Yggdrasil

Mielikki woke up in a cold sweat after having a dream that her favorite maple tree had been destroyed by a rogue lumberjack. She saw a flickering orange glow lighting her room and was able to easily find and put on her glasses before looking out the window to see that her prized maple was ablaze. This realization made her feel like her stomach was being eaten by snakes. She had planted the maple as a small child and grown up with it. She had her first kiss under its ruddy canopy. She cannot remember who she kissed there many decades ago but had become to consider this tree to be her best friend. She had watched her son play under it before the incident. She grabbed her cane and rushed outside to futilely attempt to douse the flames with her garden hose. Despite failing to stop the blaze its light revealed a gas can, a lighter, and footprints leading away from the tree toward the woods. A sense of resolve grew in her. She went back inside and asked her wise old spider plant if she should follow the footprints and get revenge on the arsonist after sunrise. The spider plant whispered, 'Do it if your arthritis won’t stop you! You should go for a walk in the woods in any case because it will calm you."

The march out of town was mostly quiet. Not surprising for such an awkward endeavor. Every year, the young lives of all those who had completed all the years of their formal education were evaluated based on how they fit in with the community and the order of things. Free thinkers, with radical ideas were nothing but troublemakers in the eyes of the elders. The community had been ravaged by power struggles in the past and so the elders designed this process to weed out the biggest rebels and misfits. On this day, the misfit in question was a boy named Adam. Despite the warnings of his parents throughout his childhood, he couldn’t help his inquisitive, opinionated nature. And so Adam was being escorted out to the woods miles from the community, banished forever. They finally arrived at the edge of the vast woodlands and stopped. One of the armed escorts asserted gruffly, “The penalty for contacting or returning to the community is death. Good luck”. And then they left.