July ? 1869

I’ve been watching the trees. I sit at the edge of the forest and I stare. The little shack I had been hiding in fell over. So now I watch the trees. I think they want me to watch. They cast shade for me to sit in, they hide me from prying eyes. It's quite nice to watch trees. You should try it sometime. Some are deep green and dark brown, and they stand solid, handsome, and valiant. You couldn't touch that tree with a blade if you wanted to. Some trees are pale and slender. They have silvery leaves and they sway, they dance in the wind. Some are twisted and gnarled, and their leaves are mottled, near black. Don't talk too loud around that kind of tree. You never know which ones are listening, waiting.

The trees are growing, I can see them. The grass has already grown around my legs, up to my chest. Ivy tendrils are creeping across paths and up trunks, and sometimes I hear a house or building collapse under their pulling, squeezing, tangled weight. Most of the town is ivy. Dark green with little, wee pink flowers. They’re quite lovely. What isn't ivy is any combination of fungus, flower, sapling, moss. It's rich, it's deep, it's unnaturally natural. You haven't seen such a fertile, ripe place. You can smell the growing things, like a pie on a windowsill. It slaps you right in the face with aroma.

The colours of all this are stunningly vibrant. I stared at a tree for so long that I saw each little vein in its leaves and crook in its bark. You've never seen such a tree. Sometimes I think I see little birds made of leaves and flowers dancing in the crown of the forest. Cut throat vermillion, blinding yellow, and the deepest, darkest, most mysterious emerald. I think the dehydration may be getting to me. I can’t bother to get up though, not now. Not when there’s so much to look at. No colours like these have ever been seen by any man. Not in all the histories of all the countries of all the world. I like to watch the little birds. They’re so far away, but I see them as well as if they were perched on my hand. They haven’t sung yet. The only sound is the rustling of tree branches in the wind. I’m beginning to think that there was never any other sound, ever. Just wind, just trees.

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I ran out of ink. You may be wondering, how am I writing if I’ve no ink? It’s simple really. You see, I have a quill, and the quill has a pointed end. For now, my ink is borne of my flesh. All you have to do is take the pointed end, and you press it into your skin. Anywhere is fine. You press,

and you press, and you press some more, and the point of the quill stabs and tears. And then, there’s a wonderful spout of delightful red ink. You have to use a lot, but it doesn't run out. There's always more. You just have to keep tearing away. Eventually, you may find that the ink won’t stop coming anymore. It's really quite convenient, but take care not to stain your pages with too much ink. Oh, and don't worry. It stops hurting once you see the eyes in the forest.