The Clouds swirled violently overhead, "Did you not first stretch your imagination on my canvas?"
The solitary Red Vixen blankly stared, "Who else revealed the importance of footfalls to you?"
The cracking Thunder exclaimed, "Forget not! None but I! The invisible tyrant! Had you trembling in ignorant terror!"
The lonely Trumpeter Swan cooed, "Where else did you learn to cherish your soul-mate?"
The broken Roosevelt Elk sighed, "Who else taught you majesty?"
The sorrowful Grizzly Bear growled, "Who else reminded you of your true place among us?"
The unkept Golden Eagle glared, "Was it not I who taught you merciful hunting?"
The mournful Bottlenose Dolphin reminded, "Who else humbled your assumed superior brain size?"
The tattered Mountain Lion interjected, "Where else did you witness a more perfect predater?"
The lone Grey Wolf asked, "Did you not learn to honor family from my prime example?"
The invincible Lightning flashed, "How quickly you forgot who gave you your two mightiest triumphs! You kept warm by borrowing the essence of the unfathomable Sun himself! ..And lets not forget who flowed in your beloved metal wires."
The unmeasurably potent Water came forward, shifting from caring curves to spikes of fury. "Unthinkable! You have made me Vile! Putrid! Poison! I the Granter of Life itself! For none live without me, yet you care not! Insolence! Arrogance! IGNORANCE!"
All lost their voices in the long ensuing silence. Finally the last Great Horned Owl gazed at them all, steadied herself, and spake solemn and resolutely;
"The smartest. The most powerful. The most ingenious. You entertained all of these notions, yet learned them all and more from us. You think you’re alone in your divine providence, but your nothing without the surrounding life that allows you to live. You starve without the animals and plants to eat, die of thirst without clean rivers to drink from, suffocate without breathable air, and succumb to exposure without rocks, soil and plants providing the necessary solace from harsh elements.
There appeared to be two lines to your kind, those who remembered the gifts of the past and revered the wild mentors that gave them, and those of absolute self-absorption believing all knowledge came solely from yourself. Although one line was respectable, the other was but a lost fledging, desperately needing help back to its home. Incredibly, the majority of them were nothing without their precious artificially manufactured trinkets. Consider, without them there were more above than below you, on what you termed the food chain.
Have you finally witnessed the abhorrent price for those wasteful items you needlessly manufactured? You reduced beautiful mountains teeming with life to sorrowful rubble, extracted their metal veins and bejeweled secrets within. You silenced untold scores of trees from singing their windswept leaves' songs, viciously ripping them from their ancient home. You knew this exposed the land to the unmerciful sun and elements, leaving every creature and plant homeless and orphaned in the torn asunder ghostland, afraid for themselves and their families; yet you did all this without regard to winter's close approach. Your cruelty is unmatched.
All shared the atrocious crimes they witnessed, imprisoned plants, never allowed freedom and true life before eaten, their internal blueprints rewritten to such a degree, they were unrecognizable from their wild cousins. Pervasive toxic chemicals belched into the air and hideously dumped in rivers without care or thought, tainting everything in contact. Discarded trash leached poison for untold buried years, diabolical plastics killed for uncountable generations, your terrible explosives harmed all who dwell within land, air or sea.
You were utterly ceaseless in your abomination's!"
The animals each nodding as the simple truth cut through the clear, cold night.
Resigned and forlorn, the Great Owl looked to the lone survivor of humankind, and continued.
"One wonders if you managed to soil the celestial heaven's with your unnatural materials. We prayed for untold generations you would come to your senses and wake from your selfish suicidal nightmare. When you released your deadly radiation, forever scarring and insidiously poisoning the land, there was an audible gasp from the sacred earth herself; our prayers stopped that day and forever-more, for you were Hell bent and Demonic in your ways.
Some of us have heard stories we were once in love in the dim past, but its clear your majority mutated into evil spirits when your tribe split into its two branches. All life watched your murderous insanity, knowing only upon the moment of earth's death or your extinction, would you rise from your madness and finally witness what you’ve wracked.
We are the last there is, the last of our kind, of all kind. No more mating in bliss rearing our children to play in the streamside meadows, no more herds roving on frozen tundra's dancing with the beautiful aurora, long gone are the schools swimming deep into the sweeping currents winding around this once immaculate earth, no more soaring on the graceful breezes over the enchanted woodlands underneath. All is gone.
Only we remain witness to the end you’ve brought to us all, every beautiful plant, every noble creature, every gorgeous mineral, every sacred fossil, even the pure clouds have been poisoned. You've finally seen that which we all have, for countless generations.
This is the end of us all, but there's still hope for the future; for it is said in our oldest tale the earth's creatures were once as tall as the towering Sequoia were, wielding horns as wide as the Blue Whale was long, dwarfing all before and since. They were the pinnacles of all earth's tribes.
Alas, they have been gone so long only the rocks remember them now, but what does survive is one of their beliefs passed down for countless aeons. We do not know if it is indeed truth, but those ancient masters believed, hidden deep inside us all live small secret animals; smaller than any grain or seeds, smaller than even powdery pollen was. They believed they were here before all others, the very first animals, and in times of peril they council the true course.
So you see there is hope yet, they will start the grand cycle anew."
The last human finally broke his watery gaze from the Great Horned Owl, locking eyes with each and every pair afore him, forging a bond of love, compassion, understanding, respect, and regret.
Just then he seemed to relax internally and be at peace, "Yes" he whispered, "I do believe I hear their council."
-Mitch Mitchell
http://nativesurvival.com
