Dead Inside

“I look at the trees, green and growing, and I see a ruin of skeletal limbs, black bark against a stark white sky.  Winter, forever.  Or, worse, just a stump.  Nothing left at all.”  He wouldn’t meet her eyes.  “It’s the same… with everything.  Inside, there’s a death, clawing its way to the surface.  Inevitable.”  His hands wrung each other, pale fish writhing in a sunless well.

“Look deeper,” she said.  She held out the bit of spongy wood she’d taken from the trunk.  The soft white bulb of a mushroom clung to its surface.  “Just a little deeper inside.”