Shimmering trinkets hang from strings. They talk in morse code with sunlight as it bounces off their edges. The dull ones? They just hang, silenced. There's no wind.
Once there was a pudgy brown haired little girl. She'd reach her short, inquisitive fingers toward the sun, towards the trinkets. Dangling tantalizingly out of her reach. As she reached, stretching up from her toes, the shouts of a man and a woman came from behind the locked windows. Her fingers paused and shook but reached further. The strings stretching from little chunks of metal up into the trees. Tears ran down her blotchy face as she dropped to the grass.
Every time the voices boomed from the walls, she'd come and reach.
Paint chipped from walls, and her fingers reached closer. She came out more often.
One night, the yelling starts in the early morning, shaking the trees awake as the stars watch, shaking they're glimmering heads. The little girl slides open her window and pushes the screen out onto the dewy weeds. She leaps outside carrying a shoe box. Tripping blindly across the grass, wiping away tears just to be able to see, she falls to her knees and places the box firmly under the trinkets, sparkling in the moonlight. She steps on the box, starts to reach... but a voice yells from the window, "We're leaving, honey, come one."
"One sec," she begs
"No. NOW!" yells the woman.

So she leaves the box and the trinkets, and they leave.


After a while, the man walks out. He holds a ladder and 2 trinkets on strings. He climbs the tree and ties them with the others. “Two more gone forever.” He mutters, and brushes his fingers over the shimmering trinkets.