🍃Proof🪾

 In the hush of a clearing, a young oak lifted from soil still damp with memory. Its bark thin, soft as a scar not yet hardened, its arms uncertain. Just twigs sketching at the sky.

Around it, the elders loomed. Vast oaks with roots tangled like veins of the earth, crowns heavy with decades of wind, their shadows woven together, a canopy of stories older than storms.

The sapling did not envy, but it did wonder:

"How does one climb from silence into the chorus of leaves? How does bark learn to endure the bite of winter, the weight of summer’s sun?"

Then, without thunder or trumpet, a tender bud cracked open.

One leaf...

Just one. Green as a promise, trembling. Its edges curled with the breath of becoming.

The leaf was no crown; no forest, not yet shady for weary travelers. But it was proof. Proof that the sapling belonged to the lineage of giants.

In that moment, the clearing seemed to lean closer, the air hushed as if to listen. Nothing barred the young oak but its own belief.

The soil was deep, the sky vast, the path already written in its rings, waiting only for time to carve it.

And though no one knew- not the wind, not even the sapling itself- whether it would rise into greatness or bow beneath the weight of seasons. The leaf’s trembling declared a truth:

The way forward was not to wish for the forest.

But to grow into it; 

One leaf at a time.