67 EXTRA: THE SLEEPING TREE

There was once a tree in a park - a tree that had slept its years away in a little hole, sunken inside a deep, dark hole somewhere in some corner of the green, green grass space.

It had once had a tire swing swing hanging on a branch, the wood still bearing the marks of the ropes that strangled the branches and had cut off the water and sustenance from the little leaves and the fledglings of blossoms.

The branch snapped one day.

It fell down onto the floor, the tire bouncing once, before rolling around on its rim before lying down to rest on its side.

In years, it would become part of a blossoming nook, little yellow buttercups and white daisies growing inside the black circle of the rubber container, holding in heaps of soil and water and life.

There were spiders, ants, and little chrysalis that would become butterflies.

But Xiao Ying would never know that.

He would have never known what had become of the little, beloved tree of his, the tiny hideaway that held the depth and size small enough for a little boy to hide away from the dogs, the thrown rocks, and the jeers.

It was nice place.

It was a nice place.

And it was a nice place.

Everybody avoided the tree after the rope became frail and finally died away, finally withering to become nothing but frail, frail fibres, the frailty of the tree soon dying away in the dreams of everybody else.

Xiao Ying, the little baby that he was, nothing more and nothing less to his mother, hid away in that tree, leaving back on the wood and the moss, muddying his knees and scraping his elbows red, needing medical attention, needing care, and needing somebody to pull him out back into the sunlight.

His mother did sometimes.

His neighbour did sometimes.

But as he grew up, he began pulling himself up more and more higher and higher, to stand on the ground finally, before he began to slink back down into the hole.

There were books that he could bring to the tree, keeping him company, and giving him finally something to read out to the massive, towering oak.

He was thankful to the tree, praying to it on occasion as thanks for hiding it away from any aspiring and curious wanderers that ever veered near to his tree.

It was his tree.

It was Xiao Ying's tree.

It was nobody else's.

It was his tree.

Xiao Ying began to read almost everything that he found, whenever his neighbour took him to the park, and his mother on her off days, her sick days, and the gaps between her jobs.

He read the tree stories of Gods and Demons and Flying Monkeys.

He read the tree stories of the Moon, the Archers, and the Magic Potions of Immortality.

And he read the tree stories of himself, his life, and the people he loved.

He told the tree his love for books, and how one day he would love to write his own stories, and how he would have loved to live within them, dancing around in a land without people, in a land of sunshine and rain, in a land of a happy, happy little boy, as if that world would make Xiao Ying happy.

When he left that tree, there were still no flowers in the tire, his personal, little chair.

Now, staring out of a glass window, Xiao Ying knew that it would be a fitting grave marker.

Even as he left for university, Xiao Ying still never went back to the park, one day isolating himself for a reason that he would never be able to point out to anyone.

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