People said Petra was strange because she talked to trees.
She didn't broadcast it. But if you watched her in the forest behind her house, you'd see it — a hand on a trunk, her head slightly tilted, lips moving.
She wasn't pretending. She was observing.
She noticed which trees grew well together and which seemed to push each other away. She noticed when a tree was stressed — leaves slightly different, bark slightly dull. She noticed the way a clearing of stumps changed the whole mood of a section of forest.
When the council proposed cutting a path through the oldest part of the forest, Petra wrote a report. Three pages. Detailed observations. What lived in those trees, what depended on them, what would be lost.
The council was surprised. They had expected a petition. They got a scientific case.
They changed the path.
On the way home, Petra stopped at the oldest oak.
"We bought some time," she told it.
The oak didn't answer.
But a woodpecker hammered three times from somewhere above, and Petra chose to take it as a response.