Trees are a transportation thing or device in certain regions of the mythical world, but particular trees are planted so people can return to their homes if lost. In what way would this work? Something would come into the thoughts of the lost person as if the tree were asking them where they lived, and suddenly, once they answered the tree, they would find themselves back home. These trees couldn’t be ordinary; on the first appearance, they appeared natural; getting closer, some seemed to look transparent, like an apparition, one particular tree was made out of metal, and the foliage was cubical and constructed of interlacing wires of metal. There was one that resembled a tower with branching flames on tubes of light and flame-like greenery. Most of these special trees are natural in appearance; one, in particular, had leaves that formed a canopy; the tree would take a lost traveler to any safe place. That tree had invisible rooms in the shape of spheres up high in its branches like a tree house. It was in a large park with vast grass, flowers, and other trees. Not all the trees in that park were transportation trees; most were just regular ones with no power. How did a person find a transportation tree? There was something strange about these otherworldly trees, as if they weren’t supposed to be there; maybe they didn’t grow there, the trees seemed to glow, and of course, the ones that weren’t natural looking were simple to see at a distance. Sometimes the stars of the night were observed in between the foliage. Otherworldly was a strange word to say in a land of mythical things, which means those things defined as otherworldly were even stranger. People surmised that the trees had existed in another world with different laws of nature. Most people felt that trees shouldn’t exist in their world. But they were there, and they had voices to come to them; caution had to be looked at first because some of the trees would take people permanently somewhere else, thus never returning to where they had been. These trees had been known to be dangerous; the question was how they were identified. Sometimes when they were observed, they seemed tattered and old, deteriorating from time and weather as if they were dying and made out of paper. But seeing this observed in one of the trees was not common, so caution was important.

People from other mythical worlds had been known to fall out of these trees, and eventually, they found their way back. People were not the only living things that came from these trees; some things were strange. Star-like objects entered the world and flew into the sky and out to the stars. No one knew what they were, and none could explain them. Animals of strange configurations appeared and then disappeared, never to be seen again. People dreamed of different worlds, exotic cities, people, lands, and things.

The trees said things to many people; none was ever the same; people saw something in the trees that others never saw or imagined, not because they were gifted, but because every individual saw things differently according to their experiences.

Robert J. Matsunaga