A minute or a millennium, time makes no difference. Whispers reach me on the wind, of yesterday, tomorrow. What are these things to me? What I am now is what I have always been and what I will always be.

Except for that moment…how long ago? Humans have a concept for the passage of time. Years. It was years before, we shall say, though it may have been only one of their tomorrows ago.

I was green then, with spring, my limbs still easing out of the chill of winter. I was in love with a family of squirrels living in my highest branches, as I had loved the family before that, and after that. My love endured and encompassed every family, every squirrel, from when I began, or perhaps, when they began, whichever came first, and whichever would end. It wasn’t something fast or hasty, it wasn’t brief. I know what it is to be hasty, I have seen the lesser folk before, seen their lives flashing in their eyes as brilliant as the summer sun…but a season, two seasons, and the sun grows cold, and only I am left to remember their brief passing.

She came that spring, as suddenly as a sunrise. One moment I dozed in a haze of eternity, feeling the wind rustle my trailing branches, and the next, something stirred something unfamiliar and wholly different to me. I am not an unkind being, and so it was this creature found herself cradled in my blossoms, where I could digest what she was in my own way.

And my way was to observe, and I observed her. So focused was I, I didn’t mark the passing of spring to summer, summer to fall. So focused was I, though my limbs shivered with the cold of winter snow, I remained awake against the chill of slumber. So focused on this tiny creature, this alien form that nestled in my branches, that I was deaf to even the voice of nature itself for seasons, murmuring around me in the wind.

But as all things must come to pass, as day turns to night, winter to spring, so too did I realize I did not know this creature that had become a part of my world. And with that realization, I heard the whisper around me, the soft voice of my mother, of All-Mother. I felt the caress of her hand brush my leaves and stir them from my branches to fall, spiraling to the floor. I felt the warmth of her tears as she cried for joy or sorrow or both, and I wept with her.

“First Son,” she breathed, and her voice echoed deep in my roots buried in the soil. “This is a thing for you to protect.”

My answer was only in the rustle of my leaves, the creaking of my branches. “What thing?” they asked. And she responded.

“A concordant guardian, First Son, and I give it to your keeping.” A shudder ran through the length of my limbs, both trembling need and infinite satisfaction, encompassing the total sum of my love for All-Mother. It was such a violent reaction it flung the creature from her blossom and she tumbled onto the forest floor. A concordant guardian, a protector of all that is good and natural. A force that was timeless, even more timeless than the All-Mother, more timeless than nature itself.

And perhaps it was true, perhaps this tiny, helpless creature was a guardian, for I had seen her kind before, to be sure. The faerie folk, magical beings that were extensions of the beauty of nature. But this one…this one was different. And so I accepted the All-Mother’s word, I accepted that this tiny creature was in my keeping and I in hers.

She was a solitary being, at first, keeping mostly to my blossoms and herself. But as time passed, she grew, and soon she came to speak to other creatures of the forest, the birds and the insects and my family of squirrels. They would carry her words to me, her innocence and confusion, her curiosity and wonder. And so it was that I came to know her, in a fashion, like the animals and insects knew her.

Bramble became her name, given her by the eldest squirrel of that summer. He had a fondness for blackberries, and she, an ability to pluck the ripest ones without getting caught up in the barbs. For days, the squirrels argued between Bramble and Blackberry, until finally, it was Bramble they settled upon. I had never before realized that they had names for each other, squirrel to squirrel, bird to bird. It seemed absurd to name each other when their lives were so brief. And yet, I found myself calling her Bramble too, and I delighted in hearing stories of her antics.

A breath for a creature is the space of several heartbeats. A breath for a tree is the changing of the tides. Between one breath and the next, this tiny creature began to speak to me. But not as the squirrels and the birds did…no, not for Bramble. Her voice was a quiet susurrus of sound, a constant murmur describing all she saw through her eyes. She didn’t care if I responded, which I rarely did. She didn’t care if I acknowledged her at all.

And I came to love her and cherish her, to view the world I had known since All-Mother had created me through the eyes of a creature that was timeless and yet, just born. For she had no knowledge of what she was…this form had taken shape, and she had taken this form, and with it went the passing of all that she had been before. And a part of me longed to tell her, longed to share eternity with her.

But the rest of me knew it would destroy what was so precious about her.

So I kept my silence, and she wove her world before me, as generous in that as she was in everything else. I never minded her sudden flights of fancy, I never cared that she rarely followed one thought through from start to finish. Her mind changed as rapidly as raindrops falling, but I knew her heart never altered.

She was not mine, though she was given in to my keeping, and when time enough by human reckoning had passed for Bramble to move on from my protection, I knew sorrow, and I wept at her passing. I have heard humans think trees emotionless, but this is not true. Trees love, and their love is everlasting. It was not unusual for me to love her…but that such a creature as she could love me.

I listen now to the murmurs of my brethren, I listen to their whispers, the words they carry from lands far away. I only pause in my vigilance to sleep the dreamy silence of winter. Seasons pass, and still, I listen, waiting for a mention of her name, a breath of her passing. I may be the treant king, the first son of the All-Mother, eternal and enduring. But in one moment, I glimpsed mortality through the eyes of a faerie, the frailty of the world I was a part of, and knew life.

Life begins the moment we stop searching for a reason to live.