• A girl placed her arms around a tree, kneeling in front of it. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. She was exactly what they called her...a tree hugger. A branch snapped behind her but she paid no attention.
    "...What are you doing?" A teenage boy stood behind her, looking at her strangely.
    "Shh. Listen." She held up a finger to him. "Can you hear it?"
    "Hear what?"
    "The earth. She's talking to us. Can't you hear her voice? It's crying out in pain." She breathed deeply again. "Help me. You've ruined me. My own children have ruined me." The girl opened her eyes but did not look to the boy. "We have ruined her. And you." She finally turned towards his confused looking face. "You probably think I am nothing more than a sack of crazy. But it's true. She's trying to call out to us...but we aren't listening."
    The boy suddenly swooped down next to her, putting his own hand on the same tree. The girl smiled.
    "Can't you feel it?" She closed her eyes again. "Her warmth is pulsing through the trees...through us all. It's giving us all life. Can't you feel her heart beat?"
    Yes. The boy could feel a pulsation through the trees. He could feel the wind on his face, caressing his cheeks in a motherly fashion. He could hear the water rippling from a nearby stream, he could see the leaves and grass dancing in the wind.
    "How can we be destroying her? We're killing her..."

    "This is the five o clock news. It appears the oil spill has only worsened. Local birds have been found covered in oil. Who knows how many fish species have been wiped out?"

    "She's bleeding. We've wounded her!" The girl was crying now and it was not just her. It was multiple people around the world, from every continent.
    "She's dying..."
    "What can we do?" The boy asked as the wind picked up.
    "We can let her have her revenge. We don't deserve the mercy she has given us..." The girl got up from the forest floor. "Let her judgment come."

    "I never though about it before..." The boy looked at his friends. "But what are we doing to the earth who gave us life? We are takin things from her. Taking what is not ours to have. We should be borrowing from her and returning them when we die...Aren't we selfish creatures?"
    "Yes...we are." His friend replied. "Besides who cares? Only outcasts and crazies think of this stuff."
    "Don't forget hippies," another added.
    "Sometimes they are the best people. The greatest thinkers...the most understanding." The boy nodded. "They are the best of mankind."

    The girl smiled as she hugged the tree. "That's right mother. We're going to try to save you...and if we can't. Then please don't have mercy on us, and take back what you gave to us in the first place."

    She gave us life in hopes that we'd take care of her as she aged. We only took from her and kept taking like selfish brats. But what happens when the day comes when she wants what she gave us back? After all...it's not rightfully ours in the first place. Is it?