Understory
A record of a life,
one year at a time.
Once a year it asks. You answer in your own words, it seals them into a ring, and then it leaves you alone until this day next year.
Thirty seconds. The whole idea, without the reading.
Four journeys, a tree each
Different parts of a life, kept separately, because they are not the same thing and the questions should not be either. Each grows at its own pace, on its own anniversary.
You
The one nobody else answers and nobody else reads. It is the only tree that can never be shared, which is exactly what makes it safe to be honest in.
The two of you
Answered together, in the same room, and kept by both of you. One question, two people, and a record of what you each thought was true that year.
Your household
Everyone under one roof answering the same thing. A child answers it differently at nine than at nineteen, and the tree keeps both.
Your companions
A tree for every animal in your life, however many there are. Written while they are still beside you, which is the only time it can be.
It grows with you
An acorn on the day you plant it. A ring for every year you come back. Six stages, thirteen years to a grown tree, and nothing you can do to hurry it.
you plant
one
two to three
four to six
seven to twelve
years on
Growing it together
A tree answered together belongs to everyone who answered it. Once, the app draws a code on your screen and they point their phone at it. Everything sealed so far lands on their phone, whole.
After that there is nothing to do. Next year whoever has the app open answers, on whichever phone is in someone's hand, and the moment it is sealed everyone else has it. Nobody sends anything. Nobody accepts anything.
It travels sealed, to an address only your two phones can work out, and it is destroyed the moment it is collected. There is no account, and we never learn who either of you are.
The trunk is how you step back
Every year you answer becomes a ring. The trunk is where they are kept, and it is the part of the app you open years later.
One ring for every year of that journey. Inside is the youngest, outside is the oldest, and the clock underneath counts how long the tree has been standing.
Two ways to read it
One year, in full
Open a ring and read that year back question by question, in the words you used at the time. Nothing summarised and nothing tidied. A question you left blank says so, because deciding not to answer is part of the record too.
Last year stays shut until you have answered this year, so what you wrote at thirty is never edited by who you became at forty.
Or one question, down the years
Pick a question and see every answer you have ever given it, oldest first. Ten of them come round every single year, so a decade later they read as one continuous line.
Year by year you never notice yourself change. Side by side, it is the only thing on the page.
Your words never leave your phone
There is no account to make, no server holding your answers and nothing to sign in to. We are not being careful with your data. We do not have it.
No analytics, no crash reporting, nothing in the app that reports back. Nobody can be asked to hand your record over, because there is nothing on our side to hand over.
And the ground they grow in
Underneath the trees are your foundations: what you love, what you cannot stand, what you believe, what steadies you. Not a yearly ritual but a slower one.
Held open all year and changed whenever you want, with the whole history of every change kept. An answer you held at twenty five and released at thirty is part of the record too, and the app remembers when it moved.
What it costs
A shared tree that somebody hands you is free to keep and free to keep answering, whether you have bought anything or not. What you pay for is starting journeys of your own.