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The Leaves (4) : With the changing seasons, there are piles of leaves all around Destiny City. It’s a difficult job to try and keep up with them all, and sometimes the allure of these leaf piles is impossible to ignore. Who doesn’t want to relive the childish joys of their youth? And no one’s around to see, right? So why not jump into a pile of leaves? Oh–because, when you do, you jump through one pile and come out of another somewhere else across the city. The leaves all seem ordinary, but there’s a few odd seconds between when you jump into the leaves and when you jump out; it feels like falling, tumbling, somersaulting through the air. It’s not scary, just odd. You see walls of leaves–brown and orange and yellow and red–and they crunch magnificently. Overall, it doesn’t seem menacing, just a bit of trickster fun. If you try to jump in a pile of leaves again, you might wind up somewhere else entirely–or right back where you started.
As the weather cooled with the changing of the seasons, the leaves on the trees had lost most of their green and became varying shades of red, orange, yellow, and brown. It always reminded Cam of warm apple cider with cinnamon and the smell of a warmed pine tree waiting for decorations and music. Many trees had shed their leaves and the city had sent landscapers around to rake the foliage into neat piles all around the city. Many shops had begun putting up signs that shared the colors of the leaf piles, giving the city a cozy and warm fireplace-feel that made Cam crave the spicy-sweet taste of pumpkin pie.
He wandered the streets, noticing that the streets felt emptier than normal. As if people were already holing up in their homes to wait out the chill before it came. This would make picking pockets and begging for the kindness of strangers much more difficult. Cam could already feel the weight of the winter encroaching. It was going to be a meager season again and had Cam's mind already trying to sort the strange puzzle of how to secure some food and a, hopefully, warm place to sleep before the frost rolled in.
The sun shone overhead and one pile of shed leaves caught Cam's attention. A whimsical feeling that he had thought died out long ago bubbled up from his core. He had the sudden urge to leap in and roll around, no matter the critters that might be hiding within. Before he could think about it too much, his body began moving on its own. His legs carried him at a sprint towards the strangely alluring pile and launched himself into the air.
The familiar feeling of his body cutting through the air as he ran gave way to the sensation of free-falling when Cam jumped. The dry leaves rustled as his body burst through, but the feeling of falling didn't stop. Cam felt suddenly lost in space, a light-headedness and queasy-stomach twisting Cam's sense of direction until he couldn't tell which way was up and which was down. As quickly as the feeling of falling had started, it ended, with Cam flying out of the pile of leaves and landing on the dry and yellowing grass... of the city park?
Cam looked around from where he sat on the ground, no longer encased by the concrete and glass of buildings but rather the open field-like surroundings of the city park with its bare trees. A strange nausea brought the bitter flavor of bile to Cam's mouth, urging him to swallow it back as he stood and brushed himself off. He didn't catch the red-orange leaf stuck in the longer strands of his golden locks, the leaf placed perfectly like a hair clip given to him by one of the fae.
Not sure if he was going to fall through the fabrics of reality again, Cam decided that would be the last time he went jumping into any errant piles of discarded vegetation. He shoved his hands into the front pocket of his ratty hoodie, still feeling that strange dizziness from the experience. He looked around again, but all the people walking through the park hadn't seemed to notice the displacement of an entire human body from a pile of flora. He took a steadying breath to try and ground his mind and nerves again, then started walking back to the streets and alleys. A chilling wind picked up, blowing the leaf from Cam's hair to land perfectly back onto the pile of its fallen comrades.
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