The Tree Hugger

Jordan stood over the freshly planted sugar maple sapling. She opened the book, and flipped through it, seeking an appropriate incantation. She wanted an especially powerful incantation for this tree; not only was it to be the centerpiece of her garden, but it was her revenge on that bastard Craig for leaving her without a word. The bastard! She found the prayer that she wanted, stood straight, and closed her eyes. She began to chant:

To you I bow; Mother Gaia I bow
My life make anew; In me shine through
Holy Spirit come through; All is good and prepared for you

Heaven has said to me; The earth is the key
Goddess come to me; The earth is the key
Life is anew, Come through with me.

Power come home; Through me come home
My heart enliven; Our earth is arisen;
And before you I stand, Mother Gaia in hand.

As she finished the incantation, Jordan took the glass of semen and poured it slowly over the freshly turned earth around the root of the sapling. She watched as it slowly seeped down into the ground, the slick white liquid vanishing into the black earth, nourishing the tender young roots. Would it make a difference? Would it help the young tree to grow? She shrugged. Who knew? At least her encounter with the asshole Craig would not be a total loss, she thought. Maybe, just maybe, his seed would contribute to the growth of her new tree. The bastard.

Jordan continued to fuss over the other plantings in her garden; she watered the seedlings, turned soil, pulled weeds, shored up the chicken wire protecting the tender young shoots. Eventually, she had finished her chores in the garden, and returned to the house, to enjoy another pot of tea. Her seduction and abandonment was all but forgotten.

Over the next few days, Jordan's life returned to normal. She spent most of her spare time in her garden, feeling the moist, sensual earth between her fingers, watching the progress of her young plants and the sapling, and sipping tea and reading her books in her favorite wicker chair in her living room. Julia called and apologized for standing her up at Donavan's, and Jordan forgave her. When she felt the need, Jordan took Woody out of his drawer and achieved oneness with his intense, wooden hardness, lying on her back on the bed and praying to the Goddess.

The sugar maple sapling seemed to be doing exceptionally well, and growing much more rapidly than Jordan would have expected. In fact, it had grown several feet within a few weeks. Jordan noticed a slight swelling, a sort of lump, about two feet off the ground, on one side of the trunk. That was unusual, she thought, but she didn't dwell upon it.

Not too many days later, though, she noticed that the lump had grown even more, and extended; it had grown into a nub, almost the beginnings of a branch. Very interesting, she thought. But she had other things to attend to; watering and fertilizing her other plantings, pulling weeds, and saying her incantations.

Eventually, though, the nub had grown large enough to demand her attention. It was lengthening and thickening. It was far too large, not to mention to low and too early, for a typical branch on a sugar maple. Jordan pored over her horticulture books, but could find no explanation for the abnormal growth. Oh well; it did not appear unhealthy. It was strong and firm and hale. She decided not to worry about it; she could only wait and watch and see what happened next.

The next time Jordan inspected the sugar maple, the abnormal branch had grown to nearly a foot long. She looked hard at it, her head cocked at an angle. It looked very familiar. Long, stout, and strong, with a blunt, rounded end and a smooth exterior. Why did it seem so familiar? She reached out a hand and lightly stroked its length with her fingertips, grasping it from below; it felt familiar, too, she thought. Her hand, almost with a mind of its own, stroked up and down the length of the branch. Her grip tightened. Its smooth, hard surface felt very familiar against her palm. She even imagined that she felt it throbbing in her hand. But that was silly, of course.

Then Jordan realized what the branch reminded her of: it was Woody! It was the exact same size and shape and proportions as Woody, her beloved dildo! She smiled quietly to herself, and stroked the branch swiftly and lovingly in her hand. What an amazing coincidence! She blushed at the realization. She looked right and left, as if someone might be watching her, here in her backyard garden, to observe her sudden and embarrassing realization! But of course nobody was there. Her garden was quite secluded, and not visible to outsiders. Still, she blushed clear down to her breasts.

Amused and ashamed at the same time, Jordan ran into the house. Flustered, she threw herself onto her bed. She took Woody out of his drawer, and put him through his paces. Oh, Woody! she thought, as she sawed him back and forth inside of her private, secret areas, I could never replace you with a branch on a tree! Woody loved her back, without hesitation, and without judgment, as he always did.

And yet, as the days went by, Jordan found herself tending to the tree, and the unusual branch, more and more each day. Each day, she found reasons to water the tree, feed the tree, and weed the area around the tree more than was strictly necessary. She found herself standing in front of it, chanting incantations from her book, more than she did with her other garden projects. The branch, so erotic even from the beginning, began to beckon to her more and more strongly with each passing visit. Eventually, Jordan knew, she was going to have to find out if her suspicions were justified; to learn if this strange branch could really live up to the potential that she thought it might.

One day, a month or so after the planting of the tree, Jordan woke up extremely horny. She had spent much of the previous day in her garden, and she had continuously stolen glances toward the strange, erotic branch, wondering what it would be like to… no, she still couldn't say it, even to herself. But this morning, she was horny as hell. She began to reach for the drawer where Woody lay, awaiting her need. But no… not this time, she decided. Now was the time to find out for sure.

Jordan got out of bed, and wrapped her robe about her shoulders, leaving it untied. She went out to the garden. The sugar maple had grown considerably in the last month; it was now taller than she was, and the trunk was several inches thick. The strange branch was almost three feet off the ground, and a full foot long; it was jutting up at a slight angle above the horizontal. Its eroticism was undeniable. Jordan took a deep breath, and then parted her robe. She stepped toward the tree. She raised herself up on her tip-toes, feeling the cool, moist earth oozing into the crevices between her toes. She gently positioned the lips of her vagina at the tip of the strange, erotic branch, and then, slowly, carefully, lovingly, lowered herself onto its length.

She gasped! The branch entered her, gently and tenderly. The feeling took her breath away! She felt its smooth surface against her flesh, and experienced such feelings as she had never before known. It was as smooth and gentle as Woody had ever been, yet was as alive and throbbing as a living lover. It was the best of both worlds! Jordan wanted to scream with the pleasure, but at the same time did not want to disturb the perfect peace and harmony of her garden. Instead, she reveled in the calm, quiet, loving balance between her body and that of the tree, the sugar maple that she had nurtured from a sapling, knowing that it was as much her lover as it was her child, her other half, her soul mate. She slowly, gently impaled herself on the branch, sliding down until her belly rested against the trunk of the tree. She felt the branch entering her, penetrating her, loving her, completing her. It was in her! It was loving her! It made her whole. She wrapped her arms around the trunk, pressed her cheek against it, and shuddered with the all encompassing pleasure of being owned, entered, impaled, and loved by a living, loving creature of the earth.

Jordan felt the branch deep within her; she imagined that it was expanding, growing, extending. She envisioned it advancing deep within her body, probing to her heart, her lungs, her brain. She felt as if she were one with the tree, connected by the strange phallic branch. It made her feel as one with the tree's very essence; the roots, the earth, the planet itself. She felt alive! She had never felt more perfect and complete in her life, or more connected to the infinite, loving, living earth.

Jordan knew that a human lover would begin to thrust in and out of her. Would the tree? Of course not; that would be ridiculous. But soon she felt the thrusting begin. Was the tree thrusting into her? Or was she doing the thrusting herself? Or was the planet itself, somehow, privy to her needs and her situation, creating the loving, thrusting motion that goes hand in hand with the sort of love that Jordan was feeling? Eventually, Jordan decided that such distinctions were irrelevant; all she knew was that she was feeling ecstasy of a sort that she had never felt before, and she gave herself over to the feelings.

Bliss; pleasure indescribable; completeness and happiness and correctness; Jordan was one with the universe. She lost all sense of self, and knew only that she was in heaven. Her arms were wrapped around the trunk of the sugar maple, as were her legs. Her bare toes were dug into the moist earth, and her fingernails dug into the bark. She came as close as humanly possible to achieving oneness with the tree itself. When her body wracked with orgasm, she felt that she was staring into the face of the Goddess herself! She screamed in pleasure, closed her eyes, threw her head back, and swooned.

Later, how much later she had no idea, Jordan awoke. She was lying in the dirt, in the mud, feeling like a new born spirit in the primordial ooze. She was as happy as she had ever been in her life. She could smell the cold, moist earth in her nostrils; she felt the soft pungent aromas and the vibrations of life all about her. Her fingers clutched the mud, her toes dug into its moistness, and she felt as one with the planet.

She slowly rose to her feet. The mud squished between her toes. The tree was still there, of course, as tall and strong as ever, with the strange phallic branch jutting out toward her, looking strangely triumphant. Jordan thought about going inside to brew a pot of tea. But then she decided that tea could wait. She'd rather have another ride on the branch of love.

Jordan rode the branch three times that day. And five times the next day. And the day after that. The strange sugar maple, with the very strange erotic branch, had become her new best friend. Poor Woody went unloved in his drawer. But then, he was only a piece of dead wood; however smooth and beautiful he was, however much pleasure he had given her in the past, he had no hope of competing with a living, growing member on a living tree. Jordan had finally found her true lover, her soul mate, her one and only. Day after day, she devoted herself to worshipping the tree, and the wonderful branch, in her own special way. Her phone occasionally rang, but she had long since given up answering it. All that she needed was right there in her garden.

On night, several weeks later, after riding the branch many times during the day, Jordan sat in her living room, in her favorite wicker chair, reading through one of her many books of prayers and incantations. She was giving thanks to the Goddess for her new lover, as she had come to do every day. She was pondering how wonderful it was to have a living, giving lover, perfect in every way, who would never run away, who would never leave her. She felt very blessed. But she wondered if they could somehow become even closer. She was a person, but her lover was a plant. Could the gap somehow be bridged? Could they somehow become closer, more aligned, more perfectly in tune? She scoured her books for an answer.

She went through all of the books on her shelf, and finally found a prayer, an incantation, that might just do the trick. She read:

I bind unto myself this choice,
By strength of will and strength of voice,
By invocation and to be,
Myself in it and it in me.

Earth about me, Earth within me,
Earth behind me, Earth before me,
Earth to own me, Earth to mold me,
Earth to comfort and to hold me.

Jordan wondered if this might be the prayer to answer her prayers; if it might somehow bring her, and her deciduous lover, closer together than they had ever yet been. She glanced out the window. The moon was full. If ever there was a night to find out, this was it.

Jordan shed her clothes, leaving them in a heap on her living room floor. She brushed her hair before her bedroom mirror, stroking it until it shone. She took a crystal pendant, a charm of Gaia, out of her jewelry box, and slipped it onto a chain; she looped the chain around her neck. Then, glorious and naked, she strode out to the garden under the pale white moon, her book in her hand. She stood before the tree. She felt the moist mud between her toes. She opened the book, and began to read.

I bind unto myself this choice,
By strength of will and strength of voice...

As she finished the prayer, she dropped the book aside and looked at the tree. The erotic, loving branch seemed to be glowing with a life of its own. The moonlight danced upon it. She stepped up to the tree, again feeling the moist, pungent earth squishing between her naked toes, oozing between her digits, connecting her with the Goddess of the planet. She wrapped her arms around the tree's trunk, and planted her lips on its bark, kissing it, and whispering her devotion. The tree, silent and stoic, accepted her benediction.

She lifted herself up on her toes, and again, as she had done so many times before, placed the lips of her sex against the soft, blunt tip of the erotic branch. As always, she imagined that she felt it quiver and pulse, as if it could feel, perhaps even smell, her sex and her need. She slowly, tenderly, gently slid downward, letting the branch penetrate her. Her natural juices, as always, moistened the smooth bark, easing the way for the merging of human and plant. She slid further down, closer and closer to the trunk, and felt the familiar closeness, and the familiar flaring, swelling, and, and expansion of the branch deep within her being.

But this time, somehow, was different. It was better, deeper, more intense than it had ever been before. The expansion and invasion of the branch into her body, which she had always attributed to her imagination, was much more pronounced; so much so that she was sure that it was, finally, for real. She gasped! The branch was growing, deep within her most sacred recesses, deep within her body. The Goddess of the earth was reaching for the Goddess within Jordan herself! The branch reached and extended, beyond her vagina, beyond her uterus, beyond her hips. It extended to all parts of her body; it accessed her, it connected with her, it joined with her. It reached her kidneys, her lungs, her brain. Jordan and the tree were at last one!

Jordan was aware of a new set of sensations. She heard, and felt, a pulsing, a flowing. She realized that it was the flow of water and sap up and down the veins of the tree trunk itself. She felt the rustling of the leaves above her; not as a sound, but as a sensation that she felt in her mind. She was aware of the growing and stretching of the roots deep within the dirt, of the intake of water, of the exchange of nutrients with the soil. She was privy to all of the relationships of the tree with the planet; these were her relationships now, and her exchanges, and she belonged to them as well.

Jordan and the tree were one. The bliss was overwhelming. She no longer existed as a separate individual; she was a part of her lover, and it was a part of her. She was no longer a solitary human, alone on the surface of the planet; now she was a part of the planet, living and breathing its essence as part of its biosphere. She had merged with the infinite, with the earth, with the Goddess. She had arrived! Jordan tried to smile, but found that she no longer had control of her face. She no longer had a face! She was part of the infinite. No matter; she smiled with her soul, and it was good. It was very good. Before long, Jordan couldn't even remember ever being Jordan at all.

*******************

Several days later, a car pulled up to the curb in front of Jordan's small bungalow. A small, nervous woman got out, her cell phone pressed to her ear, a curse on her breath.

"Dammit, Jordan, where the hell are you?" muttered Julia. She was worried about her sister. She hadn't answered her phone in weeks, and Julia had finally decided to come and see what the hell was going on. She tucked the phone back into her purse and knocked on the front door of the house, gently at first, and then more urgently. Dammit, Jordan, she thought! What is wrong with you!

But there was no answer. Julia took several steps to the side and peered into the window. Nothing of consequence came to her view, just a pile of clothes on the floor. She walked around the house to the secluded garden in back. Jordan always did love her garden. As Julia rounded the corner, she stopped short and gasped.

The garden was beautiful! Row upon row of flowers, shrubs, and vines met her eyes. Jordan didn't relate to people very well, Julia knew, but she had to admit that Jordan knew her plants. And in the middle, standing tall and proud, was the most beautiful tree that Julia had ever seen. It looked vaguely like a sugar maple, but was so much more beautiful and expansive. The canopy of leaves was exquisite, and proudly hung over the entire garden like a roof, like an outstretched set of arms embracing the world. The branches were longer and stronger and bolder than Julia had ever seen. And the trunk; the trunk was amazing. It was far thicker, bolder, and more contoured than on any tree she had ever seen in her life. It contained numerous sensual curves, and was shot through with red and blue veins and streaks. It was beautiful, Julia thought, simply beautiful.

Julia sat down on a bench, enjoying the peaceful harmony of the garden. She looked at her watch. Jordan can't possibly be far, she thought; she's bound to be back soon. She could almost feel Jordan's presence about her. She looked again at the awesome tree. What was that strange branch, jutting erotically out from the trunk? It almost reminded her of Randy, her on-again, off-again lover. Only not nearly as obnoxious, she thought ruefully. Hmmmm, Julia wondered. What if….?