I woodn't want to be a tree

The Origins of Tree

*I'd really like to be a tree

                                         - Fluttershy*

  Hello, I am tree.  I don't have a specific name.  The closest it comes to is "Twilight's Tree".  I am Twilight's Tree.  And I am here to tell you about the absolutely Hell-ish experience I've gone through while housing and being kept under the care of that purple chaos magnet.  First though, how about I tell you how I got here.

  I started out as a little sapling in what the ponies call the Everfree Forest, not too far in, but deep enough to stay ignorant of what goes on outside the forest's border. I was a happy, ignorant little sapling, until some dumb zebra sorcerer came along and enchanted me.  Then he dug me up and took me home to display his new "live tree" to his family.  Yeah, the spell that zebra cast on me gave me a mind of my own then, a life beyond photosynthesis and a fight for sunlight with other plants.  And it sucked.  I mean, yeah, I could move my limbs on my own now, and I could speak telepathically if I concentrated hard enough, and I lived long enough to really GROW, but then one day mayor and a couple of guards ponies came and said "you can't have that it's too dangerous blah blah blah threat to the environment blah" and uprooted me.  Very painfully, by the way.

  I had to be relocated using unicorn magic, as I was a bit bigger than the one-story houses in "Ponyville" at this point.  One must wonder why I was put so close to civilization if I was such a "dangerous creature".  Well, I overheard a couple of real-estate agents talking, and I guess the mayor couldn't afford to build a library, but wanted one anyhow.  And guess who was excruciatingly hollowed-out and redecorated for the job?  Well it wasn't Fluttershy.  I was cut open and shelved and all that, but while it didn't actually kill me, it drained the magic from the spell.  So the good part about being a live tree that can move and telepathically communicate was now the good part about being a tree.  None.

  The spell was honestly the only thing keeping me alive, so I could move a limb every once in a while if I wanted to, but I'd kill myself doing it.  And all for a library, really.  Isn't that the sickest thing?  I mean, I couldn't "hear the screams of my fallen brethren" from the books, but I KNEW they were there, it was bad.  I was a tree with DEAD TREE PARTS in me.  It was terrible.  It wasn't too bad for several months, except for that one pegasus that tried to carve her name into my trunk.  What a nag.

  Then that magical menace of a bookworm came to town.  And to learn about friendship, of all things.