## Root & Wire
The dust tasted like rust, clinging to Elara’s tongue as she walked the cracked earth of her family’s farm. Fifteen years old, and already a landscape sculptor, carving canyons in the parched soil with each weary step. The combine harvester sat silent, a metal carcass swallowed by weeds, mirroring the state of everything she knew. Her parents’ faces – etched with drought and despair – faded further each day, their energy leached by the relentless sun.
“Anything?” her father asked, his voice raspy, devoid of hope. He leaned against the skeletal remains of a barn wall, squinting at the horizon.
Elara shook her head. “Just… quiet.” A tremor ran through her, a low hum beneath her skin she couldn’t explain. It wasn’s fear, not exactly. More like a…pressure.
The trees were different this year. The ancient ironwoods that bordered the farm, relics of a forgotten forest, pulsed. Not visibly, but vibrantly. A silent throb that resonated in her bones. She’s always felt them, a low-level awareness she dismissed as rural solitude. Now, it felt like…more.
“You spending too much time out here,” her mother said, appearing on the porch, wiping sweat from her brow with a faded bandana. “Sun’s frying your brain.”
Elara didn’t respond, drawn to the nearest ironwood. She reached out, her fingers brushing against rough bark. The tremor intensified, not unpleasant, but insistent, like a thousand tiny voices murmuring just beneath the surface of her awareness.
A wave of dizziness hit her, a disorientation so profound she stumbled backward. She saw flashes: images unconnected, fragmented – a woman in a floral dress laughing, children playing with wooden toys, a gramophone spinning dusty records. Memories that weren’t hers.
“Elara! You alright?” Her father hurried towards her, his face creased with worry.
“I… I don’t know,” she stammered, clutching her head. “It felt like…seeing someone else’s memories.”
He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Just tired, honey. Come inside.”
But she couldn’t leave. The trees called to her, a silent imperative she felt in the marrow of her bones. She pressed against the ironwood again, closing her eyes, letting the hum wash over her.
Then it shifted. It wasn’t just memories anymore. It was…feeling. A raw, primal anxiety radiating from the trees, a dread so profound it threatened to swallow her whole. It amplified within her like a feedback loop – *her* anxiety feeding the trees’ fear, and their dread returning to her tenfold.
A squirrel darted across the yard, its fur bristling with frantic energy. It chattered incessantly, a high-pitched, agitated squeak that grated on her nerves.
“That squirrel’s acting strange,” she observed, more to herself than anyone else.
Her father grunted. “Heat’s getting to him.”
The air shimmered above the ground, a heat mirage but somehow…different. It smelled of ozone and something else – wet earth mixed with burnt sugar. The electricity lines strung between the ironwoods buzzed with an unnatural intensity, casting a sickly green glow.
That night, sleep evaded her. The feeling intensified, the throbbing anxiety reaching a fever pitch. It wasn’t just coming from the trees anymore; it seemed to permeate everything – the dust, the air, even her own skin.
She crept out of bed, drawn outside like a moth to a flame. The moon hung low in the sky, casting long, distorted shadows across the farmyard. The ironwoods pulsed with an almost palpable energy, their branches intertwined like grasping fingers.
She felt a surge of…something. Not her anxiety anymore. It was being *transmitted.* A wave of dread, raw and unfiltered, radiating outward from her, washing across the land. She didn’t control it; she was merely a conduit.
The old radio, usually static-filled and useless, sputtered to life in the farmhouse kitchen. A voice crackled through the speakers – a woman’s voice, slightly tinny and distorted, singing an old folk song. A song Elara had never heard before, yet felt intrinsically familiar.
Then the lights flickered.
The feeling intensified, spreading beyond the farm, a silent ripple expanding outward across the landscape. By morning, things were subtly different. The wind carried a strange aroma, a mix of sweet decay and metallic tang. Birds huddled in the trees, silent and still. And the power was out.
The nearest town, Havenwood, wasn’t far – just a twenty-minute drive down the dirt road. But when they arrived, it wasn’t the Havenwood she knew. The main street was deserted, businesses shuttered and draped in an unnatural stillness. Cobwebs clung to the windows like spectral shrouds.
“What happened here?” her mother whispered, fear tightening her voice.
The town square was the strangest. A faded photograph clung to a lamppost, depicting a group of people dressed in clothes from another era – men with crisp mustaches and women in long skirts. It felt…dated, like a relic from the pre-internet age.
Then she heard the voices – faint at first, then growing stronger, a chorus of whispers echoing through the empty streets. They weren’t speaking words; it was more like a feeling, an emotional residue hanging in the air. An overwhelming sense of loss and longing.
“Do you hear that?” her father asked, his face pale.
Elara nodded slowly, understanding dawning within her. It was the trees. They were transmitting memories, emotions, a fragmented history of Havenwood itself. A past slowly being unearthed from the soil, a pre-internet era forgotten by time and progress.
“It’s like… the town is remembering itself,” she breathed, the words tasting of dust and regret.
The feeling intensified within her – a tidal wave of anxiety threatening to drown her. It wasn’t just Havenwood; it spread outward, a sensory tangle engulfing everything around her. The electricity lines writhed like snakes, spitting sparks and emitting a high-pitched whine. Cars stalled, their engines refusing to turn over. Cell phones buzzed with nonsensical symbols instead of bars.
Then the hallucinations began.
A woman in a floral dress, laughing, appeared on the corner of Main Street, her image flickering like a faulty projection. A group of children played with wooden toys in the town square, their voices echoing faintly on the breeze. A gramophone spun a dusty record, its music haunting and melancholic.
They weren’t real; she knew that instinctively. They were echoes, fragments of the past resurrected by the trees’ strange communication network. But they felt real – overwhelmingly so.
“This isn’t happening,” her father muttered, clutching his head in disbelief.
He stumbled backward, tripping over a cracked paving stone. A flicker of the past superimposed itself over him – a young man in overalls, repairing a broken fence.
“Dad!” Elara cried, reaching out to him. But her hand passed through the illusion, leaving a chill in its wake.
Suddenly, she felt it – not just her own anxiety, but something else entirely. An awareness spreading within her, a sense of connection to the trees unlike anything she’s ever experienced. It was as if their consciousness – a collective, ancient intelligence – was merging with her own.
She saw the network – not just of trees, but a vast interconnected web stretching across miles, tapping into ley lines and geological formations. The ironwoods were merely nodes within a larger system, a biological internet of consciousness – dormant for decades, now awakening with terrifying speed.
The anxiety was crippling, but within it lay a nascent power—the ability to transmit not just fear, but *ideas*, *memories*, raw emotions. A dangerous potential she didn’t understand, a responsibility she wasn’t ready for.
The sky above Havenwood shimmered; the familiar blue replaced with a pulsating green hue, echoing the color of the ironwoods. The ground beneath her feet vibrated with an unnatural rhythm, as if the earth itself was waking from a long slumber.
She looked at her parents – their faces etched with confusion, fear, and a flicker of something else—recognition. They were seeing the past too, experiencing echoes of their own forgotten histories.
The bloom was coming—not a floral explosion, but an ecological shift, a reabsorption of the modern world into something ancient and unknown. A merging of consciousness—humanity entangled within a vast, sentient network rooted in the earth.
And Elara? She was the bridge—the vulnerable empath, caught between two worlds, a conduit for an awakening that threatened to rewrite the very fabric of reality. The weight of it pressed down on her, suffocating and exhilarating all at once.
The town’s long-forgotten past was no longer a whisper; it was a roar, threatening to consume them all.
