A little Feary Tale

Once upon a time... There stood a solitary rotten tree on a hill amidst vast plains of barren land. No living thing could there be seen no matter how hard you'd try. But legend says it wasn't always so, that all this now dead land had once been green with millions of trees and bushes, overflowing life!
Now, it is said, that in this forest of forests, little beings lived, who weren't bigger than the squirrels on the trees. Living joyful little lives in houses underground, they knew not fear nor sorrow or even hatred... Until the Day of Envy came.
On that unfortunate day, there fell from a tree upon a hill a thing that never had been seen among the tiny folk. And so it came that he who later on was called The Finder, whose real name is long forgotten, stumbled over it. Bewildered he took it home and showed it to his spouse, an, even among her kind, outstandingly joyful little thing who everyone liked.
On that same evening, the Finder asked his wife, what she would do about the thing, but she knew not herself and thus proposed to show it to the others and ask them for advice.
So in the morning they held council, all wondering what the thing could be, and one said: lets open it, to see whats inside! Another: lets bury it, maybe it grows? A third: lets cook it and lets see just how it tastes!
But since this was too difficult a decision to make on one day, they agreed on continuing the discussion the next morning.
It was then, the Finder thought: I have found it, so I should decide, they are only jealous!
There had never before been such a feeling among his kind but he was afraid. Afraid, anyone could take his precious object, and from fear grew anger witch turned into hatred. Those emotions were too much for one who never experienced any of them before and they drove him mad.
In his deranged state he took a stone and slew every one of his people in their sleep, and the soil was drenched with the blood of the innocent and the plants began to die.
Still blinded by his rage, the Finder finally arrived at his home, where his wife slept. If she was dead, there wouldn't be anyone left to steal his treasure. But at the moment he held the blood dripping stone over her head, the last bit of sanity returned to him and he didn't dare kill the one he loved. Realizing what he had done he took the stone in despair and killed himself with it.
At the sound of his limp body hitting the ground, his wife woke up, screaming in terror at the sight of her husband lying on the ground, covered in blood. She cried for help, but nobody answered, and it dawned on her the bitter truth, that she was the only one left.
She took the wretched thing from the Finders bloody hands, knowing it was what had caused all this horror. While leaving the house, she witnessed that everything around her, that was her entire world, was rotting and falling apart. Consumed with grief, crying, still clutching the thing between her small fingers she ran through the woods.
After an infinite time, so it seemed, she arrived at a hill. On it an enormous tree, still fighting back against the sea of decaying life around it. The little woman, blind of the tears in her eyes, exhausted beyond recovery held up the thing and with her dying breath shouted to the tree: Take it back! Undo the harm you have caused!
But it was already too late. The forest was dead and with it every thing living in it. Only one lonely rotten tree on a hill remaining.
And so the story ends. But if you dare go to the tree, maybe you can find a tiny skeleton holding some kind of nut and if you bury it, perhaps there will be one day a new forest. Or maybe it will all happen again