A Much Softer Light

Billy woke in the morning and knelt on the cold floor and scratched the skin through the thick fur of the mane of the sitting dog. He looked out the window to the thin crest of light over the shoulder of the mountain, starting orange and rose and fading upward into the dark firmament of morning sky. The dog groaned in its pleasure. It raised a front paw slightly and lowered it to the floor, and raised it again and held it there, just off the floor of the trailer.

Out of the darkness the trees about started to emerge, first a tree at a time, the tall ponderosa pines rising jagged above the horizon, the whispering ball of an aspen. They gained perspective and dimension and grew from trees into the forest that they were, and they gained their autumn array of colours too. Billy watched for wind but there was none by any indication of the forest. He watched the tall brown weeds closer to the trailer, but there was none there as well. It was all still life, all dying back as the seasonal sun grew weak, and the air and ground grew cold, and all of the things that could sustain the lives of the plants were slowly taken away.