There is something in the rain. It makes the water taste different, somehow. I don't find it completely disagreeable; it actually feels a bit warm spreading through my roots. The people will not react well to it, however. They don't feel anything right now. For now, they will eat and drink and smile and work each and every day. They will thrive for now.
To explain concepts such as months and years to me would be like me attempting to describe the sensation of fresh sunlight as it strikes my green leaves. We can both agree upon the subject matter, but the way we experience the world around us is, to put it simply, different.
This is why I can feel the twinge of flavoring in the water that the people that walk around and beneath me do not.
Years pass. To me they are like breaths, had I known what such a thing felt within me. The people around me, my friends, seem distressed. The world does not seem quite like it once was. All of them seem to be in a constant hurry. No one wants to lean against me anymore for shade and rest. I do not like this change in their behavior. I wish I could understand their dialect; those strange, sustained grunts and moans that source from them. I cannot understand, but I can detect emotion. Things are not well.
It has been a while longer. Again, I cannot fathom how long. People are lying lifeless in the paved walkways. One of their boxes with wheels has collided into the hill directly behind me, long since abandoned. Those that still live look dazed, confused. Perhaps they are hungry? I wish that I was of the namesake to bear fruit for those that need it the most. I look on with fresh sorrow. Why is it so many are like this now? I lap at the waters held within the ground beneath me, tasting in the richness of that strange flavor I detected those many years ago. It has intensified many folds now, it sending a warmth of which I cannot quite explain. What was it about this warmth that my friends found so intolerable?
Time has passed once more. The world around me is silent. Sometimes I will hear them, but it is never for long. The long stretch of blackness that spreads out on either side of me – once alight with the noises of their machines, the rhythm of their steps – was empty. The dead that have been lying around me are in the final throes of decay.
I am lonely. So many breaths have left me, without a single difference coming to pass amongst the surrounding area. I feel myself growing old; the toughened skin that wraps around me is becoming grey and splintered. I test at the water once more, in curiosity. No such warmth is felt from the liquid. If only there was a single other soul left to appreciate the change.
My limbs creak in the dusty wind. The black stretch of material has become cracked and worn; areas have started to sprout fresh grass. The tall, hollow and concrete things my past friends once resided within have long, spiny cracks in the wall faces. Foliage seemed to cover everything now. With one, final breath I allow my arms to drop for the first and final time. My pride; a single, small seedpod fell from me and struck at the ground. I take one last look at the fallen world, relax myself, and focus downward at the seed beneath me. I can only hope that they can, perhaps one day, hear the bustle of those strange and wonderful beings once again.
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