The last tree.
The last tree.
"What have I done?"
The words echoed for days, when the Once-ler would still leave his factory in hopes of seeing the stumpy orange creature descending back on to the land where the truffula trees were once so abundant. He would return, the Once-ler once thought, with news that the animals had found a safe place to take refuge, and that there was an easy solution to get the trees growing again.
There was not.
The words echoed for weeks, when the Once-ler would sit in his office for hours on end doing nothing but repeating these four words like a mantra. All calls and requests and scheduled public appearances would go ignored and thneed production, which had already slowed, would grind to a halt, leaving people asking "why, Mr. Once-ler? We're all in need of thneeds."
"Your revolutionary invention!"
"The creation of the century!"
Thneeds meant nothing.
The words echoed for months, when the Once-ler would walk around his empty factory in a zombie-like state, the heavy click and drag of his shoes echoing loud like the machinery that once sang such heavenly tunes. Music to his ears. It was the sound of progress, a sound that no longer existed and would never exist for him again in his lifetime.
Much like the trees.
The words echoed for years. So many years that the Once-ler spent alone, holed up in his house with nothing but his thneeds and the echoing realization that everything was his fault. It wasn't as if this fact had recently dawned upon him; it was something the Once-ler had been aware of for years, but for all the days he was unfortunate enough to wake up into, it was like an entirely new revelation.
A revelation that the Lorax was not going to return. Not for him.
The Once-ler was left with leftover thneeds, a small sum of cash, and worst of all, himself. He would spend years staring at the stone reading Unless, fruitlessly waiting for the Lorax, and staring at the invention that brought about both his rise and fall.
Thneeds. Who's the idiot that came up with that name, anyway?
Who's the idiot that decided they could be big, that no consequence would come of destroying the truffula trees?
Oh, right.
It was him.