distraction Kate had looked away for a precious moment. And that was enough. She tried to take another step down but her oxygen tank was snagged between two branches. She pulled at the tank but it wouldn't budge.

And in the distance she could see now what the others had seen- trees. Falling trees.

Desperately she pulled at the tank but when Kate finally wrenched the tank free the rest of the children were no longer on the forest floor.

SNAP.

Kate's surroundings blurred. The tree she had become stuck on was falling. Its splintered trunk pierced through the serene, natural silence from before as it spewed out a cacophony of cracking. She strained her eyes to try and locate her friends, but the cloud of dust and ash from below eradicated any hope she had of finding them.

The tree hit the ground. She screamed and her oxygen tank smashed into pieces, like the shattering of a Japanese antique vase.

Thick toxic air forced its way into her body through her nasal passage and suddenly her whole body was on fire. A fire so powerful that in her final moments of consciousness, it felt as if she would turn to ash and be blown away with the wind.

That was when Kate Marsh died.

Or should have done.

If only the darkness that lurked beneath the branches of the forest had allowed it.