The Last Tree of Garsennon
888
"It is not good news." Pando said quietly, to the man who walked through the great gates of their throne amidst the great garden galleries. The man's eyes did not lie, or even try to persuade and Pando nodded its head slowly the lignin skin of its body creaking and whining as it did and he looked up to the throngs of trees. "I knew this, the trees; they tell me…I see through them as they see through me."
"The alliance has fallen; I cannot stop the Dalek progression on Darthan, or any of the other remaining forests." The man said quietly. "My forces were ambushed by the Time Lords, along the dark matter veils of Canniad. I cannot offer you more than myself."
Pando lifted a limb and looked at their foliated digits. The green deltoid leaves curled to brown. "They are attacking. Every world has been burned, this is the last. I can fight them but I cannot win…" Pando looked to the old man. "Old friend, you have stood beside me for eons. I have known you since you walked amongst my earliest saplings on Earth…and you stood with me as my forest spread across the stars."
"I called upon you and your forests to fight in this war, I'm sorry, I-" the man said quietly.
"I knew the risks when you came to me all those millennia ago." Pando said, a slow, pained lignin smile curled across their face. "I knew this would be my final battle. I have chosen this place to be my final stand, to be where I and my forests will be felled."
Pando slowly stood on creaking but sturdy legs. Their head was adorned like its digits with a rattling, quaking crown of deltoid leaves.
"I will stand with you then." The man said as he took a deep breath.
"You were always my best friend, the greatest tree in my forest not of me." Pando said their deep, ashy voice rattled quietly. "But I cannot ask you to stay, you are a Time Lord, you are the Daleks' greatest fear and greatest prize…you are my friend…"
"Then allow me to take you away." The man then begged. "Your forests may fall here, but it need not be their end, you could survive, seed a new forest, start ov-"
Pando shook their head. "I am ancient more ancient than even you, my friend. The paths of time, I feel them, I have seen the way the vortex curls, the way the spindles of the web transcribe my history…and despite your attempts, the shape of things to be are the shape of things that are now….here on Garsennon I shall fight my final battle…and I am prepared."
"Maybe my battle ends here too, with your forests." The man said as he looked to Pando.
"We both know the truth." Pando said as they walked past the man. "Your respite is not yet come." Pando stopped short of the great archway leading to their throne garden. "I have one final gift for you. I shall give you my experiences…."
Pando turned, and reached out with their digitated limbs and gently touched the Time Lord's head. The Time Lord closed his eyes and felt the rush of it. The torrent of it, the vast gulfs of experience of the great forests of Pando, the battles fought the endless worlds inhabited, the moments of joy, sorrow, rage, despair and love. Pando's hand dropped and clasped the Time Lord's hand.
"What I was is now with you." Pando said turning one last time from the Time Lord. "Go, now, as you must. I will hold the Daleks here, for as long as I can. But you must escape, for you are their doom and the doom of the others as well…."
"I won't leave your side." The Time Lord said, sharply, coarsely.
"You cannot leave my side, ever." Pando said, as they crossed the threshold of the archway. "For I will always be with you…my forest will live in your memories, and you will always stand as the Last Tree of Garsennon, the great benefactor of Pando."
The Time Lord, at this, did not argue. He knew the truth of it, saw it, and understood it all too well. He fled, as he was wont to do. His blue time capsule slipping away as the Dalek fleet dropped into orbit of Garsennon.
But the Time Lord was not one to accept such a thing as death of a friend, easily. Panels were removed from his TARDIS console. The telepathic circuits were exposed. The old Time Lord's fingers were pushed into the gooey organic matrix.
"I know you can do it, extrapolate the genetic codex from the knowledge passed on." He growled mostly to himself and partially to the console. There was flicker across his mind. "There! Now synthesize that codex."
History is a twisted way of accounting for time. For all that is, and must have been, and thusly what might be, it is thoroughly unknown and can only be known in the great broad strokes of recordings and written moments. History is a foreign country, whose intricacies can never fully be known, whose customs and formalities only known to those that were there, and even then the memory famously cheats. Thus it is that some order, attending to a rainforest pulled from Earth and deposited on the Panjassic Asteroid Field, may have missed an errant sapling, delivered by an undocumented blue box. And they could be forgiven for not knowing the import of this sapling, its nature, its sapience and how that may have affected their evolutionary acceleration experiments. But then again, history is a twisted way of accounting for time, and the memory cheats.