When the hero in your dream, the villain in real life.
--Narrator, Life is Life is

Like an earthquake. In the City Park. She clawed through and swallowed the earth there.



Fingers rising out of the dirt and dust and more trees sprouting, shooting up from her knuckles into the air. Overflowing onto the streets, stopping people dead where they stood. Whatever thought, whatever pictures ran through the mind, whatever and whatever.

They stood and watched the trees rise and branches stretch out like muscular arms, the leaves as big as blankets and green. Outside people stood mouth agape just pointing. Others didn't notice until the creak of the growing bark and snap took them from their daily routine. Most of these people were in their offices. Heads rising out of cubicles and staring out the window now.



Fissures along the roads and in alleys in between buildings and houses. Only after she covered the sky and they who were inside couldn't see the sun anymore, things forever in the scorning shade, did they realize they couldn't leave their homes.



More than half the city was consumed and finally someone thought to run. And when he ran, her hand came chasing after him.





And she reached for him.



She swooped him up and swam roots around his body and squeezed until he turned blue and then popped, oozed down the bark like sap. Like the sudden pain from a burn, or the onset of something bad in the bones, no one knew what was really happening until it was too late. They tried to run. Tried.

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She opened up that which had been sealed off for so long and forgotten. She closed that which had been open and would hold these things closed until they were erased from all memory.



Then quiet. All quiet. Except for the whisper of the wind. And the creaks when she slowly swayed. The earth breathed and she listened. She breathed and the earth listened. This was the time of her dancing.