5kiss to Maiel's cheek as she sat alone at her window. The walled-in orchard below was
so beautiful to her, and the dance of the barren branches in slivered moonlight was almost
too much beauty for her fragile human mind to handle. She sighed and swept her gaze
from tree to tree, coming to rest on her favorite spot in the garden. It was a simple stone
bench beneath a pair of leafless trees - but in the spring it was transformed.
Had it been spring, the heavy pink cherry blossoms and new, pale-green leaves would
have halted her from even seeing the bench from her vantage above. In the spring, the
simple bench was transformed into a throne, and pink petals rained down like confetti,
gathering in Maiel's hair and catching on her dresses. She smiled, remembering how
happy she'd been to see the petals falling down around her, tinting the thick, spring grass
with the rosy color of cherry blossoms.
Maiel smiled still, shifting her gaze from her memories into the present. It was the wind
that gave her joy now - the sly wind that rattled bony branches and shifted the dead
leaves that covered the ground. The wind was movement and life; it was power and
proof that the world continued on outside of her head.
The small, rattling leaves looked grey in the fractured moonlight, and as they shifted and
danced in the December wind, Maiel smiled to see such life below - the chaotic dance of
winter leaves.