The Bone Tree

On the lonely hill it sat, watching. The last bone tree, its leaves made of flesh. On each, written in the dead tongue, were the words of its song. When the wind blew, a cold breath that tore at the land, the leaves sang in harmony. A song of loss and suffering, the song of the world as it had been, the rattle of the bones shaking the stars from the sky. Each time it sang, they wept. They wept for what they had done, the crimes they had inflicted on each other. As they hung from the tree, ornaments of sinew and pain, the makers wept tears of blood that fell to the dead, barren soil and fed the tree. As the tree sang, it grew in torment and ferocity. On day, it knew, its bones would caress the sky and its makers would feed the oceans. The last of them flayed on it boughs, their debt paid.