Song Of Spring

Chapter 1

Even when you are scattered like fallen leaves, you can be pretty ~ autumn

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I squinted at the fallen leaves on the forest floor, laid out like a carpet of warm browns and oranges. Tiny yellow leaves were raining all around me and sprinkling the trail ahead like party confetti. It was a heavenly sight for a solo-hiker who enjoys the company of nature, but my eyes were stuck on something very disturbing. Mixed with the old wrinkly leaves were a few fresh green ones.

I scanned the path ahead. There were more fresh leaves fallen than I had ever seen during those months. The forest trail was familiar to me. Growing up, I used to play hide and seek on the outskirts of those woods with my grandpa.

I picked up one leaf. It wasn’t even dry. It was a tender, thin oval with smooth edges—rosewood. “Dalbergia sissoo,” I mumbled, running my fingers over the glossy top surface.

My phone pinged just then, making me jump. Cursing myself for not turning off notifications, I grudgingly withdrew it from the pocket of the jeans. I pinged two more times.

1 message from The Indian Botanical Society Official WhatsApp group

2 messages from Plants Rocks

Some official notification might have come at work and the gang would probably bitch about it till evening.

My eyes fell on the temperature reading.

9°C

Nine degrees in the middle of November! I dragged my scarf tighter around me and looked up at the pale white sun. Temperatures had been dropping steadily over the past year and at twelve degrees we almost had no summer.

It vibrated again with more notifications before I switched off the internet and shoved it in my pocket.

I turned back to investigating the leaf, carefully swiping my index finger over it. My fingertip picked up a thin layer of grey dust. I rubbed my fingers together. The dirt was clingy like burnt grease.

“Pollution,” I sighed, looking up at the thinning canopy of the evergreen trees. “Nature is dying.”

Dry leaves crunched beneath my shoes as I followed the usual hiking route deeper into the woods. The familiar musky-sweet smell of autumn leaves hung in the air like a warm hug. The soft rustling of the winds playing in and out of the shrubs tingled my neck and spine, sending a wave of calm. I longed to find a cosy place over a dead log and finally settle down with a book and read till the late hours of the afternoon.

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A bird chirped somewhere overhead and an object swished behind me. It sounded like footsteps through dry grass. I stilled. Something else was there in the forest. The tourists had stopped coming long back because of the prevailing pandemic. What if it was a wild animal?

The rustling started again, this time to the right of the path. I whipped around, my eyes frantically searching the dark cover of trees for hidden danger. Something moved. The sunlight breaking through the canopy illuminated a tall figure under the cover of the foliage. I saw a whiff of dark hair before it moved again.