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 Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2025 6:39 pm
Quote: 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.
She was livestreaming from her phone as she wandered, chatting casually with her followers. “Okay, guys, check this out,” she said, turning her camera toward the ground where the sidewalk disappeared beneath layers of gold and crimson. “It’s literally like nature dropped confetti everywhere. I swear Destiny City has the best fall colors.”
Her chat scrolled with laughing emojis and a few dares.
Jump in it!
Do it for the stream!
Saskia laughed. “You guys are so predictable. You just wanna see me covered in leaves, huh?”
But her grin said she was already considering it. She looked around—the street was quiet, no one nearby. “Alright, fine. But if I find a bug in my hoodie, I’m blaming you.”
She propped her phone against her backpack so the camera could catch the action, backed up a few steps, and took a running leap straight into the biggest pile she could find.
The moment she hit the leaves, the world shifted.
For a split second, everything went silent except for the crisp, echoing crunch all around her. Colors blurred—reds, yellows, and browns spinning into a tunnel that felt endless but soft, like falling through a giant autumn kaleidoscope. Her stomach flipped once, then twice, before her feet found solid ground again.
She stumbled forward, brushing leaves from her hair. “Okay… that was new.”
Blinking, she realized she wasn’t on her street anymore. The buildings were different—taller, glassy—and she could hear the faint sounds of a fountain nearby. Her phone, still streaming, lay a few feet away, the chat exploding with comments.
“Wait, what?!” she said, grabbing it quickly. “Guys, I think the leaves just teleported me!”
Half laughing, half amazed, she spun in a circle, trying to figure out where she was. “Okay, Destiny City, you’re officially weird—but, like, awesome weird.” She pointed her camera back toward the leaf pile, now perfectly still. “Do I dare try that again?”
She grinned at her screen, mischief glinting in her eyes. “Yeah… I totally dare.”
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Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2025 6:46 pm
Saskia adjusted her camera, still grinning from the first jump. Her viewers were flooding the chat with messages—half disbelief, half excitement.
“NO WAY THAT WAS REAL!”
“Girl, what filter was that??”
“Do it AGAIN!”
She laughed breathlessly. “I swear I didn’t edit that! You guys saw it too, right? Like… the whole leaf tunnel thing?!”
Her words trailed off as she turned the camera toward the pile again. It looked totally normal now. Just a bunch of leaves, harmless and quiet, the way they always were after a storm. Saskia chewed her lip thoughtfully.
“Well, only one way to prove I’m not crazy.”
She picked up her phone, propped it back on her bag, and checked that the stream was still rolling. The comments were a blur of encouragement, memes, and theories—everything from hidden holograms to ghosts.
Saskia smirked. “If this breaks my phone, I’m sending the bill to Destiny City’s Parks Department.”
With a running start, she dove again.
The crunch of leaves swallowed the sound of her laughter. But this time, the fall was different—deeper, faster. The tunnel around her wasn’t just spinning colors; it was pixelating, glitching. Bright orange leaves broke apart into squares of light, then reformed into fractal patterns that twisted like code unraveling.
Her phone vibrated violently in her pocket, and her stream crackled. The cheerful comments turned into static, the feed flickering between her face, a wall of orange leaves, and a screen filled with distorted symbols she’d never seen before.
“Uh—guys?!” she shouted, trying to grab at the swirling mess of color.
For a moment, she saw flashes—her reflection split into three, her voice echoing back at her in digital fragments. Then the fall ended abruptly, like someone had hit pause.
Saskia landed on soft grass. She gasped, looking around. She wasn’t in the same part of the city anymore. The leaves had scattered, the sky above her tinted a deep amber that didn’t match the time of day. Everything was still—but her phone was buzzing nonstop.
When she looked at it, the livestream was still active. Thousands of new viewers had appeared out of nowhere, usernames she didn’t recognize. And the chat… wasn’t in any language she knew.
“What the…” she whispered, the calm gamer in her trying hard not to panic.
She waved a hand in front of the lens, and the image glitched, creating a double of her hand on-screen that didn’t move the same way.
“Okay, either Destiny City has the best Halloween prank ever,” she said slowly, heart racing, “or I just fell into a livestream from another dimension.”
Her chat flickered again, and among the strange symbols, one message appeared clearly—
“Jump again.”
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Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2025 6:47 pm
Saskia froze, staring at the screen. “…Yeah, okay, this is officially the weirdest stream I’ve ever done.”
But even as she said it, her curiosity got the better of her. She glanced back at another shimmering pile of leaves nearby, almost glowing under the golden sky.
“Alright, chat,” she said, forcing a grin. “Third time’s the charm.”
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Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2025 6:59 pm
The wind picked up again, swirling golden leaves around her sneakers like a slow-motion storm. Saskia stared down at her phone, the eerie chat still flickering with symbols and the same repeating line:
“Jump again.”
Her fingers tightened around the device. “Okay,” she muttered, voice trembling just slightly. “You wanted a show? Let’s make this one count.”
She turned the camera to face her, offering her viewers a shaky grin. “Alright, chat—if this ends with me waking up in another dimension, someone better clip it.”
The glowing pile of leaves shimmered at her feet, humming faintly now, almost like static from a half-tuned TV. Saskia took a deep breath, then sprinted forward. For a moment, everything was weightless.
She fell through the colors again—but this time, they weren’t autumn hues. They were streaks of light, like pixels streaming past her in ribbons of orange and gold. The air buzzed in her ears, filled with distorted whispers of her own voice echoing back. “Jump again… jump again…”
Her stream flashed on and off—images of Destiny City upside down, her chat exploding in unreadable lines, then complete black. She reached out, trying to hold onto something, but the world dissolved around her like a glitch resetting.
Then—Thud!
Saskia blinked hard, her vision adjusting to dim morning light. Her blankets were tangled around her legs, her pillow half on the floor. For a second, she just lay there, listening to the faint hum of her PC running in sleep mode. Her phone buzzed beside her. The stream app was still open. The last thing it showed was a frozen frame of her falling through a tunnel of leaves. The timestamp read 3:17 a.m.
She sat up slowly, heart pounding, then rubbed her face. “Okay… dream? Right? Totally a dream.”
She checked her notifications—hundreds of new followers, a thousand clips, and one saved video titled simply: “The Autumn Glitch — LIVE.”
Her stomach flipped. She reached for her hoodie and felt something crunch inside the pocket. When she pulled her hand back out, a single golden leaf fell into her palm—whole, unbroken, and shimmering faintly in the morning light.
Saskia stared at it, her calm demeanor faltering for just a second before she let out a nervous laugh. “Well, chat,” she whispered to no one, “guess I really fell for that one.”
With a sigh and a shake of her head, she placed the leaf on her desk beside her headset.
Tomorrow, maybe she’d stream again.
Maybe she wouldn’t.
But as she crawled back under her blanket, one thing was for sure—
Destiny City was never boring.
Her breathing steadied, her eyes drifting closed.
And as Saskia finally fell asleep, the golden leaf she’d left on the desk slipped silently to the floor. It landed with a faint rustle—soft, almost like a whisper—before fading into a flicker of golden light that disappeared before morning.Word count: 938
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