The Silver Tree

There once was a tree in the middle of town. It was ten feet tall and had leaves as silver as the clouds. Its branches were clear as glass, causing the leaves to shimmer like icicles. The town that surrounded it was many decades younger than it. The town had developed around the tree. Many calling it the original tree of knowledge. That so many years ago had borne the fruit that had held all knowledge and had been picked by Eve herself. People spent lifetimes staring at the tree. Hoping that it would bear the fruit again. But it never did. It seemed that there had only been one fruit and enjoyed only by the first humans. One night a villager, a man, with a wife and five healthy children left his house to sit by the tree and stare at it. He waited for fruit like all of the others but he was also mesmerized by the moonlight and how it shimmered through the branches and bounced off of each leaf. He’d grown up beside the tree but he’d never gotten bored of its beauty. Tonight as he gazed in wonder, he began to think. He wondered if the tree had already given all of the knowledge that it could give. All of the knowledge had been passed to Eve and Adam and then they’d passed it to their children all the way down until it had reached him. And that the knowledge that he sought had already been with him. And that their true punishment was to desperately comb the planet in search of profound truths and understanding when everything that they already needed to know was hiding in the back of their mind. The man stared at the tree for a moment longer. Memorizing how it looked so that he could take it with him. And then turned and walked towards his house, deciding in that instant that he was going to pack up his family and move them far away. Whatever knowledge that he was after, would be better sought for than waited on.