My personality is a tatter made of bits and pieces of other people. The wind is high in my ears as I step outside of the school, briefly chill before I hug my coat tighter around me; it smells of rain and far away places, maybe the hill I am on acts as some sort of geographical receptacle for other points in space. The sun is setting but it's not dark yet. Magic hour. I collect parts of people's personalities that I find beautiful, useful, or fitting (all words for the same thing) and attach them to my own. A tree towers above me and, even though I am not stranger to the sensation, I take special note. This memory will be carved into my narrative, I suddenly know. The chill is heightened by the way the leaves' green tinges the shade thrown by the tree, pink light of the climaxing sunset scattered between the organic holes in its tapestry. It gets colder but I don't move; the wind is still blowing. I am a hub; I am the connector of disparate memories, disparate monads, disparate holes in the tapestry of the universe that we call "perspective".
In the south-eastern periphery of my sight, quite long during magic hour on a hill, lies the City and a tree towers over it. Ağaç Ana reaches its hands into the sky, holding it in place. I smile. My own tree seems smaller (which, like all trees, it is) by comparison and that makes it seem more intimate (which, like all trees, it is). I take a step towards it and the wind increases. It is decidedly cold now. As my personality broke around the hardest day of my life, I realized that in rebuilding it, I could not repeat the same mistakes of my youth; monoliths are too fragile. Hours I set and tried to plan my own self while it, of course, coalesced silently into this hub. The wind suddenly changes direction and the air is filled with pollen; the tree is blossoming in the middle of the snap freeze, an Indian Winter. I raise my chin slightly into the wind and let the air blow around me, drawing tears from my eyes that are then whisked away. The tree stands in the midst of a roundabout and, around us, is a town.
Starting to walk is hard but I manage it. I have appointments in the City, mechanisms of ritual that the social unit does not suffer delay in. My tree walks with me, in the sense that I never really leave it; I leave behind a part of me that I, perhaps, picked up a month or a week or a lifetime ago. The hub molts, periodically (do not ask me of the cycle, I don't know) and is an agile thing. As more pieces of people are added, so too pieces leave. This is useful; I am in may places at once. The road, slightly in need of repair, curves down the semi-golden ranges of the hill, leading to a highway. A highway towards the City, naturally. I have appointments. Above me, closer now, Ashvattha encompasses the sky, its multitude of branches reaching to the stars themselves. Count them: Cygnus, Alshain, Zhinü ducking underneath the cover and spinning her threads which hand across her million siblings. Walking the road, my thumb out for the kindness of strangers, I hug my tree.
Lights stop and then accelerate again and, suddenly, I am moving much faster towards the City. I will make my appointments. "What do you do" asks a voice beside me. "I gather people's lives and store them inside me, forever branching into my own firmament" I reply. They nod. "Yes, that sounds reasonable, good idea" they follow up and a warm silence stretches besides us. They can tell my tree is swaying in the wind and they respect that. The cobblestones of the roundabout are welcoming and I feel at home in this town, even though I know nothing of its pathways and alleys, don't know how it feels on Saturdays, have never seen its park crowded with people, have not tasted its myriad ways of being. It, like all towns and people, is a hub.
In the south-east, Yggdrasil rises and eclipses, finally, the sun. I have appointments and so does the City. I have tasted its markets in full bloom; I know the gentle curves of street and sidewalk. The lights stop and with a "good day", I depart. Breathing deep, I turn down the boulevard and smile at its shadows waving hello to me. Yes, my friends, I'm back but only parts of me; a part has been left behind. "Yes, of course" they say. They are practical, being shadows and boulevard shadows at that (the most practical of shadows). "You're a hub".
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