Serpentine Squiggles

There’s something about wandering the desert of leaves, I don’t know.

The trees — what were trees — are mostly horizontal things, crumbling cylinders. The animals — what were animals — existed as dust and fragments. You’d walk and you’d see a great white rotting mound of death, and you’d wonder whether it were one animal or a whole list.

A scientist could put the pieces in place, probably. What were scientists.

But the trees and animals were details. It was called the desert of leaves.

You were glad there was no wind, because the top layer of the ground crunched into brittle pieces when you stepped. You wore goggles anyway, your bags weren’t sealed tight.

The sun was a mercenary, and as if his contract with the kingdoms of life had ended with the death of all these trees, it glared vaguely from the dark pall of the sky. Whoever its new client was, they must intend you dead from all this heat. Your clothes were sweating.

Miles. You’d walked miles under this sun. Breathing this still aridness.

You hadn’t seen a person in—

Calendars were dust.

As bad as the sun was, the desert itself was its own kind of radiation. Every moldering tree, every pile of death, it wore on you, it withered.

You wandered on.

You found something.

What were trees no longer quite looked like trees. What were animals no longer quite looked like animals.

This no longer quite looked like a person.

She still wore her wedding dress. The cheekbones were still in place, like the last hint of a smile.

She still wore that ring.

You bent down, looked close at the broken skeleton.

It felt like a disturbance, but the desert of leaves was no place for something like this.

I took the ring and wandered on.

There’s something about the desert of leaves. Something lonely. That’s not quite it. It wasn’t something you felt, but realized. You felt the desperate touch of air, the urging, the pleas.

No, the right word is welcoming.