Alder, he said, dodging trunks askew and unbending, like posh dancers blocking the way from steerage. She hunted a clearing, having been lost like this before. Every stump a bear standing in the overcast. The tangle ahead worse than ever. Wide eyes follow lines, proping pencils over shoulders seemingly the size of trees.
Brows smooth, mouths open, they study breathing, snaggle-toothed as sailors.
Room crowded with desks, walls thick with example. Too much going on in too little space. Winds flatten plains no wider than their eyes where children study hunger, not the other side of the world. Pastel houses crowding their fences squat on the streets below echo the cascading wonder, empty of what it is. To sit alone on a mountain, or even a hillside near the sweet and quickening leaves.