When The Leaves Fall 🍂

"When I die, I don't want to be buried," she says, her voice soft and cold, like the breeze brushing her skin and the touch of a lover's ghost.

"Why?" he asks, leaning against the sycamore's trunk beside her, examining her up close.

But her eyes, tender and profound, instead of meeting his questioning gaze, are following a single autumn leaf dancing with the bliss of freedom and the sorrow of an end, just before it reaches the ground to join its fallen brothers and sisters. "Because I couldn't breathe."

His lips part as if to utter a response, but when he registers the words that came out of her mouth, he stops, and then scoffs in good-humoured amusement. "You little hobbit," he begins. "You couldn't breathe? You wouldn't be breathing, dumbass. That's kinda the whole death deal."

She finds herself smiling at his mock frustration as her eyes drift to a legion of industrious ants across the forest floor, her fingers tugging listlessly at little weeds poking between the cracks beneath their feet.

"Cremation then?" he suggests, tone now laced with mischief. "Or are we going full dramatic Viking send-off—me lighting your funeral boat on fire with a flaming arrow, shirt half-open, wind in my hair, grief etched on my ridiculously perfect face?"

She does not answer right away. Instead, she keeps her gaze downward, to the army of ants still, her expression unreadable save for the slight curve of her lips—half a smile, half a sigh. And then, at last, she breaks her silence.

"I just want to be laid bare on the ground," she begins, her quiet voice coated with longing, "no box, no walls, just my skin against the earth, crawling back into the womb of the world," she tells him with such serenity and melancholy it almost breaks something in him.

But, as if he refuses to be affected by the haunting image she has just conjured, with a cheeky charm that almost appears forced, he interjects, "Bare, as in... no clothes?"

Almost immediately, her solemn face breaks into a grin before throwing a playful glare at him.

"WITH clothes," she emphasises, "but of a material that easily decomposes."

He smiles to himself as he stares at her delicate form, grabbing a handful of leaves from the ground and dropping them onto her head.

She beams, eyes crinkling he almost can't see her irises, as she shakes the yellow and orange leaves from her hair. But she isn't done talking. "And then when I become one with the earth, I want you to plant a tree and flowers on top of my soil, plenty of wildflowers—trillium, violets, wild geranium, bluebells—I don't know what they look like, but I am sure they are beautiful." She smothers a sheepish giggle, as she only remembers those names from the classic books she consumes. "And by then, I shall be reborn amongst nature," she declares, looking around her with content appreciation, and then she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, as though she means to devour the scent of that very moment, to tattoo it in her lungs and give it permanent residence.

The mischief in his eyes gradually fades, like the dying light of dusk, as he listens—its sparkle replaced with something softer, tinted with the faint, familiar taste of bitterness.

"I wanna be swallowed by roots and turn into petals," her voice returns to its happily forlorn cadence, as if she carries a candle through a long, dark corridor, half-believing someone might still be waiting at the end. "I wanna be the breeze through the leaves and the scent of spring..."

He is silent, watching her as though she's becoming something he can no longer touch. Slowly and softly, her eyes open, her small mouth exhales deeply, as though releasing a burden she has carried for too long, or a desperate prayer she beseeches Mother Nature. Her chest rises and falls with deliberate grace, and her gaze is set afar—beyond the woods, beyond the sky, beyond all else within his perception.

"And when you come visit me," she continues, tilting her head up to look at the branches, "you can lie under my leaves, then I will let my flowers fall in your hair," a ghostly smile tugs at her lips as she envisions the image in her head, "and you'll remember every goddamn second I drove you insane."

He lets the words linger for a second or two, her knack for vivid imagery working on his imagination, and then he huffs a soft chuckle. A momentary silence hangs in the air. The birds chirp uninterrupted, the leaves rustle in a soothing chaos, and the stream of a nearby river cries in a peaceful form of anguish. "That's so you," he says finally, his intense gaze wistful.

"Hm?" She glances at him.

"Morbid... poetic."

Her face breaks into a smile, a genuine one. But no sooner does this joy appear than it is coloured with a sombre shade, like a temporary exposure of the sun being swallowed by a large mass of grey clouds.

The change in her countenance disturbs him. "Why do you look sad?" he asks, and then all of a sudden, his own face dims, as if an awful realisation struck him. "You're not seriously dying, are you?"

The corners of her lips lift once more to affect a smile. "I might just well be," she mutters, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

The aching tenderness on his expression deepens. "Why do you say that?" he inquires of her, his deep voice wrapped in the sweetest form of affection and concern, almost sounding hurt.

"Because..." she starts, blinking more times than necessary, as if fighting back tears. And then, with eyes filled with silent agony and rage she tries hard to suppress, she looks up at him, her smile quivering. "Why did you have to die first?"

A cruel hush takes over.

For the first time since she set foot in the forest, his silence feels wrong. Hollow. Deafening.

Because he is not there.

And the leaves no longer fall in her hair.