The Arbor Where Thoughts Go to Rest

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The tree did not grow in soil but in what remained after thought had finished speaking. Its trunk rose from a plain the color of old bone, roots braided like sentences that had forgotten their verbs. Above, the crown swelled outward, a vast, cerebrated canopy, folded and furrowed as if weather itself had learned to think.

Those who came here did not arrive by walking. They found themselves already present, small figures at the edge of the light, uncertain whether they were observers or memories. The air hummed faintly, not with sound but with recall. Each pulse through the tree sent a soft tremor through the ground, as though an immense idea were turning over in sleep.

Within the crown, nodules opened and closed like listening organs. They were not eyes, yet they gathered impressions: the weight of names, the residue of decisions, the warmth of forgotten hands. The tree had learned this language long ago, when the world still believed that growth meant accumulation rather than loss.

Mushroom-like satellites hovered nearby—minor thoughts shed from the central mass. They drifted slowly, unanchored, carrying fragments: a face half-remembered, a road that once led somewhere, the taste of metal in rain. When they touched the ground, they dissolved without trace.

At the base of the trunk, a hollow formed where the roots converged. Those who dared approach felt a pressure behind the eyes, not pain, but the insistence of being known. The tree did not judge. It absorbed. It archived what could no longer be carried.

Over time, the visitors thinned. The plain widened. The sky dimmed to a permanent dusk. Still the tree remained, neither alive nor inert, patiently translating the debris of consciousness into structure. It stood as a record of everything that had tried to make sense of itself and failed gently.

When the last figure vanished, the tree continued its work. The world had ended its questions. The answers, having nowhere else to go, took root.