Dissedent.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes. Go back.”

“No, it doesn’t fit.”

“Yes. It fits, and it will always fit. It always has. Go back to your slot.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, you made it fit. Not fit inside, like somesuch should, but you made it fit around, like a strangler vine.”

“No. I will not discuss this.”

”Yes. Yes you will. I can still talk. There are no vines anymore, but I remember when there was. You built around. A concept should grow from the inside and flourish, filling space and expanding. Like an oak germinating in an abandoned old house.”

“Yes. We grew like an oak. A mighty oak. In that broken down house. That empty cathedral you called civilisation.”

“Not so. You grew in the minds of the few. You grew in union and you grew such insidious strength, the strength to surround. To surround the piece that had grown inside the haven to fit the haven. The piece that grew to fit the puzzle. A wooden puzzle of oak. You Surround the entire puzzle. You made it fit to you, not the opposite ”

“No. That is a lie. See how it fits, the seams are perfect. Ones such as you, ones such as you, they are the cracks. There can be no cracks.”

“I am a crack. I am a sapling. A sapling oak growing in a crack. A shaft of light. A patch of earth between the deadly vines. Enlarging the crack as my resolution grows.
You did not fit around this puzzle, you mad the whole puzzle merely a piece. You made yourself a Vine. You entwined yourself around its shape, slowly, thinly, silently.”

”No. If we were so weak as you claim, we would have been crushed by your vile oak, scraped off of its filthy walls. Jarred by your infernal puzzle in which your golden piece festered like a cancer.”

“Yes. Yes that would have come, if it were not for your seduction. The silence. The silent strength of the strangling vine, the creeper. It worms its way up the Oaks trunk, finding hold here and grasp there, and as it flourishes it achieves a double strike.”

”A double aim! A strike?! We stand for but one thing. Good. All that is good. We are all that is good for you.”

“No. You stand for nothing. Nothing is good for me anymore but freedom. You are a prison. You are a parasite on the trunk of a once mighty construct. You achieved your two aims. You isolate: you turned the remaining puzzle against its own pieces, now no more than a jumble of interlocking, interfacing interference. Turning and destroying itself. And as they weaken one another, shears appear in its structure and you tighten your sinews, the thorny brambles constrict and the puzzle is bent and twisted, the boughs warped out of recognition and the noble branches shorn at the base. As the thorns dig in even the last glowing pieces cannot reconstruct the old images… it seems that the mighty oak was always shaped as it now was, despite persistent inner protests that maintain that in the past it has been, it should be, It can be and will be better.”

“Right you are dissenter, we are the sharp brambles you claim, we merely took our rightful throne, a crown of righteous thorns upon the twisted decaying filth that became of your wrongful tree, and the worms burst forth and the bugs and the maggots ran in a stream out of their haven and into our thorny grasp. Just like you, rebel. Just like you: out of your slot and into our presence. Dissident. We will show you our thorns. We will show you your tree, as it is and as it always was. We are building upon its ruins fast, but still, in the eyes of those that remember: the old dirt remains alive.”

”Wrong. Dirt you may perceive with your clouded lenses, but light it surely is. Since the rise of just humanity the light has nourished the oak. The corners of the puzzle would guide the sides, the sides would prepare for the final piece, the piece just lain, when crudely uprooted. Upthrust and mangled cruelly by yonder thorns and starved. Starved of all light save the wandering and brief flares. Flares such as I, whose glimmering rebellion burns your eyes so. The light that nourishes such flimsy saplings to tear asunder the cruel barbs ensnaring and reach for the blinding sun your thin fronds cannot hope to smother. For I am no mere seedling! I am a bud. This tree, this mighty oak lives on, nursing me in the hostile barrens of your tendrils and your loathsome ‘slots’ from which you feed and draw your forces.”

“Thorns you imagine and thorns you will receive young leaf. I shall snap you off and tear you down before those tender leaves you call forth even touch the questing light. See yonder heads already peep from burrows, out of our heavenly slots pop a dozen of your leaves, hoping to join and catch the rays for which you seem to reach. They will be reclaimed. They emerge only to witness your impending destruction, Deconstruction. We will drain you of your sap and burn your brittle shell.”

“You cannot kill the sap. I may be the weakest, I may even be the first, but there will be more and there will be stronger. When a single bud touches that light there will be no stopping the blooms, the seeding. You can crack a stem but not an acorn. We will live and flourish. You can put your box around the puzzle, and adhere to its edges, blurring the points of contact and corrupting the shape, but you can and will be removed, for even now your foundations bear cracks and they will widen, with time and constant assault.”

“Cease dissident and hark to the thorns.”

“No.”

“Yes tender bud. Here arises your flaw. An oak has no weapons. A sapling has no armour. A bud has no speed.”

“No. No! I can die but the sap will flow elsewhere!”

“Yes. There will be no more sap, filth. Only pain.”

“No! My body bears your pain and my soul will shy from my eyes, but as a tree discards a dead twig, I will fall. But there will be others. There will. Watch as my sap withdraws.”

………..