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There isn’t much to do with your day when you’re a pine needle. You’d think the sheer number of needles on a branch would mean that there would always be someone to talk to but nope, most pine needles were not great at conversation.
Their concerns were depressingly small. It was all “Will the wind come my way” and “When will the food come up here”. They thought nothing of life off the tree.
Tom on the other hand, could think of nothing but life off of the tree. On a different tree, far enough that they couldn’t speak to each other but close enough that their trees’ roots touched, was a pine needle.
His name was Harry.
Every so often the wind would carry over the sounds of his words and Tom couldn’t think of anything else.
In short, Tom was obsessed.
He was determined to meet up with this pine needle. With Harry.
Every time he heard his neighbors jabber about the sun, his craving for proper conversation increased. And with it, his craving for Harry.
Harry was…beautiful.
In the fall, when most needles were brown and crumbling, Harry was green. He stood proud, taller than his crumbling neighbors could hope for.
Tom was taking a nap and dreaming of birds. He woke with a start to the needles on the neighboring branches yelling about birds.
A red bird came swooping down and grabbed needles from Harry’s tree.
If Tom had a heart, it would have sunk. The noises around him raised to nothing.
The bird took Harry.
What would Tom do now? Harry was his reason for living, his only hope in the world.
His ears filled with the sound of screams, his neighbors having gotten so loud that Tom could no longer block them out.
The bird was coming his way.
Tom’s broken heart lifted. If he could just get the bird to take him…
THWAM
Tom felt a tug and then he was free! Free from his branch, free from his neighbors, free from his boring life!
He looked over to see who else the bird had taken. His metaphorical heart sank.
Harry wasn’t there. Tom was taken by a different bird than Harry was.
Harry liked life as a pine needle. Some might call it boring with how nothing much happened, but Harry liked that about it. It was peaceful.
He spent his days with his face turned towards the sun, soaking it in. Sure he wondered about life beyond the tree but who didn’t?
Wondering about something didn’t mean you didn’t like what you had.
Of course, those words were the ones the wind chose to pick up and bring to the other trees.
It couldn’t take the ones where Harry was admiring the sun or waiting for water. It took the ones where he wondered about the world.
If he had eyes he would roll them.
In return, because the wind had a weird need to keep things even, the wind brought news from the other tree.
Tom was obsessed with him apparently.
Which was weird. He was just Harry. Nothing was special about him.
Tom was a bit of a creep in Harry’s opinion. Every time Harry glanced over, Tom was watching him.
Once, in the middle of a nice conversation about the state of water these days, Harry’s neighbors started screaming.
He felt a moment of annoyance until he processed what they were screaming.
A bird coming to take needles? From his tree?
This was his chance to get away from the creepy Tom!
Harry wiggled around, trying to loosen himself from the branch.
Slam!
Talons hit him, nails grasped him! His plan had worked!
He was free!