By Hannah Fuller-Saucedo

Once there were two dancing trees. Rooted so closely together, their branches were entwined. 

Their story tells about two people as in love as the Gods above of their power, yet this love was as pure as the waters running through a stream. 

They never married because Time had been too cruel. It was a time of violence and war. They could not have made it.

And so, in their last minutes they vowed that in their return to this Earth they would find each other.

“Through this lifetime to the next, infinitely.” 

They wished to be indestructible. Something Time would not so easily vanish. 

They promised each other until in their last breaths flowed the airy words, “In the stars I will see you, for until the next life, we will always find each other with moments to spare.”

As they laid themselves down in a pit of the Earth, they held onto each other, never intending on letting go. 

Not a soul mourned their passing, and as the months faded into years, the fighting had stopped. Peace graced the land and a slowly sprouting patch of iris flowers grew, decorating the silent wish of an unmarked grave.

With them, the start of two small pines flourished and decades further, they grew by each other’s side. 

In the Winter they died, in the Spring they flourished, and in the Summer they burned. However, they did it together, side by side, enlaced in each other’s arms and forever dancing in the waltz of an ancient vow.

As the centuries passed, and the mountains around them were destroyed, cut into for roads, they remained intact. 

Until the day a change in the breeze, and a gloom in the morning fog told them their time had almost been spent. 

They could feel it in their tangled roots that they were lucky. 

To have lived so long, in one life or the next, it did not matter. They had found each other. 

Every time. 

And yet, when they felt their story truly ending, resentment felt foreign to the relationship between old friends. Now, Time would be kinder to them. 

Days turned to nights and in the stars was a certain twinkle of sorrow. 

It was the wind, the Earth, the night sky, even Time itself that felt the pain to say goodbye. For they themselves had never known the love that humans were granted the gift of feeling.

They had seen for over a millennia how one could love another and they basked in the joy of simply watching their curious days unfold. 

Indeed, Time was regretful for what had to be done. 

However the trees, ready to part as if knowing no end would truly be the end, welcomed their friend with open arms.

It was for the first time in a thousand years that the trees unwrapped their rough arms, welcoming a cold metallic sting, and together they fell.

Now, even the seas and skies away mourn the two lovers, The stars shine brighter remembering what they had seen. And those trees, later turned to wood, had made a lovely house for two beautiful spouses and a darling child.

Hannah Fuller-Saucedo is a teenage girl from Mexico. She loves reading and has a deep appreciation for beautiful things hidden under unassuming stories. She enjoys losing herself in her mind and hopes she can, someday, make a career out of daydreaming and harnessing her creativity.