No day spent at Nimm's home would have suggested

No day spent at Nimm's home would have suggested to the visitor that another seven billion people were crawling over the planet more or less simultaneously. The island was all his.

Nimm was relieved that there was no one around to make fun of his last name ("Rod"). But one day while he was skinning a boar, he saw a booze cruise headed straight for his island.

child because honestly, who really gives a shit about Tom's kids? How Tom and his dopey wife got on Nimm's isolated island was a mystery. Nimm decided

that all there was really left to do was breathe. So, she found a remote location under the shade of a shrub, laid down on her back, closed her eyes...inhale, exhale; inhale-

reverting to her primal essence, she found she could photosynthesize. She adjusted her head to follow the sun. Empowered, she developed tap roots in her toes. A rescue copter flew

over her top branches and she felt the rage flow through her xylem and phloem as she reached out a planty limb to smash the intruders in the rescue copter into smithereens. She

turned around only to see more of them, igniting her roots with a vicious flamethrower. after stomping them, she finally made her escape.

She ran as only a sentient walking tree can. That is to say, very slowly. But her pursuers soon gave up the chase, deciding that really they didn't need her to make cheap

hamster bedding. The brush with death brightened the colors and scents of her world, for we are but flowers of a summer day, who blossom with brambly dreams before the long night.