There was once a time when the stuff of stars was able to move about freely, exhibiting the same kind of vivacious will that you see in other animate matter. We call these willful celestial beings of old star-people.
Different star-people found their own corners of the world to explore, each suited to their own sensibilities. It just so happened that our little rock was the favorite of one such tribe. And back then, it really was little more than rock, but its empty abundance appealed to the star-stuff. Our rock exhibited an endless possibility that moved and quickened their star-hearts. There were seven who came and went from here freely, and loved to laugh and dance and play among the craggy crannies of this infant world.
There came a time when, due to the way and form and substance of things, these free-flying forms had to coalesce and enter their stage of suspension. The star-people had to find their own place, take on a temporarily immutable shape, and hang from the sky no longer able to visit the more solid masses that they drew to. With a compliant yet foolhardy attitude, the seven returned one last time to dance and sing a song of their time here on earth. However, when it was time to depart one of them lingered longer than they should have. They felt that their song here was not yet finished, and they kept singing when they were meant to be settling into the sky.
As their sibling-stars returned to the space where they'd belong for a time, this star sank into the ground. Our ground. They sank and evanesced, their star-stuff mingling with the rock that they loved and refused to leave. Watching their friend fade from above, the six others now set in place began to weep with what animism they had left - they cried, and cried, and cried, and their tears fell to our ground. The water formed into large pools, and fell softly upon the place where their friend had just been.
Some time passed, how much, however, is hard to say as it was difficult to tell back then. But one day, a sprout sprang up from the ground where the seventh star had sat singing their song. This sprout, filled with delight at their new form but longing for their sky-kin, grew and grew and grew. It became taller and taller, wanting to remain grounded in the earth but reaching and trying to build a bridge to the stars. This Tree, solid as an oak but pliant like a pine, is the Tree we are duty-bound to guard. The first Tree, the sapling that came from and tries to touch the sky again. It is to this Tree that we owe our gratitude for all the things that grow, including you and me. For it's not just the first Tree, but the first plant; the source of all other life-matter in our world.
It is on, around, and through this Tree that the other plants first germinated, first took their breath and felt the warmth of our own star.
This tale that I have just told you is only now recorded in the written word - for so long we have passed it down through mouths and ears and not else, but the legacy of the caretakers of the Tree is fading.
Here is where we have laid down accounts of the emergence of new plant-life from the Great Original Form. There is not always one of us present when new sprouts come into being, but we have been there for some very important births, and have tried to preserve what knowledge of them that we can.
