{"id":3139,"date":"2013-11-25T09:55:34","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T14:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=3139"},"modified":"2013-11-25T09:55:34","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T14:55:34","slug":"the-lady-in-the-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/the-lady-in-the-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lady in the Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3141\" alt=\"LadyinTree\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/LadyinTree-194x300.jpg\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/LadyinTree-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/LadyinTree.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/>She grew with the rest of the tree, part of its wooden trunk, content to support the limbs and leaves above and suck up the sap from the roots below.\u00a0 She was tree, mindless and free.\u00a0 Bugs crawled over her belly.\u00a0 Birds hopped over her, scouring for the bugs, but she felt no tickle.\u00a0\u00a0 Winters came and passed while she felt no chill, and spring with its new leaves brought no joy.<\/p>\n<p>Yet all that time, her shape was forming.\u00a0 She was gradually separating from the rest of the trunk.\u00a0 Her arms came free, her torso began its supple twist, and her legs tensed, ready to take a first step.\u00a0 For ages she was caught that way in expectation, not free but no longer mindless tree, either.\u00a0 She had no way to guess what she might become.<\/p>\n<p>Then, one day, a human child passing through the forest paused to ponder the tree.\u00a0 The lady inside absorbed the power of the child\u2019s gaze, and felt the parallel amazement when the child\u2019s face lit with discovery.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s a lady in the tree!\u201d\u00a0 For the first time, the lady recognized the human shape that mirrored her own, and in that instant, she glimpsed the awful, wonderful truth: she was not tree.<\/p>\n<p>Then her true prison consumed her as it never had before.\u00a0 The child left the forest, and the lady was unable to follow her.\u00a0 Her arms extended higher to sprout into more branches.\u00a0 Her legs, never fully formed, stayed locked in the stubborn cells of wood, while her face, just when she was trying hardest to breathe, closed its mouth forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She grew with the rest of the tree, part of its wooden trunk, content to support the limbs and leaves above and suck up the sap from the roots below.\u00a0 She was tree, mindless and free.\u00a0 Bugs crawled over her belly.\u00a0 Birds hopped over her, scouring for the bugs, but she felt no tickle.\u00a0\u00a0 Winters [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-3139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3145,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions\/3145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}