Oh my goodness. I don't believe what I just did.
I wrote a poem about Stumpy.
Those little bosses really don't get enough credit. Yet again, this is just some random angsty crapping. Can't be that good, considering what it's about.
Originally a poem, but I decided to make it a oneshot. I just joined the lines together and added punctuation. So if you find that the whole thing reads a little bumpily, you know why.
dead
Empty, dead, he crests the mountaintops with a motionless gaze, the spirits of the dead gathered around him while he searches. Searches for those who did this to him.
Ah, he still recalls the times when the treetops were laden with verdure, when he stood by the river, welcoming the wind—while the river sang in invisible, yet grateful, ears, and the birds gathered at his whispering voice
He recalls how the humans relaxed beneath his shadow, enjoying a picnic or a game, leaned on his trunk and sank into sweet sleep, embraced by the scent of flowers.
Were they the very same? They had loved him so—and yet they had hated him. He had come to realize only later.
Human deeds. The bane of the land, of life. He had been given no chance to realize before he drank it in, the poison of human greed—and he began to die.
You say that plants do not feel. But he felt—it was sheer, destructive pain—as the poison killed him from inside, his spirit emptying, turning away from life, turning into a shadow.
Suddenly, he had lost everything.
Dead leaves flutter
Brittle dry carcasses of a lost dream
Branches becoming bare, dusty fingers
Scratching at the empty sky
And he may never smile again.
Anger is all he has left. So, remembering the ones who destroyed all that he once had, he melds with the strength of his grieving furor, sinks into an abyss he will never escape—becomes a monster.
Now all that gathers as he speaks are the dead, their flitting black wings brushing the blank air—all lost, as he is, in the midst of this darkening world.
The mountaintops will forever be his haven as he seeks out the ones who destroyed him—waiting to bring them their deserving end, to throw all his pain, his empty pain, back at them.
For he longs still—a deep-buried wish—for something that will never be returned. For the joy and light he once held, for the days when he stood by the river and gazed at the sky.
But he knows that he will never have them again.
And so, he searches to this day, crossing the mountaintops, for a hidden solace he will never have. It is a grief that he will never lose, a grief that will chase him till the end of time.
And you will sometimes see his shape, still against the sky, a silhouette in the winds. And dead or alive, you can't really tell. Then only will you see his dreams, remember his tales of a bright, beautiful past—a past that will haunt him forever.