Worldbuilding: A Cure for Happiness - Trees with Eyes!

Someone wanted to know more about the trees with eyes over on tumblr, so here is a little about them:

At first glance, this seems creepy. Okay, no matter what I say, it’s always going to be creepy. But hopefully less creepy if I explain it? So here goes:

Brieuc’s countryside village exists at the foot of a mountain, and perched on the edge of the mountain, overlooking the village, is a mysterious castle. To get to that castle, you’d have to go up the mountain. But there’s a most peculiar forest you’d have to go through…

A forest where every tree has eyes, and all of them follow you around as you pass through…

How to explain the eyes? They’re… almost vestigial. Is that the right word? Probably not. Basically, the eyes do see, but they don’t see. They see you walking around among them, but they don’t see enough (or get sentient enough) to then judge your clothing style or wonder why in the world you’re wrapped in all those layers of cloth when you could just grow yourself a nice thick layer of bark.

The eyes are part of a defense mechanism for the trees, allowing them to sense threats and react accordingly.

Say you’re a soon-to-be-deeply-unfortunate traveler making your way through this not-at-all-creepy forest. It’s getting dark. You’re not going to be able to see anything soon. (Sure, the nice lady at the inn told you not to make that journey until morning, but these country folk are always so superstitious!) You decide to bring out your handy dandy torch and light it on fire. Voila - light!

And then you die.

What did you do to deserve such a fate?

Because the eyes see. Fire is bad for trees. Fire is dangerous. Fire is a threat. And these trees aren’t completely helpless. They can release a deadly toxin into the air to battle any threat they may sense. So, you’ve made a deeply unfortunate mistake, and you’ve paid for it with your life.

But, again, the eyes are more like visual sensors that recognize specific things. They recognize fire because fire = threat. They recognize enough that if you were to bring in an axe and plunge it into one of their trunks, you = threat. Equally, if you’re carrying fire, you = threat. Since they’re not registering that they’re on fire, that means that instead of shooting water droplets out into the air, they will instead deploy deadly toxins. To get rid of you. The thing carrying the fire. (And then, if the torch causes a forest fire, they will proceed to shoot water droplets into the air.)

Okay, so we’ll pretend that that makes total sense and that there is absolutely no flaw in the evolutionary logic of my fantasy eye-trees.

~⭐~

Grab the 2022 Reflection & Productivity Journal here for $2.00! Try out a full-month sample free here!

Check out my psychological thriller Apartment. Add it to your TBR on Goodreads!

Read my solarpunk mystery Murder in Heliopolis on Royal Road, Inkitt, or Tapas. (Binge on RR!)

Looking for a writing prompt workbook? Check out 101 Writing Prompts.