When we were first told to do a short story without dialogue I thought of doing something without humans, mostly because I did not think I would be able to write about humans without them talking. What made me narrow it down was when we were shown previous freestyle student’s animation in english. The first one we watched was Rooted, by Anastasia Garachtchenko. It was about a raindrop who wanted to make it back into the sky. The natural theme was nice and I liked the theme the music got across. This let me think more about a natural theme, and that got me thinking about just doing the life of a tree. This evolved into a theme of nature vs the developing world, and how even though many times people go through people view them at odds, however they can co-exist, even in the limited way they do in the flash fiction.
If you want to see the Rooted animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtBqNPiw4y4
The Oak
SNAP! Flying away from home, going to make a place of your own. Ready to start a new life, your own world.
THUD! As you hit the ground you become buried in the earth - accepting, nourishing, protecting - your new home. Growing underground waiting for that first glimpse of light the little acorn dreams of the world it saw glimpses of through the canopy of the great oak it came from. Wishing it could see the animals it remembers and the humans which the great oak so fondly thought of.
After months of waiting the little acorn finally broke surface to see the world it had been yearning to see. As the sun hit its shoots it was immediately taken in by the brightness and colour that the world had to offer. The greens of the plants, the blues and reds of the birds, and the rainbow that stretched across the sky. The sprout finally got to see the beauty of the forest it would be growing up in.
As the sapling grew it could see more and more around it. Birds would take quick breaks on its branches, squirrels would skitter up and down its trunk hoping for some seeds to eat. And the sapling could enjoy the colors and feeling of the forest, and for a while it was happy.
One day, however, the Oak discovered a new type of brightly colored animal in the forest. It was different from the others. Like a bird it walked on two legs, but it had no wings or feathers, like a squirrel it had hair, but only on it’s head. It was also much larger than a squirrel or bird. It also had so many wonderful colors; while most of the animals in the forest only had a couple colors,this new one had many different ones: on its arms, its legs, across its chest. It was also making weird noises the Oak had never heard before. The oak could hardly believe it; after so long, could these creatures be the “humans” the Great Oak had spoken of? Realizing this the Oak tree hoped they would come more often. The next time the Oak saw humans, however, he learned something different.
Early one morning the oak was startled as the peace of the forest was disrupted by a large roar, louder than the Oak had ever experienced before. Suddenly there was a darker black that the tree had ever seen spewing into the sky, while a nasty smell filled the air and seemed to stick onto the Oak’s leaves. For weeks on end this sound approached closer and closer to the Oak. Finally reaching right next to it the Oak saw that the noise was coming from large yellow monsters with humans in them, as they took down tree after tree, and the stench of a machine laying down black scorched earth behind it was overwhelming.
Many years after the noise left and the black earth stopped stinking so much, the Oak, now the great oak of the forest, still resented the humans for leaving such a deep scar in the earth and for the occasional other stink machine that comes roaring past. Suddenly the black started pouring into the sky again and that smell starts coming back, the Great Oak saw that the humans are up to their mischief again when the sirens start. Red colored trucks start piling in the forest’s scar, coming with water guns as the tree sees that the black smoak had come, not from a machine, but a fire that was expanding through the forest. After these new red humans came through and put out the fire, the Great Oak saw why the previous Great Oak thought of the humans so fondly
Suddenly the Great Oak felt a little snap in his branches followed by a thud.