{ Words in the Wind } Fall (034)

He sighed.

Immediately, several indignant birds took flight from his vines, and the trees that neighboured him shed already skeleton branches.

It was getting cold, it was getting dark, and while he wasn't capable of thoughts more complex than just his existence, he was capable of understanding how his existence was shaped by others. Cold nights meant less visitors, empty trees meant less comfort. It wasn't much to contemplate at all, but it had taken him well over a few hours to decide that this was, decidedly, not something he liked.

Time slowed - he slowed, and he slowly, ponderously remembered the others.

One of the more recent had actually been two, they hadn't meant to get lost, it was he who found them. They were both small, so small, and he had let them rest as long as they needed but they were so quiet he was afraid they would not move at all. When at last they did, he shifted to let them through the shelter of his vines, both of them were gone, the first brighter, vibrant, purples and blues, and the second more sullen. He did not see them for a while.

Another had been bigger, and they were young and so very playful. They wanted things, time, attention, love, so many things and to them he was less a protector than perhaps a fascination. He sympathized - it was not difficult to feel lonely, and he did his best to slowly, always slowly and deliberately, entertain, shrugging them gently away from the tips of his vines so they did not fall, so they didn't chase the smaller inhabitants away, with what they probably thought was benign excitement.

There was one - ah, yes - this one he thought long and laboriously, contemplating their existence. It was a feeling, something he didn't quite understand was sadness. A melancholy around them that seemed to permeate into their very features. It felt like he had seen them before, somewhere, someplace else, perhaps in another lifetime. That was not a concept he understood and so the last visitor, a strange one coloured in a thicket of dark and green, simply left the impression of unfinished words. This one would leave him thinking for a long, long time.

And of course, there was his neighbour, the other like him. They were small, but they were bright, not colourful, but so, intently bright. They were a curious neighbour, and he would see them time to time, always in the dark, the warm lush dark, wandering and occasionally watching him. He didn't mind - they were not harmful nor dangerous, and at some point he felt like he could almost see another just like her, but it was again, just a half-formed concept that he didn't quite understand. That, he would have to contemplate further, not contemplate but simply digest, mull in his consciousness as it attempted to create connections it didn't quite realize.

A sigh, his own that broke his string of thoughts, and a massive heave again as the last of the birds took to the air. It was decidedly dark to finally retreat back into the forest and stop waiting for some, any, fellow travelers.

He would try again tomorrow.