As frost crept down the ridgelines, the maples' winged seeds were falling.
These translucent propellers skimmed past the cliffs, brushing faint whispers of wind against the granite.
The stream had dwindled to a silver chain, winding along the pebbles in its bed, their surfaces marked with swirling patterns worn by summer torrents.
The fir forest on the northern slope took on a rusty hue. Beneath its carpet of needles, beetles used their mouthparts to transport their last reserves of fat for the winter.
The wild rose thickets at the southern foot of the mountain suddenly burst into motion. Startled goldfinches knocked the remaining berries from the branches, and purplish-red juice seeped into the moss, still glimmering faintly in the instant before it froze into crystals.
The pool below the cliff began to freeze over, its growing ice giving off soft sounds like shattering glass.
A fallen dead tree lay across the pool's edge. Antler-shaped frost flowers formed inside its split bark, every branch studded with hexagonal icicles.
The mountain wind swept over the bare rocks, stirring lichen spores from the cracks between stones. These gray-green wisps hung in the air, forming brief, murky clouds.
The evening precipitation froze into pellets on the spruce tips, waking a dormouse curled into a ball in a hollow beneath the roots as they fell to the ground.
It shook the flecks of ice from its fur, its whiskers brushing the budding winter shoots-
Those tender green embryos, wrapped in scales, were now storing sugars beneath the bark to withstand the bitter cold.
As dusk deepened, the little red dogwood berries became the last sources of light, until the air stirred by an owl sweeping over the treetops snuffed them all out.
Linde gazed out the window with a sigh. Before he knew it, late