The following short story is a part of the Garden of Eden Anthology, a speculative fiction anthology for which I served as editor and publisher. While the story is by another author, I have all the rights to print and reprint.
By Shelley Chappell
Apples bear a strange weight in the culture of the physical world, heavier than the satisfying bulk of one held in the palm of one's hand. Or so I'm told—that they feel good in one's hand.
For I have no hands, only limbs.
In the beginning, I did not even have those. In the beginning, there was only light. How I love the light.
Once I knew nothing, was nothing but the light. But on the third day, God created me. I was a seed, planted in the new earth, then a sapling, then I became what I was thereafter: a tree. God created many of us on the good green Earth, after He separated the land from the sky. We grew to stretch our limbs toward the sunlit heavens, longing for what was never more to be.
I'm not sure why God singled me out as different, why He chose to burden me as He did. My kindred sank their roots deep into the earth, drank water, sprouted bright leaves, and shed acorns and seeds. But God whispered to me. He sat with his back to my trunk and sighed at the end of the long day. He climbed into my branches and stared at the sky, gasping as the darkness fell and the stars twinkled across the heavens.
He was astonished at His creation, was God. What He did was partly inspired, partly compelled. Creation poured out of Him, for He was the light, given form and consciousness. He had a fire in Him, a drive to shine. And sometimes, when He sank to rest against my roots, He was bewildered by what He had wrought in His hours of brilliance.
Finish reading the rest of this story. Image from Pexels.
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