The Burning Soul

Abstract

Gray sea, gray sky, but fire in the woods and the trees aflame. No heat, no smoke, but still the forests burned, crowning with red and yellow and orange, a cold conflagration with the coming of fall, and the leaves resignedly descending. There was mortality in the air ,borne on the first hint of winter breezes, thethreatening chill of them, and the animals prepared for the coming snows.The foraging had begun, the filling of bellies for leaner times. Hunger would make the more vulnerable creaturestake risks in order to feed, and the predators would be waiting. Black spiders squatted at the corners of their webs, not yet slumbering.