The trees are speaking again, whispering their rustling language of waving limbs and breathy gusts while their magnificent autumn coats of red, gold, and orange distract the eye from their soon-to-be-naked limbs and instead sends the sight whirling and spinning and following that language, not quite understanding, but so very close that the one affected soon becomes caught up in those glorious robes and coats of majestic colours, and the not quite silent shivering of the trees, because even with their extra layers of clothes they’re cold and wet from the occasional rainfall and incessant chilly mists that frequent the sky and the ground beneath the sky. They dance too, the trees; shaking and twisting above their roots because they can’t move about the way they’d like to, so instead they content themselves with amusing bored students and exasperated parents glancing out the windows of homes and classrooms, never getting recognition from those humans staring staring staring at them, these beautiful living creatures who sing and dance and speak for everyone’s benefit. Oh, sure, maybe once in a while a kid will sit under the unneeded shade of the branches during a cool autumn evening to read, or maybe a couple will carve their initials onto a trunk but really, what tree wants someone digging into its wood when there’s so many other places to do that- paper, for example, made of dead relatives who silently gave their lives so you could write down the answers to the math homework you didn’t do, but rather decided to copy from the friend who sat beneath the waving and dancing trees finishing and studying diligently so that they could get their piece of tree with words printed on it saying they could move on with their lives and out of their parents’ houses so that their parents could stop staring out the windows at the singing trees wondering where the heck their child is and whether they should make them move out immediately because they don’t want their kid to end up like that kissing couple beneath the tree with initials carved onto the trunk, still living with parents at thirty years old.

And through it all- the speaking trees with their rustling language of waving limbs and breathy gusts, with their magnificent autumn coats of red, gold, and orange and their not-quite-silent shiverings caused by occasional rainfall and incessant chilly mists and their unnoticed twisting dances- through it all, the trees keep their ancient vigil.