"When I was your age we were a forest here. Thick and strong we were, all the way down here to the water. The First People used to come, come to this very bank and fish. Trout mostly. They brought their wives and their children. The children played in and around us, the wives cleaned the fish, they prepared some to take home and cooked some to eat. Life was good, we were all - trees, humans and animals - a community, a family". The Old One paused and looked across the water.
"I weep for you", Willow encouraged.
"See there, across the water", the Old One continued, "that is what destroyed us, destroyed our community. A New People came, so many of them, and they wanted so many things from our land, from our forests, from our waters. Hundreds of my ancestors, of my aunts and uncles, my cousins, dozens and dozens of my brothers and sisters - I was still a Small One then - were put to the axe and taken away."
Across the water, surrounded by imported ornemental trees and shrubs, the large lumber mill enjoys life on the water's edge, clanging and banging and screaming as it rips the Old One's relatives to shreds.
