The American Experiment (Riot Quest)

The Mountain's Cry

Many years ago, before there were trees, I first learned to cry. My birth was a thing of slow, grinding pain as I was forced upwards, inch by inch. And my bellows of pain echoed throughout the world. Some were drowned out by the roars of my siblings, who were born at much the same time, but the world heard others, and gradually learned to cease. Next, it was the wind's turn to make me cry, as it blew grit across me, scouring my stony hide unrelentingly. Then came the water, and the tremors, and the roots. All made me hurt, all made me cry. The sounds poured from an infinity of throats, concealed by falling boulders and winding gulleys, and I could not understand why I made it. It was just something that happened. Many years later, as the winters grew colder and the summers grew shorter, little quick things came to my slopes. They fled famine and war and plague, and sought warmth and safety.

My slopes lacked both. Predatory beasts lurked along my slopes, and great drifts of snow rested atop my surface. The streams that swept recklessly down my side were bitterly cold, and food was scarce. Some, upon encountering me turned back. Many chose to press on. It was from these I learned why I cried. For when trees collapse upon them and shattered bones, when hungry bears and lions ripped into them, even when they stumbled and grew weary, they cried. And others heard.

One of the small things weeping would be answered almost faster than I could see, and they would mend each other's hurts or offer what scant comfort they had.

These tiny, weeping things clawing at my slopes kept coming. Some - most - died but others struggled onward. They found shelter in my caves or brought their own little mountains of woven bark and animal hide, they dug up roots and hunted beasts. Some traveled further, beyond my sight, while others remained on my slopes. I watched their countless lives. Much I could not understand, but I saw how they worked amongst each other, almost like some hive of ants. And in my way, I grew fond of them.

And so I wept with them when new men came in great numbers. Plagues spread before them, slaying countless, and then came the men themselves, wielding terrible weapons and even more terrible cruelty. For a time, many peoples fought, back and forth across my slopes, and many of the trees that grew on my soil grew using corpses as fertilizer. In the end, the new men won. Some people settled their new prize. They logged my forests and mined my slopes and farmed my soil, and they grew hungry and miserable, forgotten and mistreated by those who lived below.

There were fights between the new men, and so much death it made my heart sick, and I came to understand the people of my slopes. And so when they cried, once more I found myself crying with them, hoping our voices would be loud enough that we would be heard, and that we would be helped.

@Physici omake for the Appalachian Brotherhood, for agitating among the farmworkers.