Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe Read Free Page A

what it wants to do with this life, and of course the lily pond needs relief. We must get the human to eat these things or it won't survive. Now that the human is interesting Us, We don't want it to die. While We wait for the human to come out of hiding, Zollocco will listen to its dreams and tell Us how it got here.
     
    "Well, so far I don't get very much, but what I do get is very, let's see, exotic, yeah, that's the word, exotic. The human used to sleep in a second story room made out of wood! Isn't that amazing? It didn't sleep in a metal can. I wonder which world has evolved so far. Oh, and on the green wall of the room there were printed rows and rows and rows of pictures of a bird of prey. In one claw the bird-it is always the same picture of the same bird repeated over and over--the bird has taken away some dumb human's arrows."
     
    "Good for that bird!" Our winged selves break in. "And in the other claw, the bird clutches a sheaf of vegetation. Every night the human looks around at those walls and says to itself, ‘I will not be part of a world that destroys itself.'
“How exciting! I wonder if We will be able to see the planet when it blows up."
"Zollocco?" ask Our soil worms, "Why do you think the planet will blow up?"
"I don't know. That's just the sense I get from the human's dream."
"It is good the human made its room green, the color of healthy, growing vegetation," puts in a fern.
"And reminds itself of Forest life with the pictures of the bird," adds the water elm.
Our great and ponderous oak speaks too. "I see the glimmering of a noteworthy pattern here. The human ghost told Zollocco it found the stream by needing it."
"That's true," affirms Zollocco, "I asked it how it found the stream and it said, `I needed it; then I was here' or something like that."
"Now the human's dream depicts it stating another need," continues Our oak, "the need to flee a destructive environment."
All of Ourself had felt this, but only the massive oak was rooted strongly enough to state it. Every entity that owns water ducts feels sad and oozes water. This biological display of sorrow that humans use We have adopted because We find it beautiful and cleansing. Our Great Self, Ipernia, who is All the beloved Forests Together, once sensed a whole world of humans oozing water. When Our Great Self Ipernia asked those long ago humans what they were doing, the humans said they wept in grief because their planet was about to die. Our Great Self Ipernia, moved by pity, invited the humans here. Only some of the humans were able to escape the dying planet in time. We, Zollocco, remember how We, Ipernia, felt at that long ago time. Our weeping has reminded Us. If the human continues to respond to Us, We will adopt it.
"Why do the planets of humans destroy themselves?" a bewildered marigold asks.
"Maybe they don't deserve to live!" return the gnats and the forsythia.
And Our trees, all of Our respected trees, recite the divine law: "When any entity still wishes for its life, that life must be aided in continuing, even if extraordinary efforts from other entities are needed to nurture that life; any entity that wishes to pass through death must be allowed to pass through death."
We all know that the human species still wishes to continue, so no more do Our different factions argue.
"To continue my point," resumes the oak, "it seems that the human is able to act like We do; it acts according to its need."
"But humans never know what they need. That's why they are such a confused and out-of-balance lot," trills a snake. "If this human is aware of its needs, which its stubbornness in finding water suggests, then it comes close to being a healthy creature, and We should take care to listen to its needs," says the water elm.
"The way you talk, water elm, can't you talk regular?" complains a scaly badger.
This hurts the water elm's feelings and Our elm weeps. We all groan. We are all feeling the stress that comes with too much excitement.
     
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