the pear

In a field on a quiet hill far away from the busy world, a pear swayed gently in the summer breeze. It was another lazy and glorious day. The pear basked in the warmth of the sun along with their siblings, safe amongst their mother’s leaves. The pear was comfortable in the tree and did not want to leave.

One evening, just before the sun tucked in behind the mountains to sleep for the night, the clouds darkened and the wind began to blow. Rain poured from the sky, coating the pear. The pear typically enjoyed this feeling, but this time the extra weight of the rain strained their grip on the branch above. A strong breeze crashed through the tree and the pear felt its grip slip, but it held on. Around them, many of the pear’s siblings started to let go, plummeting towards the ground. The pear gripped the branch tightly. They knew they would eventually fall. But not like this. Not now. They were not ready.

Soon enough, the storm waned. They had survived the worst of it. They relaxed, knowing there would be more days spent basking in the sun, safe in their mother’s arms. Their mother nourished them with more water from her roots and the pear felt at home again. But the water made them feel heavy. Before they could react, their grip on the branch released and they plummeted towards the ground below. The cold rain gripped the pear’s face as they fell past branch after branch, barely missing several of them on their way down. They hit the ground below with a thud, though it was much softer than they had imagined.

The pear was not afraid. Their mother had explained to them what would happen when they fell. She told them that she was once a pear. She had fallen from another tree just like herself, and when she did, a strange creature picked her up and took her away. This creature removed her core and put it back into the soil. The pear had asked her if it hurt when the creature removed her core. She told them that she was terrified because she did not know what would happen, but that it did not hurt. Not long after she transformed into a beautiful tree.

The pear rested on the ground until morning when, sure enough, they saw a creature approaching. The creature was odd. It lumbered along the grass on two thin trunks that joined part way up, forming one thicker trunk with two small branches sticking out of its sides. The creature loomed over the cluster of pears, all torn from their mother by the storm, all waiting to become trees.

The creature plodded around the field for a short time, selecting a few of the pears from the ground and placing them gently into a small container. As the creature approached the pear, it knelt down and started examining them closely, turning them over with one of its branches. The sun shone from behind the creature, making it difficult for the pear to distinguish their features. It looked like a large clumsy shadow moving about the field. It placed the pear into the container along with a handful of their siblings. Inside the container, the sun disappeared and the moon never came to take its place. The pear’s mind swelled, dreaming up the possible worlds that awaited them on the other side of the unchanging night.

In time, the container opened and the pear was confronted with the same creature as before, but this time, the creature was wrapped in a straight white cloth that covered its stump. It held some kind of sharp metal tool and hummed quietly to the other creatures around it. The sunlight here was dim and did not feel warm. The creature reached inside the container and began removing the pear’s siblings one at a time. It eventually reached for the pear and placed them down gently on a hard smooth surface.

The pear watched as the creature took one of the pear’s siblings and, to the pear’s horror, started using the metal tool to remove their sibling’s skin. The creature then used a different metal tool to remove their sibling’s core. This relaxed the pear slightly. The sight was gruesome, but the pear realized that this must be how these creatures remove their cores for planting.

The creature placed the pear’s sibling’s core on the surface next to the pear and started cutting their sibling’s body into slices. The pear watched as the creature dropped the slices into a metal sheet covered in hot oil. The slices sizzled and, after a while, turned dark brown. The creature removed the darkened slices from the hot oil and delicately placed them onto a pristine white plate along with the bodies of several other of creatures. It covered the bodies in a viscous red liquid and dusted them with dried leaves. The creature handed the plate to another creature who carried it out of view. The pear was fascinated by this strange ritual, but was more concerned about what would happen to their sibling’s core.

The creature used one of its branches to casually toss the core off the surface, out of sight from the pear. The pear imagined that there must be soil somewhere under the flat surface and was excited for his turn to be planted. The creature then picked up the pear and started to remove their skin. The pear felt a burning agony as the blade move across their body, but it could not cry out. The pear watched helplessly as the creature pushed the blade through their body and twisted it, removing their flesh in a single motion. The creature then prepared the pear’s body just as it had prepared the pear’s sibling.

The pear’s consciousness drifted between its body and its core. A portion of their mind laid on the cold hard surface, watching the rest of their body fall into a pool of hot smoking oil. Their mind lurched back into their body as it arrived at the pan’s surface, the oil grabbed hold of them and tore at their flesh violently. Their flesh sizzled and steamed as it turned a dark brown. Their consciousness returned to their core as it was tossed off the edge of the hard surface into a pile of other dismembered creatures. There was no soil here.

The pear’s consciousness jumped back into its body as it was plated. The plate was handed off and it was carried out into a new space filled with creatures draped in different colored cloths. They all hummed, and joyfully consumed the contents of their plates. The pear was carried through the room, and as it watched the creatures consuming their sibling’s flesh, they started to understand. In a curious sense, their body provided these creatures with nourishment as their mother once did for them. The thought was beautiful, and it filled the pear with joy.

The pear’s body was placed in front of one of the creatures and they felt ready to nourish them, but the creature casually looked them over, picked them up, and discarded them to the side. The creature proceeded to consume everything else on the plate. The pear was devastated. They had endured the agonizing ritual, just to be rejected in the end.

The pear’s fear grew as it watched the creature voraciously consume everything else on the plate, while humming to the creatures around it. Once the plate was empty, the discarded pieces of the pear’s body were removed and placed into the compost, right next to their core. They sat there, dumbfounded, until they were covered by the remnants of other creatures. They were once more taken by the unchanging, moonless night. This night was longer.

The long night ended with a jolt, a burst of bright light, and the feeling of weightlessness as the pear plummeted down into a vast pile of waste. Here, the sky returned to its cycles of night and day, but this time, the sun did not feel the same. Where before it filled the pear with warmth and joy, now it ate away at them. It ate away at everything around the pear too. The other creatures, the waste, they all slowly decomposed under the heat of the sun.

The days passed into nights. The pear suspected that they had arrived at the final destination of their journey. They did not know what was to come, but as they lay there watching the world around them slowly decompose into soil, they could not help but believe that their fate was the same. By not being consumed, they too would turn to soil and melt into the earth with all of those who came before them. With this thought, the pear started to see the beauty in the sun again. The sun was not destroying the pear. It was changing them, preparing them for the next phase of their journey. With this, the sun felt warm again.

As they lay there, eventually their outer body turned to soil, until only their seed remained. The seed felt light, they felt ready for what was to come. They looked forward to the mornings now as each day brought them one-step closer to something. It did not know what, but the mystery now excited them.

One morning, a flock of birds circled the wastelands making a terrible racket. One of the birds dropped out of the sky and landed right next to the seed. It jerked its head around scanning the ground near the seed and then locked its eyes directly on them. The bird snatched the seed up in its beak and took off flying. The seed felt the rush of wind as they flew through the air. It reminded them of the days when the wind would rush through the leaves while they hung in their mother’s arms.

This trip through the air did not last long, however, because after only a few minutes of flying high above the ground, the bird was hit with a strong breeze and it dropped the seed. The seed plummeted, but this time towards a soft bed of green grass. They collided with the soil hard enough to become lodged in it.

The seed reached down into the soil and took a drink. Over time, they felt their body extend down deep into the soil towards the water and up into the air towards the sun. Each day they woke up with a stretch and grew deeper into the ground and higher up into the air. They did this every day until they had a thick, tall trunk and their leaves stretched out far in all directions, and eventually they too started to grow their own baby pears.

There stood the pear tree, tall and content, basking in the warm summer sun, sharing with their children the stories of their time as a pear so that they too might one day be ready to face what was waiting for them on the other side.