Wallflower Blush slowly drove a small, beat up pickup truck along a bumpy dirt road. The road led into the Everfree Forest.
The truck belonged to one of Wallflower's neighbors, who was also a good friend. But Wallflower's neighbor wouldn't have any use for the truck, not anymore.
Wallflower thought she would probably cry later, when it had all fully sunk in, and she had time to think. Right now, she was still looking for a place to hide.
In the passenger seat beside Wallflower sat Fluttershy, who was a friend from high school.
"Do you think this will really work?" Fluttershy asked.
"I don't know for sure. But I know the Memory Stone lets me manipulate memories. And maybe our DNA is a kind of memory."
"A memory of what?"
"A memory of everything nature taught our ancestors' bodies, about how to grow and be a human being instead of something else."
Fluttershy snorted delicately. "So you think...you think you can just overwrite our DNA, and that will turn us into something else. Something that isn't human."
"Well, the way things are right now...can you think of a better idea?"
Fluttershy shook her head. "I wish I had a better idea. But I don't."
The truck passed a little house. Fluttershy looked for dark, dirty smoke that shouldn't be there, and any other signs of damage or violence. But the house seemed peaceful. "You know," Fluttershy said, "we could just look for a little cabin in the woods, like people use to vacation in. A cabin whose owners...might not even need it anymore. You and I could hide there together, living peacefully out in the middle of nowhere."
Wallflower frowned. "If WE can find the cabin, the Occupation can find it too."
"But maybe we could get lucky. Maybe they'll miss us."
"And maybe they won't. Do you want to take that chance?" Wallflower patted Fluttershy's arm. "Let's try my plan first, and if it doesn't work, we can look for a cabin to hole up in. Then we'll have time to think about what to do next."
Fluttershy nodded. "Ok."
***
"We're here," Wallflower said. Fluttershy jerked awake.
A large sign marked the entrance to Camp Everfree. Wallflower turned the truck up the graveled driveway, and parked neatly beside a stone curb.
Fluttershy smiled. "You're so careful, for someone who's hoping never to use this truck again."
"But this might not work. And even if this does work, I didn't want to run over any grass or flowers that I don't have to."
Fluttershy leaned over to kiss Wally's cheek. "I love how even when the world is practically ending, you still think about those things."
"Somebody has to. Now come on, we need to pick a good spot to try it." Wallflower got out of the truck, and Fluttershy followed her. The pair walked out into a broad, green meadow.
"This seems good," Fluttershy said. "But before we try to...change, I want to give it some more thought."
"What's to think about?"
"This might be the end of our lives as human beings."
"Yeah, that's kind of the point. If we stay human, the Occupation will probably catch us. And once we're caught, our kind of draftee would have a life expectancy of, what, a month or two? And until the draftee dies, she spends her days forced to do horrible things. Evil things. I'd so much rather be a tree than have to live that way."
Fluttershy reached into her skirts, and pulled out a book. "The people who the Occupiers draft as soldiers, and force to do those things...do you think they go to Hell for what they did? Do you think their souls are weighed down forever by what happened? Or do you think God says, you didn't really want to do those things. I can forgive you."
"I don't know. I just know I don't want to be part of it."
"And do you think, if you and I really can become trees, we'll still have souls like humans do? I do hope to go to heaven someday."
Wallflower eyed the paperback book in Fluttershy's hands. "The way you're talking, I'd expect you to have brought a Bible."
"You were in such a hurry to leave, this was the only religious book I had a chance to grab."
"If you saw what was left of Peat Moss...well, it's better you didn't." Wallflower shivered. "Would you really have wanted to NOT hurry out of town, and maybe..."
"I'm glad that we ran!" Fluttershy said. "I'm glad we didn't stay any longer." Fluttershy fidgeted with the paperback. "I do wish I'd found a Bible, though. It would be nice to read out of it a little, for what might be the last time, before we...might become not human any more."
"The things some humans have been doing, these last few months...I'll be glad not to be human anymore. I'll be grateful."
Fluttershy held the book higher. "Everyone says this story is a classic...but when I read it, I just found it confusing. The way it talks about Hell, the punishments in it don't make sense to me."
Fluttershy continued, "If you don't pick a side in politics, after you die you end up running across a field forever, chasing a side's banner and never, ever catching it? And if you kill yourself, you turn into a tree and people tear your branches off? Who comes up with this stuff?"
"I assume Dante, since he wrote it."
"But it doesn't seem fair. If you don't know which side is right in a political disagreement, or if both sides are wrong, you SHOULDN'T pick a side."
"Maybe it isn't ABOUT fairness. Maybe it's...descriptive."
"What does THAT mean?"
"Do you remember back when we didn't know there might be an Occupation? That things could turn out this way?"
Fluttershy modded.
"I didn't understand, back then, what the stakes really were. Sure, NOW I wish I'd gotten involved. Every day I wish I could go back in time and try to do something, to at least have a CHANCE of maybe preventing the Occupation. But now?" Wallflower winced. "It's too late for that. I could spend my whole life arguing with myself about it, or arguing with anyone else, and it wouldn't do any good. Maybe a person could spend their whole afterlife that way, too. Maybe that's what chasing a banner forever and never catching it really means."
Fluttershy bit her lip.
Wallflower added, "And a tree...to you and me, trees are beautiful. But to someone who's thinking about suicide...I guess one way people kill themselves is by hanging themselves from a tree. They turn a beautiful, innocent tree into something that hurts people, something that makes the survivors feel sad and angry when they see it. Maybe the survivors get so upset, they WANT to rip the tree's branches off."
"Maybe," Fluttershy admitted. "I don't know. But another thing I don't know is how much longer we have, before they come for us."
"Yeah. Are you ready?"
Fluttershy closed her eyes for a minute, her lips moving silently. Finally she said aloud, "And please protect and accept Wallflower's soul too. She has a good heart." Fluttershy's eyes opened. "I'm ready." She laid the book down on the grass.
Wallflower pulled a carved stone out of her backpack, and mumbled some words.
A moment later, Wallflower and Fluttershy started to change.
***
People dressed in camouflage walked among the summer camp's cabins. One man kicked a door open, and waved his gun. "Any quivering faggot mommy's boys hiding in here? I've come to show you what a real man is like."
"Please don't break things, Tanner. We might want to use this camp later. It could make a good base."
Tanner sneered. "This middle of fucking nowhere place? It's as useful as your mom's saggy left tit. But the dirt or the dodgers might try to use it as a hideout. The best thing we can do is burn this shithole down. That's what the colonel told me. So shut your face, Clay."
"Oh." Clay remembered one summer when he was a teenager, and the weeks he'd spent at Camp Everfree. Now, thinking about how the camp was about to be destroyed, he wanted to cry. He'd wanted to cry a lot, these last few months. But practice had made him very good at hiding it.
Clay shouldered his rifle. He walked away from the cabins and partway across a meadow, to sit beneath a tree. He noticed a paperback book, a bit warped from rain. He pocketed it.
He gazed towards the cabins silently, as Tanner gathered tinder, splashed fuel from a jerrycan, and set the little buildings aflame.
"Hey, pussy!" Tanner shouted. "Get your useless ass back by the truck, so you don't get burned."
Clay stood up, and walked across the meadow to the camp's driveway. He leaned against the vehicle, and watched as Tanner ignited a boatshed and part of a dock.
Clay shoved his hands into his pockets, and felt the book. He pulled it out, and started to read.
"When I was partway through my life,
I found myself gone far astray
In gloomy forest lost, oppressed by dread
My soul beset by savagery..."
Clay barely noticed when, in the middle of the meadow, two trees standing side by side caught fire.
Author's Note
The somewhat freely translated excerpt from Dante's "Divine Comedy" is based largely upon multiple public domain translations, including the Reverend H. F. Cary's and James Romans Sibbald's.
