Chapter 48: The Cycle

Sunlight filtered through my leaves, the tears of a burning giant a thousand lifetimes away turned to life and energy. Soil held my roots. It was the remains of crushed animals and plants, but it was also stone, forged in the boiling depths of the earth by pressure I could never comprehend.

Nonetheless, these things and I were connected. Pieces of a larger whole. All things, living or not, were tied by bonds greater than we knew.

"And last," the Magnolia said. "The cycle."

Around me, life bloomed. A thousand years passed. A billion years passed. All of creation burned and grew and flooded and grew and froze and grew. I witnessed the death of countless pieces of myself, only to see them rise again in the new lives that followed.

And then the stars in the sky went out, one after another, dissolving into the inky blackness of the void. We lived and consumed, but there was only so much. Eternity exacted its price, returning us to the nothing from which we were born.