you check your phone. you take a picture. the trees are hunched like whispering wizards. autumn will like this, you think, as you tuck the phone into your pocket.
you turn to leave, but a rustling stirs your attention. it’s a windless day, and the fog is thick like cotton. it seems even the aphids are asleep. your presence is an interjection, but so is this sudden noise.
you peak over your jacketed shoulder, pulling your arms close to your chest, suddenly chillier than before. a steamy breath of relief. everything is as it should be. the pine straw is still, and the willows sit crouched in quiet counsel.
but your attention snags. almost like a foot on a bulging root. felt, impassable, but unseen without a closer look. you focus your vision, bracketing the trees within the thin, black, cinematic margins of your eyelids. narrowing. noticing. and it hits you.
the willows are closer to each other than before.
but you’re probably imagining things. you check your camera roll, chuckling, expecting to be hilariously disproven, anticipating a photo identical to the scene in front of you.
this isn’t what you find.
looking up from your photo, the willows have crept nearly two feet closer to each other. in a circle. rubbing shoulders, if they could be said to have shoulders. the ones nearest to you have twisted, their gnarled visage peeking eerily at you as you peek at them.
empty and nauseous, you wonder if they are gossiping to each other.
if they might be talking about you.
the wind has picked up without you noticing. whispers feather your ears, a wordless cacophony. no, not wordless. formless. omnipresent, like air or the soft drumbeat in your skull when you cover your ears.
you can pick apart the words, but no human utters them. same notes, different instrument. stories, softly uttered by the solemn sages.
your fingers brush the petrified wood of a stump, waist-height, behind you. you don’t remember it being there. your body is heavy, and you succumb, tantalized by rest and the tableau before you.
you sit, and you listen.
for just a little while.