The Orchard

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The wind blew through the fruiting trees on the hill. Branches sagged with their burden, scenting the air with invitation, attracting moths that flew and climbed and crawled and penetrated. Soft things fell to the ground, opening and oozing, calling forth more of the world around them.

It had been a long time since intelligence had set this in motion. Yet once there had been just a scraggly sapling or two on this bill, thin hints of things to come; later replaced by careful, deliberate rows of the bearers of luscious gifts. And after the initiation, intelligence had continued to tend this. Arranging with some logic the moldering leaves that fertilized the ground. Discouraging parasites, large and small, that would attack the trees, or plunder the fruit, dismember their beauty, before their time. The trees were bred to take countermeasures, take care of themselves…

And when the intelligence left, the trees carried on. More went fallow than under watchful eyes, a branch on this tree went a bit wild and choked out another. Thirty percent eventually died, twenty percent new growth sprung up in unordered places, but the trees carried on. As they had been intended to do. They had not the perception to miss their guardians, nor the capacity to do anything about it even if they had. But they continued. Fruiting for a quarter of their planet’s revolution around its star, leafy green the next half, barren in the wintry season. Fruiting, leafy, barren…

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