Diamond or coal?

The latest object of curiosity was entirely impossible to miss. Giant, skeletal arms clawing for the sky like an exclamation mark; like the terrible horns of a monster. Though…this tree couldn’t be called ugly…the dreary elder certainly wasn’t beautiful. It was…heartbreaking. My cool, detached eyes regard this site dutifully, giving homage by offering it the attention it demands. This tree was, by far, the largest of any even seen. Inwardly, my head made no attempt to fiddle with the age of said elder – or mull over the thread of heritage it hailed from. “Hile, old mother," in her impossibly long life, she might’ve been a guardian. Not one from our homeland(s) – but still. The corpse stirs my forgotten sense of tradition and honor. Irises glide upward, drifting to follow the maze of empty branches – trying and failing – to imagine her full canopy. Had it been draped with a vibrant, royal blanket of green? My heart squirmed with effort to remember the feel of white, gentle sunlight - teasing, darting glances between those blackened fingers like a virgin lover. Above us, the ominous weather remains constant; weeping softly for the mother, just as it wept for all the other unspeakable things it witnessed. My mind hums numbly, easing itself into a plethora of things…lingering finally upon my companion, her pale expression and blond, tender eyes. She’d taken wing earlier -- as she did on occasion -- though it was hard to tell how long she’d been gone. Time had become garbled, distorted. Dawn is bleak and dreary, same as the afternoon, all the way into twilight. Only the rapid onset of night was true, when grey becomes a bottomless and shapeless black. Burnt, except for the occasional stroke of lightening to remind our eyes that purgatory still exists.