Hey all, ミノムシ人型 here to share a short story I wrote for a specific sequence in an upcoming game I'm making. I'm going to keep details on the project this is a part of very sparse and close to my thorax as this is my first game and I don't quite know what this project  is going to look like when it's done. Anyways, here is my story titled "Trees Made To Look Like People" for my upcoming project (title unannounced). 

For as long as I can remember, Father Oak has talked of the Family Burden.

Grandfather Oak was the last to bear this burden, and the time is coming when Father Oak, too, shall bear this "Family Burden".

I only met Grandfather Oak but once, when I was a small sapling. I only remember that he was very withdrawn and quiet and that made me uneasy as it made me feel like he was planning how to trap me - pick me up by the neck of my trunk and uproot me from the Earth, severing my ties from Her and ending my life. When the wind struggled through his dense coat of leaves to stir them from their resting place, it made a sound akin to that of a trapped dying animal screaming that agonizing kind of scream that transcends species, make and model; The bleating of a goat with its throat slit and jaw broken, choking on its blood and teeth. 

Shortly after that, Grandfather Oak was reunited with They who fell before to The Family Burden, and he was never seen again - save for a stump in his place. We never speak about Grandfather Oak openly.

We did speak of what I wanted to become when it was my time. I always said I wanted to be a book, so I could inspire future generations with the stories told on my pages. Father Oak would always get a sort of sad smile on his face when we talked of this, and I never understood why, until Father Oak's day for overtaking The Family Burden came and I met Grandfather Oak again, or rather, what was left of him...

It was dusk, the setting sun cast long spindly shadows that looked as if they existed to puncture and cut, eviscerating the landscape in a gory mass of shades of the void stretched across the horizon like skin flayed to the bone; hanging on by a thread. Out of this ethereal viscera poured an inky black shape that lumbered slowly closer amidst the sea of fallen trees and dry, brittle winter grass. Ever so quietly, I could hear something familiar... that I had heard before... like the biological agonizing scream of pure animalistic terror made manifest. And then it was quiet. A low hum rose above the silent cacophony of the forest:  「毎日」、「毎日」

Father Oak would not speak, it were as if he did not know how. No matter how much I yelled for him to speak up and explain what was happening, to tell me things would be okay, he only stared fixedly ahead at that grotesque marionette shambling towards us rambling away with the mad words that sounded so hateful  in their casual passivity, so sure in their abusive routine that it drove me mad, though I did not know what they meant. 「毎日」、「毎日」

The filthy, putrid fleck of a shambling mess was even closer now and Father Oak was consistently still, yet I was fully alive. I was singing the Body Electric. I could feel my heart in my ThroAt And My BrAnChes feLt a LiTTle TOO bIG on ME and I HAD NO LEAVES TO PROTECT MY WITS MY FRAYED TWIGS  AND NEURONS LAY BARE FOR TH- 「毎日」、「毎日」

「毎日」。　

The Earth’s Stain forced its image unto us, etching its way into our collective perception in all its perverse glory, and in its hand, as if it were part of the arm itself, was an Axe with a fine wooden handle made of Oak… 

“Father” 

Father Oak broke the tense silence with his dry, crackling voice. The Axe only responded in kind with that horrid guttural moan, 

「毎日」

And with that, Father Oak lowered his gaze and The Axe and that Vermin Pile operating it got to work eviscerating my Father before me. The complete inner machinations of my Father and my entire Family Lineage were laid bare right before my very eyes as I stared in unflinching, unblinking shock; dissociated from everything around me yet tunnel visioned on the brutal violence happening before me. It was then that I realized I would never get to become that book I had always wanted to be. No, that was more suited to softwood coniferous types, like pines, firs, hemlocks or even a spruce. They have longer fibers... makes for stronger paper - a better read. This horror show of entangled limbs and branches - this gaping maw sown with the seeds of Regret - was my fate. 

People usually say there is nothing left of the victim when the brutalizer is done but that’s not true. They leave bits and pieces everywhere. Everywhere you look is a little reminder of what took place that night. A small piece to remind you of what was lost, what was stolen from you… what you will become. A blueprint for your future home. They broke Father down into his most essential pieces, stacked him neatly upon himself and tucked him beneath their appendage as if he was always that small. Then, that Foul Player, that Hideous Blight shambled with The Axe and what was left of Father back into the cold embrace of the surrounding darkness.

I was left to overlook the spot where my Father once stood.

Now knowing what The Family Burden is, I choose not to have saplings of my own, for fear that they too would be turned into tools of our own destruction like my father and his father before him. But I also know that my day is coming, and late at night when dusk settles into the Earth and gets everything nice and quieted down and Mother Earth is at her most vulnerable, I can swear off in the distance I hear my Father’s voice bleating out 「毎日」、「毎日」、「毎日」。

• ミノムシ人型