A Quest;looking for gods

Chapter 4: 1.4 Concious



She had been alive many times before that, she would live for a long time or for such a short time it would be like blinking.

In between the lives was that formless darkness, except she had not been aware of herself then.

-This was the first time she had been "awake", this weird room and a body in between a death and her next life are things that had never been.-

She had live the bright,short lives of insects, her mind sunk in metalic order, as she did no more than she had to, like a cog in a machine.

She had been plants and flowers, rushing into the sunlight to bloom or spore before dying blindly in dry harsh cold.

She had been trees, her pulsing awareness muted by the slow movement of her roots seeking moisture, leaves seeking sunlight.

There had been the vagueness of time passing in each life, every form she took she did only what was necessary for the survival of the vessel and the propagation of it's genes.

There were times and places of ice, dry hot biomes, soggy stagnated warm waters, swift flowing vigorous waters,strong currents in deep seas, in the thin rarified air of high places, humid dark forests and open grasslands,she had lived in all these places and fit like a hand in a well-made glove.

All those lives she was now aware of and she was conscious of how she seemed oblivious to anything that had nothing to do with feedind and breeding.

There were too many such memories, it felt like millions of such lives. Her recall seemed to be linear, with the mindless lives coming first.

The last such life, she had been a tree. She was somewhere cool and dark, the light rarely reached her, but the soil was rich and dark, full of nutrients. She had been doing well, striving to make herself taller with the passage of every season to get out of the shadow of the old ones.

Those who failed the race towards the light became stunted and died, enriching the earth, her roots writhed slowly in vegetable ecstacy.

She was just a tree, evergreen and bent on feeding and budding in the brief warmth to form fruit in the hope that as they fall they would seed and grow.

As she relived this memory she wondered what kind of tree she was. She couldn't see herself but from the limited self awareness she was sure she had a slender trunk with evergreen leaves, with self pollinating system of reproduction. When she lived again , she would see what kinds of trees fit this bill and take the name of the most likely.

She had been like this until sunset one day, when she became acutely concious of something new.

She was aware of animals in a vague undefined way, as they flitted their brief lives around the trees and died to nourish the ground with their carcasses.

This was also a type of animal, but it felt different, when it touched her trunk, it was like being touched by the sunlight in summer before the day got too hot.

The animal would occasionally climb up her trunk, sometimes strip the bark of her, snap twigs while pulling of her fruit. She could sense the vibration of air in what passed as it's communication, when it first came, the vibrations all around the forest were distressed. There was more than this creature, but it was the only one that she could sense. The only one that felt like life. She was intrigued.

Time passed. How much time?

What is time to a being that cannot move from where it stands?

Seasons came and went, the sunlight-being

would some times come, she grew tall , sank her taproot even deeper searching for water, to ensure her blooms were big and healthy, to make bigger fruit...when the sunray-creature harvested he always took the biggest, and heaviest of her potential progeny.

Then he stopped coming. She strived for a long time, making herself better and better and he did not come.

She finally gave up. She sank herself in to her heart wood as though everyday was a cold winter day. She was long in withering before she died.

That was the first time she did more than survive to breed. She was marked by a warmth she never saw, she yearned for the being, longed to feel the sunlight again.

The very next time she was born she was human. It was the first time she was human. She never incarnated as anything other than human after that.


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