Disclaimer: I own, nothing... the characters that aren't mentioned directly by name... nothing. Oh, I guess I own the typos, and the lack of continuity and all the other bad mistakes.
Black
The tree didn't mind when the dark one had stored a secret in its skin, the tree had felt honoured, since it knew how much it mattered. When the other beings had placed the knife to its skin, the tree was then holding broken promises, selfish acts. When the dark one adorned the tree with symbols, the tree knew it mattered. It wasn't like the others. When the dark one had first arrived the tree was frightened, it had only felt this pain when its own kind had been ripped from the ground, and this being was nothing like its own kind. The symbol left had felt like a promise, one that would not be broken.
Since the tree was indeed a tree, it could not comfort the dark one; it could not offer anything that wasn't already there. The tree did ask the universe for a small favour, this was something all trees practiced but very rarely, a favour from the universe was a very special gift, one that should not be wasted. The tree had not asked for a favour in at least two decades and figured enough time had passed, so it asked for rain. Lots of rain. The past year had been a very good one, the darkness over the area had vanished, the squirrels had returned, there was no drought or flooding, but that wasn't the point. When the clouds appeared the dark one did not notice; when the lightning struck and the thunder clapped the dark one did not notice. When the rain came it came hard and fast. The dark one behaved oddly, it did not immediately seek the dry shelter under the trees thick branches, but rather sank closer to the wet earth and made itself appear smaller.
The tree had often wished that in its younger years it would have taken the time to listen to the conversations the beings held beneath its branches, but being a young tree it found better things to do. As the tree aged, it found it harder to pay attention to the strange beings because it did not totally understand what they were doing. It was, however, terribly fond of the wild rose bush that grew at the far end of it roots. When the trees future became uncertain two decades ago, when the beings brought the stones, that is when the tree wished it had been smarter in its youth, then maybe it could have understood where the other trees had gone, all the tree had was a considerable amount of pain to got with its uncertainty. When dark one had been subjected to the rain, the tree did not understand its reactions, one of the things the tree knew about these beings was they liked to be under the branches when the rain came. The tree made it rain, but the being had wilted. This confused the tree to no end.
The rain continued to fall and the tree was helpless to do anything, the time it would take for a branch to cover dark one the rain would be long over, and the being long gone. The tree was very hesitant to ask for another favour and was debating whether or not it should even debate the thought of asking when it felt the water on its skin. It felt the presence of another life. The tree felt the dark one beneath its branches accepting shelter; the act of sheltering the being was enough to make the tree happy.
So when the man had come for the dark one, the tree became scared. The life it had sheltered returned to it almost daily, and at the very least, weekly. The tree had had no new visitors for at least a decade and had become bored with the rose bush lately, it was really just there to look pretty, and other trees had nothing new to say. The squirrels no longer lodged in its branches and the birds, well, got annoying. Everything was the same, and then the dark one changed that. The tree did not want things to return to the old way.