She closed her eyes. She didn’t need them! There were so many other ways to sense and feel. Her toe-roots went down, down, down, winding and finding their way through layers of delicious cold black earth as if it were mile-deep chocolate and at the same time spreading outward around her in a huge underground web, threading between pebbles and rocks and other roots, rubbing elbows with friendly worms, drinking in delicious chilled clear water that flowed funnily up through her legs and all through her body to feed her finger-branches and her leaf-hair.

The wind flowed past her, and she swayed with it like it was music. She grew so tall she could stick her crown up above the mist and feel the warmth of bright sunlight on it. It felt wonderful, like sunshine always does, except that now she was a tree, so she wasn’t just feeling the sunlight, she was eating it. It was her food. And it tasted incredible.

And when it rained, she drank the rain, and that was delicious, too.

Her branches touched the tips of other trees’ branches, and their roots mingled underground, as if they were holding hands but with their toes. The cat had become a pussy willow, and the heron was now a lovely gray ash tree. The mamba had become a magnificent African blackwood tree. The porcupine was a thorny honey locust.

They all stood together as a grove, and it was the calmest Kate had ever felt in her life. If she’d had to stand here like this as a girl she would’ve been bored silly, but as a tree she was never bored. She wasn’t waiting for anything, or wishing she were somewhere else, she was just here, just now, all the time. Weeks went by while Earth spun like a carousel and the sun and moon and stars wheeled dizzily overhead.

Day and night changed places like a game. Birds weren’t afraid of her, they loved her and nested in her branches. A friendly giant, she listened to the frisky low-level chatter of the little plants around her and the shadowy whispering of the fungi below that. It wasn’t all fun; there were pain and strife, too. Insects and caterpillars fed on her. Birds pecked holes in her. Lightning licked down and scarred or demolished trees seemingly at random.

Autumn came and she let go of her leaves—it was a relief, really, as though she’d been wearing a lovely ball gown that had gotten slightly uncomfortable and now she could finally take it off. When winter arrived she felt the cold but didn’t mind it in the slightest, though sometimes the weight of ice made her ache. She dozed.