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There were many trees in this part of the grove, but this one, oh, this one was special.
This was her tree, and it had the ribbon to prove it, loosely tied around its base from where she had first tied it with smaller, clumsier hands, her parents watching with a smile.
To be honest, she didn’t really understand the point of it back then, nor did she now, it being a tradition amongst their town she had went along with for the fact that it was just something you did .
She cared more for the snacks and packed lunch her parents had brought along when they first hiked out to find “her” tree than looking for any that had stood out to her, and she had chosen a rather unassuming one after getting swiftly tired of walking, not because it called out to her or nothing, but just because she had wanted to sit down and eat their picnic.
So, this was the first time since choosing it, that she had gone to go see it by herself.
She knew a lot of people came to speak to theirs regularly, talking to it about their troubles, or just to talk when they had no one else, but it had always seemed kind of silly .
After all, if their protector had eyes and ears everywhere, couldn’t he hear you just as well at home then at some silly tree?
But, coming to reflect on things a little more, she figured that maybe it got really, really confusing listening to everybody at once.
Maybe it was easier to remember who was who this way, or something like that…
Like when her teacher got their names confused when they sat at the wrong desks.
Their protector was super duper old, so it was probably SUPER forgetful.
She nodded to herself confidently as she sat down on the soft, squishy ground, patting the purple surface of the tree, before pulling out her homework.
Yuck.
She wrinkled her nose in disdain as she stared down at it, and the history text book that came with it.
…Hopefully he wasn’t so forgetful it couldn’t help her with her stupid homework.
After all, he was supposed to have been there.
“Um, Mister Protector sir?”
The wind rustles through the tall, curled trees with a soft rustle, a few of them bending agreeably to the breeze, others curling in response to the slight but sudden chill.
Her tree remains silent, other than the soft, steady exhales from its spiracles.
She continues, undeterred.
“I need your help with my homework. It’s about the… the… cat… cat ah cliff… um.”
She pauses, and her lips turn down in grimace.
“… the stupid bad thingy I need to do questions on.”
She huffs.
She hated history, she could never remember the dates for things, and lots of the words were hard to say.
Very slightly, the tree seems to curl down, as if leaning down to look at her textbook.
She doesn’t appear to notice, and flicks open to the specified page, number 64 to 5, detailing some witness accounts of their days surviving the initial tragedy, along with some photos of the various people who had all lived in the same building.
… It felt funny, looking at old pictures of people, knowing they’d be like, hundreds and hundreds of years old by now or something. …If they were still alive anyway.
There weren’t a lot of folks that ancient around, not in the town she lived in anyway, though she had heard of one in the next town over who was HUUUUGE and lived in the lake.
Above her, there’s a soft sigh, and the musical whistle of exhaled air.
She looks up, and stares up at the red bristled branch that’s reached down to read over her shoulder.
“… you knew them?”
She stabs her finger against the group photo displayed prominently in the middle of the page.
It sways slightly, before slowly reaching down to gently trace a bristle across the picture.
Well… she supposed he must have known everyone from then, right?
Still… it was weird to think about their protector knowing someone from all the way back then, back when he wasn’t as big, before he became Everybody's friend.
On the next two pages, there’s a few pictures of just after the catastrophe, the state many cities were left in, as well as the first few pictures of Him.
He was still big, sure… but he looked so tiny compared to now, and he wasn’t able to stretch as far, contained to a single city, someplace far, away.
She looks back at her homework, reading it aloud slowly.
“Qweh-Question one:
which city did our protector first appear in?”
Ummm…
She squints back at the page, and tries to find the name somewhere in the sea of words, but they all turn into a mass of wiggly squiggles, swimming around on the paper.
“Uhhh… uhhhhhh….”
… this wasn’t supposed to be hard.
Their teacher said they gave them easy homework this time…
She bites her lip and tries to blink away teary eyes.
She didn’t want to look like a crybaby but she didn’t want to look stupid either.
A branch curls down to gently pat her shoulder, before curling around a passage of the textbook, blocking out the unimportant parts of the text.
She blinks, and the words slowly come into focus.
-first appeared in Montréal, a city in Canada, in the continent then known as North America, where-
“… Mohn… teel”
She mutters, and scribbles the answer in pencil
“… that’s a funny name.”
She sniffs.
There’s an odd whistling from the tree, short sounds in quick succession.
She wrinkles her nose.
“… are you laughing at me.”
She demands, crossing her arms and glaring at the whistling tree.
The branch sways from right
to left quickly in denial.
“Liar!”
The two argue for a little while, steadily progressing through her homework, tendrils curling around textbook passages to help highlight the relevant information, until at last, they arrive at the very last question.
“What is the most popular name, taken from a figure from the catastrophe, commonly given to children today?”
The girl stares at the question silently for a few moments, mouthing the syllables with an odd look on her cave.
As the tendril begins to move, she stops it.
“… I already know this one…”
She mumbles.
The tree has fully curled over the girl by now, protecting her from the sun and the chilly breeze.
A few branches peek out curious at the sudden change that’s befallen her, concerned.
She picks at her fingernails for a few more moments before speaking.
“… Everyone turned around and looked at me today when the teacher told us.”
Her voice is small, and quiet, almost imperceptibly so.
Still, He hears it, the ever reliable listener.
“He was talking about names, and what made them important and… and… he said that this name was really, really special.
That… that parents gave their kids it because they wanted their kid t’ grow up to be special too.”
There’s a small sniff.
“… I’m just little though. I don’t… I can’t be big and important.”
A branch drapes itself across her shoulder, a comforting weight to reassure her, he’s still here, he’s listening.
“… I didn't even know my name was special. N’body ever said anything.
But then Mister Wells wrote it on the whiteboard and everyone turned around and giggled.”
She still recalls it clearly, her name written in all caps in the middle of the dirty off white whiteboard.
SAM.
She fiddles with her fingers, pulling and tugging and hearing the knuckles snap in the quiet of the grove.
“… I don’t wanna be called Sam anymore.”
She admits.
“Not if I have to try n be Big and special and important.”
She hadn’t liked the way her classmates had teased her, pointing at a picture of someone in their textbook and saying “look it’s you!”
She didn’t like the attention at all.
Someone named Sam should know the answer to their homework without needing help.
Someone named Sam should
be able to read good, and know how to pronounce words right, and, and…
She’s hugged suddenly, the trees many arms wrapped around her comfortingly, and she starts to sob, hot tears rolling down her cheeks.
“… I don’t want Mom n Dad to be… be sad I’m not what they wanted.”
She sniffles out between sobs.
A bristle rustles her hair gently, before another snakes its way down to pick up the abandoned textbook on the ground.
Sam stares with watery eyes, as it flicks open to a page, and taps a photo.
“…?”
She doesn’t understand what it’s trying to say, until it taps the picture again, then the name underneath, and then, itself.
“… Oh… are you a Sam too…?”
She sniffles.
A branch nods, then pats her head.
As young as she is, she doesn’t grasp the significance of this.
In this moment, all that matters is she’s not alone in sharing a name that feels too big for her.
“… so… so you’re Sam…? But… I’m Sam.”
She wipes her nose, and furrows her brow.
How are they supposed to tell them apart if they’re BOTH called Sam… that’s just confusing.
“Um… then… then you can be Big Sam, and I’ll be Little Sam.”
There’s another funny whistling from the tree, but it seems to agree.
“…I didn’t know you had a name. Everyone just calls you Our Protector…”
It’s funny to think he might have had a Mom and Dad too at some point.
Did they name him Sam because they wanted him to be special too…?
“… Are you sad no one calls you Sam anymore…?”
A shake.
“Oh.”
Protector must have been like… like a nickname then.
Like when Mom calls her sweetie, or Daddy calls her little monster…
Something you call someone you love, or something.
That made sense.
Everyone always talked about Big Sam like he was their friend after all, even if she didn’t really get it until now.
“…Did… did you know the other Sam? The one I’m named after?”
The tree seems to freeze in place, and she worried she said something bad-
Before it slowly, slowly nods.
“Oh! Was… Was he super duper special like Mr Wells said he was?”
She waits expectantly staring up at the various branches shifting amongst themselves quietly.
It shook.
“… He wasn’t?”
That didn’t sound right.
“He can’t have just been some normal guy, not if everyone names their kids after him!”
She argues.
The tree laughs, and shakes itself again in rebuttal.
… It was kind of fun to argue with Big Sam.
It didn’t yell, or get scary. He’d laugh sometimes, but it was never mean either.
You could tell him whatever you wanted, and he wouldn’t tell anyone.
It’d just be there for you as a steadfast friend.
… She thinks she got why people liked talking to their trees so much now.
“So…First Sam was just… normal? He didn’t… he wasn’t super duper smart or strong or anything…?”
Big Sam had patiently debunked a lot of the things Mr Wells had said about what the First Sam represented.
She didn’t even know Teachers could be wrong about things…
She looked back down at her homework, and chewed quietly on her pencil, thinking.
Maybe… maybe she didn’t mind her name so much then.
If Sam had just been a guy… she could be just a normal kid, right?
She didn’t have to be super good at school, or sports, or anything else. She could just Be.
“… I don’t wanna change my name anymore.”
She says out loud.
“Sam is… Sam is a nice name.”
She decides.
It was their name after all.
Maybe she’d change her mind in the future. Maybe she’d want a name just for herself…
But for now, it didn’t seem so bad to share a name with someone who was so utterly ordinary… but had been loved enough to be remembered anyway.
“… Thank you for helping with my homework.”
She wraps her arms around its trunk, and buries her face against its soft purple surface.
She wondered if the rest of Big Sam could feel the hug, or just this part of him.
…Maybe it didn’t matter.
As she packs up her things, and heads off, skipping between trees, and hopping over tendrils, it felt like the whole forest was waving her goodbye.
… She’d come by again, she had decided.
Sure, she could talk to the tree in their backyard, or to one of the many dotted around town, but…
Her tree, yes, hers was special.