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Thanks Ellen for posting this faded glory themed pic to #LuxvilleTales. Here is your story.

THE RIBBON OF TREES.

Ellen knew the dark. It didn’t scare her. Even on moonless nights.

Her friends were afraid though, and they wanted her to be afraid as well. They told her stories about girls who got lost in the dark, girls who were taken, girls who never returned. It was easier not tell them about her visits to the ribbon of trees.

From the tower of the Luxville City Hall you could see the olive green of the eucalypt trees that surrounded the city like a moat. There were not many places high enough for citizens to see it, but the City Hall tower was closed to the public at its highest point. The Mayor’s idea of protecting the citizens from themselves.

Those who dared to sneak up the tower, to see what lay beyond the city for themselves, took photos through the towers barred windows. Others left photo prints stuck to the wooden stairs. The photos showed the green ribbon was thinner now than in time gone by. It was still a connected circle, except where the highway was cut through to the Capital.

Ellen worried for the trees that remained, and she worried about the shrinking darkness. She climbed out her bedroom window and down the tree beside it.  In her pocket was her journal and pen, as usual. Tonight she also carried a small blade and hand shovel. She walked through circles of bright from the street lights of Luxville, where the night sky retreated, until she reached the dark where the stars announced themselves.

Once inside the ribbon she walked slowly allowing her eyes to adjust to the shapes of the tall trees towering over her and the flick of small seedlings huddled together on the floor beneath. Her breath joined the murmurings of the bush, and her footfall joined the erratic percussion section. Surrounded by the night she stopped and looked more closely at the ground. She stooped low and carefully pushed the shovel beneath the seedlings. A perfect incision between enough dirt and saving the roots.

She balanced the full shovel as she walked on to the other edge of the ribbon, where the road to the Capital began. A clear row of loose wire and stake fencing forced the trees to stop. Beyond the fence lay a barren plane of highway verge. Setting down the shovel she pushed hard on a fence stake, loosened and lifted it, moving it toward the highway a metre before pushing it back into earth.

Ellen took out her blade. On the stake she added a mark, five times she had moved this one. She wondered when people might notice. She turned back to the hole left behind and smoothed the earth creating a shallow curve. She laid the shovel of seedlings into it and patted the earth down around the seedlings.

Ellen pulled her journal out and wrote the date, the number of seedlings and then looked back along the row of stakes holding the line. She drew a picture of the fence line from the stars point of view. It was no longer so straight after her many visits to advance the tree line. Ellen said aloud her planting mantra.

‘Well if the Capital won’t come to Luxville!’

LUXVILLE TALES story by Erin McCuskey | image by Ellen.

The #LuxvilleTales are generated from reader contributed images. Post me a single image themed ‘faded glory’ and I will write you a short tale. Tag it #Luxville & #LuxvilleTales and tag me too! Love Madame Yum