When the elder of a colony far away detected a rampaging fire, a report was immediately sent to all elders in their vicinity. When it finally reached me I likewise passed along the warning to as many of my fellow local elders as possible.

Many if not all of us prepared ourselves and our colonies for what was to come. Some elders however were already too weak of old age and could not do much, some inevitably decided to donate their lives to those within their colony who had a higher chance of survival.

It was a harrowing way to go but one that held great honor. They strengthened the next generation, ensuring that at least some would go on.

As for the rest of us who choose to endeavor, not much could be done when a tragedy such as this comes. Being entities without movement, our one and only option was to fill our cells and ourselves with as much water as possible.

Though this survival technique came at a great cost.

Our cells were never designed to live with that amount of water within them. If we survived, the healing process would take a long, long time to recover. But at least we would live.

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Of course this technique could only ever work if we had access to plenty of water, which my colony fortunately did. Our mycorrhizal fungi was brimming with a wealth of water since spring ended. I merely assumed a member of my colony’s root tapped an underground reservoir somewhere and was continuously donating some in exchange for amassing nutrients.

However when I questioned my colony no one claimed responsibility. I did not put much credit in their responses as most members of my colony were made up of slow thinkers. When I asked a neighboring elder if this ever happened to them they said it happened all the time. They said that sometimes slow thinking trees often tapped into reservoirs and did things through instinct not even realizing what it has done. I still found it somewhat odd but when I asked other elders many agreed that this was normal.

But it seemed the odd occurrences continued to pile themselves up one after the other because after the danger had passed, while many of my fellow elders and their colonies perished in the fire, many elders survived. Many more than what was expected.

When I took inventory of how my colony had faired a decent portion of my members were dead, but quiet more had survived than what the danger suggested.

When I queried further, I got a curious alert from many of my surviving trees.

They said it rained.

And that made no sense whatsoever.

I never felt a single drop of water reach my roots. While that could explain why the fire did not take as many lives as expected it just did not make any sense.

I decided to investigate more deeply but before I even got the chance to, a sapling contacted me through the mycorrhizal network and informed me that some strange thing was attached to its roots and was heavily supporting and assisting it in it’s growth.