Dawn arrived with legal vengeance. Ling's boots sank into a quagmire of paperwork before she'd taken three steps from the farmhouse. The oak tree by the porch had impaled a subpoena on the railing using a branch sharpened into a quill, its sap-glazed parchment shimmering with venomous intent. The title writhed in the morning light: Canopy Collective v. Ling – Class Action for Shade Appropriation, Root Trespass, and Emotional Distress Caused by Seasonal Exploitation. The ink smelled of pine resin and spite.
Chu Feng emerged from the barn's shadow, his overalls streaked with chlorophyll graffiti. A pinecone struck his shoulder, detonating into phosphorescent spores that hung in the air, spelling PHOTOSYNTHETIC SURPLUS VALUE EXPLOITATION in smoldering cursive. "They unionized the mushrooms," he said, kicking a chanterelle that waved a picket sign reading Solidarity With Mycelium. Its gills hissed like a leaking courtroom recorder.
Arbiter peered out from behind a sugar maple, his braids tangled in dandelion subpoenas. "I only taught them basic labor rights! How was I supposed to know firs would form strike committees?" A birch branch slapped him across the face, leaving a papercut that bled tiny Objection! stamps.
The forest darkened as the trial convened. Ancient redwood roots erupted from the soil, twisting into judicial benches upholstered in lichen. A 300-year-old sequoia named Quercus Lex unfolded his bark into judge's robes, resinous sap hardening into ceremonial buttons. His gavel was a fossilized acorn the size of a human skull, its surface etched with the fingerprints of dead loggers.
"The defendant stands accused of illegal occupation of annular memory storage totaling 2.3 terabytes," Quercus boomed, his voice shaking loose a hail of contempt-of-court pine needles. "Exhibit A: Erotic poetry carved into birch bark causing widespread dermatological distress."
Ling hurled Jiang Yue's music box at the sequoia's roots. The device caught in the grooves of a lightning scar, its gears chewing through growth rings to play a warped rendition of Ode to the Oak. Cornstalks snapped to attention, their tassels blooming into powdered wigs that recited Land Expropriation Compensation Regulations in monotone unison.
"Objection!" Arbiter shouted, dangling upside-down from a vindictive wisteria vine. "The birch bark statute of limitations—"
A pinecone barrage cut him off. Chu Feng severed the vine with a grafting knife, revealing half a carved bark fragment in his palm – Jiang Yue's handwriting glowing through the fissures: Annual Ring Server Protocol v.12.
Quercus' canopy shuddered. Ling jammed the bark shard into a knothole courtroom exhibit. The soil erupted in a geyser of buried truths:
Nineteenth-century firs materialized as ghostly witnesses, their resin tears hardening into courtroom adhesive. Genetically modified maples bled case file fragments instead of syrup. The confidentiality agreements Arbiter had tricked beeches into signing pulsed through mycelial networks like poisoned sap.
"You use growth rings as natural hard drives," Ling snarled, boots sinking into quivering roots, "yet sue us for data breaches?"
The music box jammed. Jiang Yue's hologram erupted from the sequoia's core, her fingers trailing bioluminescent code that rewrote each growth ring's encryption. Oaks recoiled as their innermost circles betrayed them – hidden accounts syphoning photosynthetic profits, black-market timber deals disguised as wildfire prevention.
Chu Feng drove his grafting knife into the humus. Bronze circuitry blossomed from the hilt, hacking into arboreal root networks. The forest began purging its crimes:
Pines vomited gilded gavel fragments. Birches shed bark to reveal tax evasion ledgers. Even Quercus Lex split open, disgorging century-old contracts where woodpeckers had pecked false testimony into innocent elms.
"Settlement terms," Ling ground her heel into a fleeing taproot. "Pumpkins wear permanent apology signage. Carbon credit profits split 70-30. And—" She ripped the sequoia's resinous robe, exposing sapwood pulsing with shame. "—weekly tea parties featuring audiobook readings of Botanical Protection Acts."
The cornfield applauded with rustling leaves. The scarecrow judge removed its wig, revealing Jiang Yue's bioreactor glowing beneath straw-stuffed burlap. Arbiter tried teaching mushrooms to form an oversight committee until a hickory nut cracked his skull.
At dusk, the annual ring servers entered hibernation mode. Ling found Chu Feng on the barn roof installing new hardware – a moonlit emotion translator that turned arboreal grievances into jazz riffs.
"Maples are suing over growth ring depreciation taxes next month," he said, tuning the frequency dial. "Planning to counter with delta blues."
Pumpkin vines snaked toward the eaves, hungry for confidential settlements. When Jiang Yue's hologram began humming The Internationale in photosynthetic frequencies, Ling finally smiled – the first real smile since the oaks had served notice.
The forest breathed in digital lullabies, its growth rings glittering with docket numbers for endless tomorrows. The scarecrow's wig tumbled through moonlit rows, revealing arbitration codes mutating in its straw skull. Deep in a rotten hollow, February 30th spun new indictments from spider silk and stolen daylight, its fungal quill scratching against the bark of a world that kept inventing fresher ways to litigate itself into oblivion.