That tree has existed there since its birth. Every day it saw the sun, the moon, and the stars. The birds flew in and sat on the tree, singing all the merry songs. Then, one day, small saplings began sprouting around it. The tree sang merry songs for the saplings while wishing for their long life and told them the stories it loved and treated those saplings like its own children. Soon, the saplings grew into enormous trees, bigger than the tree that existed there before all. The tree couldn't see the sun, the moon, and the stars anymore. The birds sat on the bigger trees now. As the days passed, the heart of the tree began getting darker and heavy, and death began treading all around its trunk. The tree had a conversation with death and poisoned all the trees around it through its roots. It killed the children of its own to see all that beauty again. But while leaving, the death left all the souls of other younger trees that it had just taken and left them around the tree, and those souls kept crawling around its trunk while staring into its eyes with the reflection of death in their eyes. The moon, the sun, and the stars didn't show up at all after that day. The birds never showed up again either. Eventually, the tree wished for the arrival of death. But death never took the soul of the tree with it. Instead, it bestowed the tree with a long life. That was the moment when the tree saw the reflection of death inside the eyes of life that existed inside it, too.

- Akshay Vasu


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