Broken Symmetry (NTB Book 2) (A Socksfor1 AU)

The Crystal Tree

(MEME POV)

I leaned against the wall and watched Nadwe, Joocie, and Woolf talking on the other side of the room. Blaza and Akik were... Wherever those two like to go now. Dusk was probably outside exploring, and I had no clue where the heck Oompa and TBVG were.

It had been a few days since they had gone to find Luci and came back with the new that she had disappeared. Akik and Blaza always seemed to be together lately, and the same could be said for Joocie, Woolf, and Nadwe. Except, in a friend way, not in a relationship. The trio had asked me to join them, but I really hadn't felt like it, so I remained by myself, standing in the corner.

I decided to go outside for some fresh air. I headed out the door and exited the building, headed for the forest.

The trees here were very different from Earth trees. For one, they were huge. Bigger than even the giant sequoia trees I saw once. The leaves were a sea blue-green, and the bark was smooth and tough. It seemed to complement the pale, purple-blue cornflower sky.

I traveled deeper into the tall, ghostly forest until I found a large clearing. It was surrounded by the pale trees I'd been seeing, only these had a more metallic, shiny looking bark, like silver. The leaves were also more blue.

But that's not what caught my eye.

A bit deeper into those trees was some kind of glittering structure. It looked as if it was made of diamond. As I got closer, I saw that it wasn't diamond, but was, indeed, some kind of mineral. And it wasn't a structure, it was another tree. A shorter (as in, shorter than the 50 foot giants) one, with thin leaves shaped like stars that were translucent. The colors of the tree were prismatic.

I ran my hand against its smooth bark, amazed at its somewhat natural occurrence. The dark shadows around me were lit by Wronix's light filtering through the mysterious tree. In that light, I thought I saw something inside the tree's somewhat translucent trunk. I squinted, trying to see what it was, when my right eye suddenly felt like it had been poked by something.

"Ah!" I gasped. I blinked a few times, and after a minute the pain was gone.

Probably just some dust that got into my eye, I thought. I shrugged and gave the tree one last look before heading back the way I came.

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But what Meme thought was a speck of dust

Was the one thing that eternally sealed his fate.

For inside that tree was a husk.

What is a husk, you ask? Only the lifeless, crystallized body of an innocent soul that had become just another victim of the tree.

The crystalcone tree.

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That's no ordinary tree Meme get the zait away from it

459 words