"The Tree" part 2

I thought I would add some more writing from my short stories, seeing how I'm pretty much stuck at home all the time right now. For those who didn't read the beginning, go ahead and click here.

Even in its sad state, far from the grandeur it had once basked in, it still loomed over me ominous and unforgiving. As I beheld it my instincts screamed at me, demanding that I bow in fear or cower and pay tribute. But my heart was not filled with fear, instead I felt a great sadness. I became strangely aware of the silence that engulfed the area surrounding the Tree. A morose feeling of loneliness that is felt when one living thing is cut off from all other life. I strained to hear just a simple chirp of a far off bird, the sad howling of a solitary wolf, or even the droning of a summer cicada. Nothing. Then I heard it, or rather I realized for the first time what had always been there. A sound, deep and billowing at once and high and screeching at others. I spun around in place trying to pinpoint the origin of the hideous melody and found that it came from all around me. It was the voice of the forest, unrecognizable in any linguistic form, yet I understood; the same way one can tell a couple in an adjacent room are fighting through the muffled voices. We trust the walls to hold the silent secret words that we never want strangers to hear, yet they can never hide the anger, lust, betrayal, and overall depravity in life. I heard weeping, like that of a mother agonizing over a child taken from this world too soon, from the old willows neighboring the dead river. Proud mocking coming from a grove of young upstart Oak trees, barely fifty rings of age. The Ash reveled in their new blooms and flaunted the Wisteria that hung from the branches in clusters of striking blue and purple that infested the trees like some beautiful disease. I was disgusted by it all yet something inside me demanded my gaze remain. Was it simply that beauty be recognized or the fear of offending a creator that could conceive of such things, I did not know.